POT PROBES FACE AVERAGE 30-DAY DELAY

If you've been waiting a while for police to shut down the marijuana
growing operation in your neighbourhood, you're not alone.

A new study by the University College of the Fraser Valley indicates that,
on average, it takes 30 days for police to execute a search warrant on a
suspected growing operation after receiving a tip from a neighbour.

The wait is even longer -- 41 days -- for anonymous tips phoned in to
CrimeStoppers.

Police are far quicker in responding to complaints received from BC Hydro
(22 days) or landlords (eight days), according to the study.

Criminologist Darryl Plecas, the report's lead author, said the delay in
searching growing operations is in large part due to the enormous backlog
of cases that police are dealing with.

"It's simple overload," he said.

The delay in raiding growing operations is increasingly resulting in police
getting to the scene of the crime too late.

Plecas's study found that the percentage of raids that resulted in police
finding no active growing operation, but evidence one had existed there in
the past, has increased from three per cent of all raids in 1997 to seven
per cent in 2003.

The number of investigations that resulted in cases that were "unfounded"
- -- meaning police found no evidence of a growing operation at all -- has
also increased, from four per cent of all cases to seven per cent.

However, the study notes that cases classified as "unfounded" by police
tended to be those that they took the longest time to get around to
searching -- on average, 48 days.

Which, the study states, "may suggest that a large number of unfounded
cases are perhaps not unfounded at all. Rather, a large number of unfounded
cases may be nothing more than cases founded very, very late."

Insp. Paul Nadeau, head of the RCMP's Coordinated Marijuana Enforcement
Team, said the increase in raids occurring too late could also be the
result of growers becoming more sophisticated.

"When you're talking about criminal organizations, they're able to pack
things up, get out and move to another place, quicker than they used to,"
he said.