EVEN CRIMINALS HAVE CITIZENS' RIGHTS

Editor, The News:

George Bochenek (The News, Feb. 12) gets off to a bad start when,
without a scrap of evidence, he fantasizes that "our police forces . .
continually put their lives in danger with pot busts."

Exactly how many police officers can he name who have been shot to
death in busting a marijuana grow-op?

Every day, somewhere or other, grow-ops are busted. If Bochenek's
hysterical theory were true, we would see hospital emergency rooms
overflowing with wounded police. Police come to court regularly to
testify at marijuana trials. We don't see them staggering in on crutches.

The danger faced by police in busting grow-ops is vastly exaggerated.
As our Court of Appeal noted years ago, most marijuana growers
surrender peacefully.

After all, they know they are surrounded and the police are much more
heavily armed.

Our Court of Appeal also noted that weapons stored by marijuana
growers are used to defend themselves against rip-offs by rivals.

Marijuana growers know they cannot depend on police protection if
rivals (calling themselves the police?) suddenly break in. So
marijuana dealers do what is only logical: they arm to defend
themselves exactly as our ancestors did.

As for booby traps, they are set by growers to protect operations
against rivals during their absence. Among the vast number of pot
busts, very rarely are officers injured after they announce
themselves. Bochenek can apply his expostulation ("What nonsense!") to
himself.

Ironically, it is the public who are endangered by police. On the
North Shore, a drug squad burst in on the young son of a prominent
sports coach.

The man was watching TV. Having little time to react, he leaped from
his chair with the converter still in his hand. The police thought it
was a gun and instantly shot the young man to death.

If police had given him a few minutes, he would be alive today. He
suffered more than what Bochenek calls "inconvenience."

"A man's home is his castle," runs an ancient saying from our English
past, and it remains his castle even when he grows marijuana. Even the
worst criminal remains a citizen always and, thus, receives full
rights under our constitution, which is "the highest law of the land."

Greg Lanning,

Abbotsford