AG WARNS OF VIOLENCE RELATED TO GROW-OPS

The deaths of four RCMP officers in Alberta Wednesday should dispel any
doubts people might have about the dangerous nature of marijuana
grow-operations that plague B.C., Attorney General Geoff Plant said Thursday.

"I think there is an attitude that is part of our culture in British
Columbia that thinks that a grow-op is just your neighbour making a couple
of bags of marijuana for some of his friends," Plant said in an interview.
"Whether that was ever true -- 20 or 30 years ago -- it's sure not true today.

"We're talking about the commercial manufacture of marijuana for the
purpose of participating in an international organized-crime activity.
That's very serious business."

Victoria Police Chief Paul Battershill, whose partner was killed in a
police raid in Vancouver in 1987, said investigators increasingly find
grow-operations that are either fortified, booby-trapped, or guarded by
people with weapons.

"I think, in some respects, people think of grows as mom-and-pop
operations," he said.

"Certainly, when I was on an ERT (emergency response team), we were
encountering grows that were protected by people with weapons. Obviously
that trend is increasing."

Battershill said he has seen reports pegging the number of marijuana
grow-operations in B.C. at 9,000 to 10,000. "I think we'd be in range of a
1,000 grows on the Island," he said.

Police, however, have a difficult time controlling the problem because the
courts hand out such light sentences, Battershill said.

The Vancouver Sun reported earlier this year that fewer than one in seven
people convicted of growing marijuana in B.C. over the past two years was
sentenced to any time in jail.

"The sentences given out in B.C. are ridiculously low for grow-ops,"
Battershill said. "I think that grow-ops that are either booby-trapped or
guarded by persons with weapons or barricaded should receive a considerably
higher sentence. That should be a separate category."

Plant said B.C. has been urging the federal government to push ahead with
its plan to double sentences.

"We've been trying to help send a message that this is serious, because it
was serious yesterday, it's obviously serious today, and it will still be
serious tomorrow.

"We're talking about something that has been the blight of our
neighbourhoods. It is a serious law enforcement problem. It has also, I
think, been a problem in terms of public confidence in the administration
of justice because the public doesn't understand why sentencing isn't
serious for something they think is serious."

Battershill said news of the Edmonton shootings took him back to the day
his partner, Vancouver police Sgt. Larry Young, was shot and killed by a
drug dealer during an ERT raid. The killer had been listening to a police
scanner prior to the raid.

"As a former tactical officer," Battershill said, "I can tell you, without
even looking at it, there was nothing those people could have done to
protect themselves if they were ambushed."