SAN JOSE — Police officers fanned across South San Jose and Evergreen early Wednesday, raiding eight homes and seizing thousands of pot plants connected to a clandestine suburban marijuana grow scheme, authorities said.

Spearheaded by the San Jose Police Department’s Metro special-enforcement unit, “Operation Greensweep” recovered 1,872 plants, most of which were of salable maturity, and arrested or detained six people.

That included the couple suspected of supervising the alleged scheme, San Jose residents Dean Minh Trinh, 39, and Kim Chai Le, 38, who were taken into custody at their Winsted Drive home. But the sophistication of the operation — worth more than $5 million by the highest estimates — suggests they have their own overseers and other conspirators, police said.

“This is not a mom-and-pop operation,” said Lt. Larry Ryan, commander of the Metro unit. “That money is going somewhere. Other individuals are involved.”

Like other indoor grows that have been uncovered by area law enforcement over the years, some of the involved homes were illegally drawing electricity through jury-rigged power that bypassed the PG&E meters.

“The amount of electricity that goes through these places is unsafe. Eight residences like this is dangerous for the surrounding community,” Ryan said.

One of those homes, in the 700 block of Dubanski Drive under the shadow of the Santa Teresa Foothills, was outfitted in a way that the utility company did not register it as using any power at all.

Neighbors who walk and drive by the Dubanski Drive home every day were none the wiser that a marijuana grow was being run right under their noses. In fact, thanks to an intricate makeshift ventilation system, those same noses didn’t detect the pot scent in the home until officers served a search warrant and started carrying the plants into the driveway.

For Ruby Nowack, who has lived within a stone’s throw of the home for 39 years, the first sign of trouble she noticed at the home was Wednesday morning, when she woke to the sound of police officers knocking on the front door and yelling commands to the lone resident inside.

She added that she did not observe the kind of foot or vehicle traffic at the home that she would typically associate with illicit activity.

“I would never see anything coming from the house. It was very quiet,” Nowack said. “It totally doesn’t fit in. I’m sorry to see this because it’s going to cause the owner a great deal of harm.”

That comment is particularly telling, because the entire purported grow scheme began unraveling back in March with another home associated with Trinh and Le, in the 300 block of Bodega Way off Cottle Road. Police say the homeowner contacted authorities after suspecting suspicious activity by his renters.

Responding officers obtained a search warrant April 15, when they entered the unoccupied home and found at least 700 marijuana plants, which are not included in Wednesday’s confiscation total. The interior of the home was ruined by water, mold, and other structural damage, a characteristic that would be later found in the other homes.

The findings spurred a broader three-month investigation coordinated by the Metro special-enforcement unit, which conducts drug enforcement operations for SJPD, and the simultaneous search warrants served Wednesday.

Besides Trinh and Le, four other people, all men, were detained at other homes targeted by the search warrants, though their level of involvement was not immediately clear.

Metro unit commander Ryan noted that the challenge with identifying suburban grow houses correlates with their sophistication, which also allows them to avoid detection by neighbors and others.

“They’ll do everything they can to make it look like it’s business as usual at these places,” he said. “They’re not going to draw attention, they’ll pay their rent on time.”

Still, he said, when police do catch wind of the grows, they will look to shut them down.

“These are elaborate drug operations in residential neighborhoods, and no wants these in their neighborhoods, so we’re going to actively pursue them.”

Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga.