DRUG TRAFFICKERS OPTING FOR CHOPPERS

Cost And Convenience Drawing Criminal Gangs To Helicopters

VANCOUVER -- Organized crime groups in B.C. are buying helicopters in
growing numbers to clandestinely transport marijuana across the
border, the Mounties say.

One of two men killed in a helicopter crash near Hope last Monday had
previously been charged in the U.S. with drug smuggling using a helicopter.

And on Sept. 7, three B.C. men were arrested in Washington state, and
their helicopter seized, after they were found with 55 kilograms of
marijuana.

"What we've noticed lately it is a lot of helicopters. It is a large
increase," RCMP Const. Randall Wong, of the Integrated Border
Enforcement Team, said in an interview. "Over the last year to
year-and-a-half it has more been helicopters than fixed-wing planes."

Helicopters are the preferred means of transport for many reasons --
they can be picked up used as cheaply as $100,000 and don't need a
runway to take off. Owners don't need insurance or to file flight
plans for short-haul trips.

"The criminal element will actually hire a pilot to teach people how
to fly helicopters.They are not going to ground school, as they are
supposed to," Wong said. "They buy these helicopters and their whole
mentality is the more product I can get across the border quicker, the
better off we are."

Wong said the criminal gangs use drug money to buy the helicopters, so
they don't need bank loans. They will offer a farmer near the border a
large monthly fee to store the helicopter.

He said aircraft have devices on them so they can be picked up by
radar.

"Most of the bad guys don't even turn that on," he said.

They then lie about their identity if they are contacted by air
traffic control. It's not like there is a police aircraft close by to
pull them over.

The biggest development in cross-border criminal activity was the
discovery last summer of a tunnel built between Canada and the U.S. to
smuggle drugs. Three B.C. men are going to trial in Seattle in
November after their much-publicized bust.

Wong said there have been rumours among law enforcement personnel for
years about the existence of cross-border drug tunnels but none had
been discovered.

"We have never had an investigation where we actually located one
until now," Wong said. "I would really be remiss if I said there was
no other one. In all honestly, why wouldn't there be one?"

While the three men charged did not get a chance to really use the
tunnel because of their arrest, Wong said it could have been a gold
mine for organized crime.

"If that was never detected, those three guys would have been
millionaires," he said.

The most common form of drug transportation remains commercial trucks,
particularly drivers with links to Indo-Canadian crime groups based in
the Lower Mainland.

Mike Milne, of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said more B.C.
truckers have been arrested on drug charges in the last year and their
level of sophistication has increased.

"We are seeing more and more false compartments in the cabs," he
said.

RCMP Insp. Paul Nadeau of the Vancouver drug section said the number
of commercial trucks involved has gone up 400 per cent over the last
three years, with the size of marijuana loads being seized getting
significantly larger.

The types of drugs discovered on both sides of the border mimics
trends among users.

Things like heroin and opium are down, while ecstasy and
pseudoephedrine -- used to make crystal meth -- are up, Milne said.

In 2004,Washington state officials led the U.S. in the quantity of
ecstasy seized. In just four weeks last summer, the state seized more
than in all of 2004.

Like the criminals, law enforcement agencies on both sides of the
border are sharing information and working together as much as possible.

"I don't think either of us could do our job as efficiently without
each other," Wong said.