DRUG OPERATIONS LITERALLY EVERYWHERE

Cultivation a Big Concern Across the Country

They're in bunkers, barns, old breweries, houses, apartments -- and
Quonset huts.

Every day, law enforcement officials across Canada charge into
marijuana grow operations and methamphetamine labs rife with
booby-traps, toxic mould, dangerous chemicals, weapons -- and
criminals willing to use them.

"They're literally everywhere . . . We just found one in sleepy hollow
Prince Edward Island," said the RCMP Director General of Organized
Crime, Chief Supt. Raf Souccar on Friday.

"This endangers children. In 25 per cent or so of the cases, we're
finding children in grow ops or meth labs. We've tested teddy bears
and found residue," said Souccar.

These criminal operations that flood Canada's streets with dangerous
drugs are in every province, police say.

The danger of busting them, however, was underscored by Thursday's
slaying of four Mounties in northeastern Alberta, as police zeroed in
on a pot grow operation hidden on a farm.

Souccar estimates there are at least 10,000 to 15,000 marijuana grow
ops alone in each province of B.C., Ontario and Quebec.

The mayor of one quiet Alberta bedroom community that was overrun by
grow ops said residents are grateful to police for driving out
cultivators -- but the risk to officers and the public is real.

"They were so well hidden. Once the first bust was made, it was in our
face," said Chestermere's Dave Mikkelsen.

In 2003, police descended on the town of 8,000, 10 kilometres east of
Calgary, and netted $4.5 million in marijuana and equipment from 10
homes.

The Southern Alberta Marijuana Investigation Team has busted about 20
Chestermere homes in all.

"It's a thankless job. These perpetrators are sick people willing to
kill others to protect pot," said Mikkelsen.

Indeed, operators will go to great lengths to protect the drug
operations.

In 2002 in Victoria, B.C., police found a camouflaged mousetrap
altered to fire off a shotgun shell.

In grow ops and meth labs, police have found doors wired to weapons,
chemicals rigged to produce toxic reactions and light switches
connected to ignition sources.

In 2000, a Vancouver police drug officer was hospitalized after being
attacked with a metal pipe during a drug bust.

That same year, a Burnaby B.C. officer was injured by flying glass
when high-powered light bulbs exploded.

And a Toronto detective was shot and wounded following a botched drug
bust involving crack cocaine.

Police say they can face danger busting drug labs, both big and small,
right across the country.

Former undercover drug Mountie Bob Stenhouse was shot at during one
takedown near Surrey, B.C. in the 1980s.

"It wasn't even a big op," said Edmonton's Stenhouse, who worked in
the drug section for eight years during the 1980s and '90s. "Back in
those days, we were allowed to go onto property without a search
warrant . . . We were in the barn. All of a sudden -- kaboom. Someone
shot over our heads. We hit the hay. We didn't see him."

Not long after, Stenhouse lost his good friend and partner in a heroin
bust gone bad in Thailand. A Thai/Canadian link in the trafficking of
the drug had been established.

"He was buying heroin on the back of a pickup truck in Chiang
Mai."

The traffickers got suspicious and the driver hit the gas. Cpl. Derek
Flanagan, 35, was thrown from the truck and broke his neck.

In this week's multiple murder, four RCMP constables -- Peter
Christopher Schiemann, Anthony Fitzgerald Orion Gordon, Lionide
Nicholas Johnston and Brock Warren Myrol -- were found dead Thursday
along with suspect James Roszko at his farm near Mayerthorpe, 130
kilometres northwest of Edmonton. They'd been staking out a marijuana
grow op in a Quonset hut on the property.