B.C. POLICE, PROSECUTORS SOFT-PEDAL ON POT: STUDY

VANCOUVER - Police in British Columbia are less likely to investigate
marijuana growers, prosecutors are less likely to lay charges against them,
and judges are less likely to send them to jail than they were in the late
1990s, according to a study to be released today.

"It seems, no question about it, that the system is increasingly unable or
otherwise failing to respond to this problem, despite the fact that we have
every indication that the problem is worsening," said Darryl Plecas, a
criminology professor at the University College of the Fraser Valley, and
the study's lead author.

The study of the province's pot trade is based on a review of all reported
cases of marijuana growing in B.C. from 1997 to 2003.

"We went to every single police office and pulled the files ourselves,"
Prof. Plecas said. Researchers then tracked each case through the justice
system.

The $250,000 study was paid for by the RCMP, but Prof. Plecas said he was
given "carte blanche" to draw his own conclusions -- which in many cases
were not very flattering of the police.

"People in the system perhaps would rather this report not be there, because
it's not exactly complimentary of any part of the system," he said.

One of the report's key findings is that the percentage of growing
operations reported to police that are "fully investigated" -- meaning, in
most cases, a search warrant being executed -- has dropped from nearly all
cases (91%) in 1997 to just over half (52%) in 2003.

During that same period, the percentage of cases where police conducted only
an "initial investigation" -- such as driving by a suspect property for any
outward signs of marijuana growing -- jumped from 2% of all cases to 26%.

And the share of cases where police did nothing at all leapt from 7% to 22%.
Even when police do end up raiding what they suspect to be growing
operations, the study found, they are far less likely to pursue charges
against the growers.

Inspector Paul Nadeau, head of the RCMP's new Co-ordinated Marijuana
Enforcement Team, acknowledged the study's findings are troubling.

"Nobody in the study is looking very good," he said. "I call it grow-op
fatigue. ... I think police are tired, just as everyone else is, of dealing
with these things."

The study found that while police are sending fewer reports to Crown
counsel, prosecutors are also becoming less likely to lay charges. In 1997,
Crown prosecutors laid charges in 96% of the growing operation cases. By
2003, that had dropped to 76%.

After rising steadily in the late 1990s, the number of suspects charged with
growing marijuana in B.C. has dropped dramatically in the past few years,
from 2,116 in 2000 to just 798 in 2003.

Remarkably, even fewer people were charged with growing marijuana in 2003
than in 1997 (1,185) -- despite the fact there were three times as many
growing operations reported to police.

Bob Prior, director of the federal prosecution service in B.C., said
"there's no doubt that ... we aren't charge-approving as many cases sent in
by the police as we did in the past." He said that is the result of a
deliberate policy by prosecutors to do more "upfront screening" of cases to
reduce the number that fail later on.

The Plecas study found judges have become increasingly lenient with
convicted growers. From 1997 to 2003, the percentage of convicted growers
sent to jail has dropped from 19% to 10%. Provincial Court Chief Judge Carol
Baird Ellan declined to comment on the study's findings.