DRUG BUST LEAVES NEIGHBOURS UNSETTLED

Residents of the Vista Point Road area are still shaking their heads
over events surrounding an April 29 drug bust that sent
camouflage-clad, heavily armed police officers into their
neighbourhood.

Bob Brown is a near neighbour to the property where police seized
1,812 marijuana plants in various stages of growth and associated
hydroponic growing apparatus and paraphernalia.

"They (the RCMP) came hovering in here in their chopper and had my
horses terrorized, trying to land in their pasture 50 yards from the
house," says Brown.

He says older neighbours, uncertain those responsible for the
marijuana grow operation were still at large, "were terrorized they
were going to be murdered in their sleep because they might think we
were the ones who turned them in.

"We're still hanging here. We haven't been told anything. We don't
have a clue."

On the day of that event, he adds, one unsuspecting senior was
severely startled when confronted "by three guys in camouflage with
machine guns."

Brown says the police exercise involved "at least half a dozen cars"
and the police helicopter. Neighbours know the trailer at the grow
scene was removed during the night following the police action, but
little more.

Barriere RCMP say an active investigation continues, and while nobody
has been arrested charges are pending.

"There is no threat to the neighbours whatsoever," a detachment
member said May 9. Further, police say they understand that "everyone
up there knew what was going on and never said a word," and that the
operation had been on-going in some form since at least 1995.

That matches what Brown and others report.

"For six years everybody up here had their suspicions, and those with
teens were quite concerned." Brown says a man claiming to be the
owner explained the property had been purchased to provide a summer
getaway for his parents who found the U.S. Southwest too hot in the
summer.

"As far as we know, the owner never lived there. The owner pulled a
trailer up there and left it." The owner did construct a large shed
on the property, and for five years a single tenant occupied the
property. That person had no real contact with the neighbours, nor
did the male who replaced him 18 months or two years ago.

"We knew it probably wasn't on the up-and-up," says Brown, "but we
kept our silence for fear of retaliation."