SHOOTINGS WERE INEVITABLE, TOP DRUG OFFICER SAYS

No 'MA and PA' Operations: Most Operators Have Criminal History, Many
of Them Violent

An RCMP officer who has made a career out of hunting down marijuana
grow ops said last night it was just a matter of time before a police
operation on a grower resulted in a massacre.

"I hate to say it," said Inspector Paul Nadeau from Vancouver, "but it
was bound to happen sooner or later.

"Over time," he said, "the numbers catch up to you."

Insp. Nadeau, who heads the RCMP Co-ordinated Marijuana Enforcement
Team in British Columbia, took pains last night to distinguish
grow-ops from the "mom and pop" garden operations of the popular
Canadian imagination.

In fact, the 4,500 grow-ops reported in B.C. alone each year are booby
trap-ridden, gang-run dens of peril, where officers encounter the jolt
of live electrical wires connected to door knobs, basement stairs
descending into pitch black dark with missing steps and noxious
chemicals either deliberately or accidentally left to simmer fumes.

Such dangers, the traps and explosives, are present in 2.1% of
grow-ops in B.C., while knives are encountered in 2.9% and guns in
6%.

More often, it's the stolen hydro electricity surging through raw,
amateur wiring, that can pose the most immediate danger to officers.

"You just watch where you step and you watch what you touch," said
Insp. Nadeau of the grow-ops.

Meanwhile, the operators, Asian gang members and outlaw bikers, are
dangers in themselves.

"In so far as the suspects that we encounter in these grow-ops,
there's a myth, there's an illusion among some members of the public,
that we're dealing with ma and pa operations, and that these are
people that are peaceful ... nothing could be further from the truth,"
said Insp. Nadeau.

Growers have, on average, a 13-year criminal history, seven prior
criminal convictions -- 41% of them for violent offences. Those
numbers are particularly scary because 75% of grow-ops are in
residential districts, bringing turf wars, home invasions and
environmental risks closer to families and children.

In B.C., it's estimated there are 10,000 to 15,000 grow-ops in the
province, with up to 3,700 children believed to be living in them,
while as many as 10,000 children are believed to be living in grow-ops
in Ontario, according to a 2003 Ontario Association of Chiefs of
Police report titled Green Tide.

What draws the growers to marijuana gardening is big, big
money.

Darryl Plecas, a criminologist at the University College of the Fraser
Valley, in Abbotsford, B.C., estimates the industry generates billions
each year -- in B.C. alone.

In just a single family-sized dwelling, he said, a grower can make
half-a-million dollars, if not a million cold.

"There's so much money to be made and the low sentencing has made the
risks so low that, frankly, the choice is fairly simple for them,"
said Insp. Nadeau.

But such violence as we saw last night is very uncommon, he
said.

With sentences being as low as they are, most operators "will just
turn themselves in and get arrested ... the use of weapons is unusual."

But it's not the police officers growers are most worried about: much
of the danger stems from other criminals seeking to steal crops.
That's when violence can really break, Insp. Nadeau said.

The grow-ops themselves are proliferating.

From suburban homes, to inner-city warehouses, and even a mothballed
Molson brewery, grow-ops are proliferating across Canada and it's rare
that a week goes by without a major bust.

In British Columbia in 1997, Insp. Nadeau said, the average operation
boasted 149 plants.

In 2003, that number rose to 236 plants.

And the trend, which he said he has seen grow since his early days in
the force 25 years ago, is creeping east at the same time as
operations grow more sophisticated.

Grow-ops surged in 1997 and peaked in 2000, with their numbers holding
steady since then.

The incentive for the move east is the rich population centres of the
eastern seaboard and the "insatiable appetite that Americans have for
Canadian marijuana," Insp. Nadeau said, adding that 50% of
Canadian-grown marijuana ends up in the United States.

And what the United States sends us in return is even deadlier --
cocaine. "They're involved in it because it's their money machine.
This is what they turn to to make money to finance other criminal
activity" like importing cocaine, Insp. Nadeau said. "So when people
talk about marijuana and grow-ops, it's really not about the marijuana
- -- it's about the money."

The solution, argues Prof. Plecas, the criminologist, is higher
sentences and a shift in how we deal with hydro-electricity-theft.

More fundamentally, said Prof. Plecas, who has just completed a
seven-year study of the grow-op phenomenon with his Abbotsford
colleagues, Canada must rethink its laws surrounding public vs.
private property.

Here's a recent history of some of Canada's larger busts.

Last Thursday, police in Chilliwack, B.C., pulled 816 pot plants from
a home in the city 92 kilometres east of Vancouver. The following day,
RCMP found 800 plants and about 20 pounds of dried marijuana in a
grow-operation in Mission, also east of Vancouver.

A week later, neighbours at a housing complex in Coquitlam, B.C., said
they weren't surprised when police found 28 separate marijuana
grow-ops in the complex.

And it's not just B.C., even Prince Edward Island has its share of
grow-operations. Last month, police in Princeton uncovered 3,000
marijuana plants, growing equipment and drug paraphernalia in the tiny
province's largest ever drug bust. One of the largest grow-ops in
Canada's history was discovered mere blocks from police headquarters
in Winnipeg. Officers found more than 10,000 plants in the boarded-up,
two-storey brick warehouse.

The largest indoor operation found in Canada, with more than 25,000
pot plants, was uncovered Jan. 10, 2004, in the former Molson brewery
in Barrie.

Officials say grow-ops also create health risks for those who live
within or near marijuana growing sites.

Glenn Jenkins, an environmental health officer in Edmonton, says many
grow-ops are condemned as unfit for habitation because of mould.