$4M GROW OP BUSTED ON S.W. CRESCENT

Patterson Home Hid City's Largest Marijuana Den

Police have feretted out Calgary's largest grow op, camouflaged in a
$1.2-million home in a quiet southwest neighbourhood.

Police found 2,445 plants worth up to $4 million spread throughout the
interior of a large home on Patterson Crescent S.W. on Friday night.

Neighbours said until police arrived, they'd seen nobody at the house
for a while.

"I'm really stunned," said Lauraine Pysh, who is the neighbourhood
Block Watch captain. "They must have been coming at night, because I
walk in this area every day and I've never noticed anything."

Marijuana clippings used to clone the most potent plants and
surveillance cameras are signs the grow op was part of a larger
criminal operation with drugs being grown at other locations,
investigators said.

"It was quite sophisticated," said Staff Sgt. Darren Cave of the
Calgary police drug unit.

"We have some information that might be related to other addresses in
the city."

No arrests have been made and investigators are trying to determine
who owns or rents the 4,684-square-foot house.

The Southern Alberta Marijuana Investigative Team -- a combined unit
of city police and RCMP -- was summoned to the house late Friday after
a service worker visiting the property called police.

Friday's bust is the biggest the unit has encountered since its
formation in late 2003 -- and is the latest in a series of
record-setting seizures from large suburban homes.

In what was thought to be the city's biggest residential marijuana
bust before Friday's, police found 2,319 plants at an Arbour Lake home
in 2005. That seizure eclipsed a 2003 find in Scenic Acres, when
investigators seized 2,100 plants inside a house on Schiller Crescent
N.W. In 2006, police seized $63 million worth of marijuana from grow
ops in Calgary. In 2004, the total topped $100 million.

The home on Patterson Crescent, which city assessment records value at
$1.2 million, bore many of the characteristics investigators encounter
at larger operations: the plants were in three different stages of
growth, which yields a new crop every few months.

Neighbours said the home was owned by an elderly couple who sold a few
years ago.

A group of young people then moved in. One neighbour said police were
called a couple times to quell loud parties. He said they moved out
last fall. Since then he's seen nobody but spotted a pickup truck on a
couple of occasions.

When he walked by Friday, the man, who didn't want to be identified,
said he could smell the marijuana.

"The fact that they're growing a couple million dollars worth of
marijuana in the place -- yeah that's a surprise," he said.

Andrea Propp was about to leave for Banff when she saw police pull
up.

"I said, 'That's really strange. Did you see all those cars going up
there? I bet that was a drug bust or something. Something fishy's
going on,' " Propp said.

Another neighbour said it was suspicious she never saw anyone at the
home.

"When we think back, we think, well, when it snowed we really never
saw tire tracks or anything," said the woman, who didn't want to be
identified.

The woman said she suspects there are similar operations in every
Calgary neighbourhood.

The growers bypassed the home's electrical meter to steal large
amounts of power needed for grow lights and ran wiring throughout the
house.

"The drywall has been punched out in several places," Cave
said.

Large-scale grow ops reveal a need for tougher laws and increased
police resources against organized crime, said Shawn Howard of the
Canadian Justice Foundation.

"This just shows how seriously we have to take the issue. The general
public doesn't realize how dangerous the groups who are behind this
are," Howard said

Legislation before Parliament proposes mandatory minimum sentences for
drug trafficking and production. If Bill C-26 becomes law, grow ops
larger than 500 plants could net a minimum two-year sentence for
anyone convicted of marijuana production.

The current maximum for production of marijuana is seven years.