POLICE STRUGGLE TO KEEP AHEAD OF POT GROWERS

'Disturbing trends': Deadly traps being used to
protect huge marijuana crops

KEMPTVILLE, Ont. - The scraggly rural property does not look like much
at first sight. A ramshackle bungalow and decaying barn loom behind
the locked front gate, while rusting farm implements and an abandoned
sausage-vending truck litter the overgrown yard.

A tractor lazily crosses a nearby corn field.

But as a team of Ontario provincial police, RCMP and military
personnel slice open the lock, roar down the back laneway in a convoy
of trucks and wade into the thick, ugly bush beyond, the landscape
suddenly alters.

"There's some there," says Det.-Const. Dan Nadeau. He's pointing to a
clearing in the brush, filled with what could only be marijuana
plants. A few metres on is another patch of the distinctive weed and
beyond that a third one.

As the officers begin hacking down the plants, an army helicopter
churns slowly overhead, hunting for more of the surreptitious grows.

The final haul would be worth close to $100,000 on the street, and
once would have been a typical seizure by Ontario's marijuana
eradication program, which scours the province every fall for hidden
fields of pot. But times have changed and by recent standards, this
discovery is tiny.

The next day, the team's first stop is a mile-wide crop of 4,000
plants -- a $4-million street value. They happened on a mammoth one
the week before of 18,000 plants. Those had to be removed by dump truck.

"We are definitely seeing some disturbing trends," says Det.-Sgt. Rick
Barnum of the OPP's drug enforcement section.

"Three years ago we would go out and get a 500-plant grow operation
and say, 'Wow, that's a nice grow.' ... Now we're getting 5,000,
10,000, 20,000 plants at a time."

And the Ontario police operation is just one front in a battle being
fought across Canada against the country's fastest expanding drug
problem -- marijuana grow operations that show up everywhere from
suburban basements to warehouses -- and even a mothballed brewery.

Police seized 1.4 million plants in 2003, with a street value of more
than $1-billion, up from under 300,000 just eight years earlier,
according to a recent report by the RCMP's criminal intelligence
directorate.

While much of the public's attention has focused on the indoor grows
that have become a bizarre fixture of the urban landscape, the cheaper
outdoor crops are fast overtaking them in size.

Some criminals have even begun offering farmers as much as $400,000 to
buy their properties, as long as they can move out within days, said
Det.-Sgt. Barnum.

Police are also increasingly encountering dangerous defences around
the pot fields. Armed guards are posted at some, while others are
booby-trapped with spikes, guns hooked up to trip wires, or razor
blades taped to plant stalks. "There's a lot of money sitting in the
ground, so these guys are taking all the steps necessary to protect
their investment," said Det.-Const. Dave Glass of the OPP, a leader of
the eradication program in Eastern Ontario.

As Canada rethinks its approach toward soft drugs, police defend their
actions as a blow against organized crime groups that have cornered
the marijuana business -- and note that users of harder drugs usually
start with pot.

Det.-Sgt. Barnum also says new evidence points increasingly to the
fact that pot grown in Canada is in effect being traded in the U.S.
for smaller quantities of cocaine that is then imported back here.
Seizures of coke provincewide soared several-fold to a record of about
100 kilograms last year, he said.

The outdoor grows are even taking an environmental toll. Criminals
have dug irrigation ditches and re-routed waterways, causing some
marshy areas to completely dry up, said Supt. Mike Gaudreau, the
RCMP's organized crime head for the Ottawa region.

Police are trying to strike back. Provincial forces in Ontario and
Quebec run eradication programs with the RCMP, while the Mounties take
the lead in the other provinces, helped occasionally by Canadian
Forces helicopters.

The officers on the eastern Ontario team have become used to long, hot
days lugging thousands of plants out of the bush, to be buried in
dumps later. But there are slower days, too.

One morning recently, the combined force splits into two teams, each
supported by an army chopper.

A tip sheet prepared by local drug officers lays out a list of
potential grow sites, some warning of possible armed guards.

Word comes from the surveillance helicopter of a positive hit and the
convoy of pick-up trucks, cruisers and a cube van -- for transporting
the seized plants --speed off down a succession of back roads, guided
by the spotter hovering above.

They end up at a sprawling corn field next to a busy highway. Brushing
aside eight-foot-tall corn stalks, the officers led by Det.-Const.
Glass find two small patches of marijuana cleverly hidden inside.

At a more remote site, the officers head off into the bush and finally
reach the little clearing where plants have been spotted. There is a
problem, however. The plants are not marijuana, but wild raspberry --
still legal in Ontario. It underscores a day of frustrating missteps.

"The day we don't get 1,000 plants is a bad day," laments Det.-Const.
Glass, who admits even their best efforts are a drop in the bucket.
"We feel sad, dejected that we didn't do what we set out to do."