WAR ON DRUG TRAFFICKING SCORES ANOTHER HIT

The Mounties are declaring another hit in the war against drug
trafficking in Campbell River.

With a search warrant in hand, plainclothes police officers raided a
residence on the 600 block of Cedar Street on July 6, Sgt. Dwight
Dammann reported.

The police seized what they call a significant amount of marijuana, a
small amount of money as well as trafficking paraphernalia.

As a result of the search, one 35-year-old male and one 21-year-old
female were arrested and temporarily detained. The male was subsequently
released from custody and is ordered to appear in court to face charges
of possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking.

Campbell River RCMP are continuing to target drug trafficking in the
community and have made this a high priority Dammann said he believes
the campaign is having an impact.

"At the present time I think were having a significant impact on what we
see coming into us right now, maybe it's because of the publicity we've
received in the media in reporting these incidents," he said.

Dammann gauges this success to some extent by the number of tips from
the public the police gets. Campbell Riverites are usually very good in
that regard, he said but the number of tips coming has slowed down a
bit.

"We seem to have - touch wood - a bit of a slowdown of information
coming in right now on a lot of locations that were real problem areas
for us in the past," he said. "A lot of info we receive is from the
general public, whether its Crimestopper tips or a lot of concerned
citizens phoning in and reporting different suspiscious circumstances
that we follow up on.

"A lot of the success we've had is directly proportional to the amount
of info we've received from the general public and lately it's been
very, very good.

"It always as been in Campbell River actually."

In the past three months, the police had 19 drug buys and 12 people
arrested in one operation.

Prior to that they also dismantled approximately 20-25 marijuana grow
operations.

Additionally police have targeted some other substance abuse locations
where smaller quantities of cocaine and some quantities of heroin were
seized and arrested several persons as well.