MAJOR POT BUST WORTH MILLIONS

Raids Across City Target 10 Grow Houses

In perhaps their biggest single strike ever against the burgeoning
local marijuana grow house industry, members of the Windsor police
drug squad swept across the city Tuesday, executing search warrants
and busting up 10 such operations.

"It's massive -- this should make a substantial dent locally," said
department spokesman Staff Sgt. Ed McNorton. So much marijuana and
growing equipment was being seized, he said, that investigators had to
find a separate location to store it all.

The raids began at dawn and were expected to continue into the
evening, with arrests being made throughout the day and "very likely
through the night," McNorton said Tuesday afternoon. All the targeted
pot operations were connected to each other, he said, adding that
organized crime was involved.

Details such as exactly what was seized and how many people were taken
into custody wouldn't be made public until a news conference today,
said McNorton, adding Chief Glenn Stannard would likely be attending.

"The numbers sound like it's going to be pretty big," said McNorton.
"There's a lot of marijuana -- a lot more than (investigators)
thought," he said.

A police source told The Star the seizures could tally in the millions
of dollars in street value.

As of mid-afternoon, half the targeted homes had been raided, about
2,000 plants had been seized and five people arrested.

The chief and other top police brass were being kept apprised of the
drug squad's progress through the day.

Residents of a well-kept neighbourhood east of the Devonshire Mall
were shaken from their sleep early Tuesday when police raided a home
in the 3300 block of Conservation Drive.

"At about six o'clock I heard banging, like somebody beating on a
door," said Colleen Kavanaugh, whose family lives near one of the targets.

"I told my husband, 'Oh, my God, that's going on just across the
street from us,' " she recalls saying as officers moved at least a
dozen large garbage bags filled with plants, as well as fans and
lamps. A Pollock moving truck was brought in to remove seized
materials, and Enwin Utilities workers also attended, a sign that the
growers had bypassed the home's meter to illegally access extra power.

ELDERLY COUPLE

In the almost two years since the elderly couple had moved in,
Kavanaugh said she'd seen them only rarely. Unlike all the other homes
in the area, she added, the grass in the yard of the targeted house
was allowed to overgrow before it was cut.

"The blinds were always closed ... there was just no life over there,"
she said.

Another next-door neighbour, who asked not to be identified, described
the elderly Asian couple who owned the home as "very nice, very quiet
people" who would always greet him politely. But he added the retired
couple didn't reside at the home.

Behind the blinds and flowered curtains of a basement window facing
the front of the home, a cardboard screen had been erected that would
have prevented anyone outside from peeking in.

According to city records, the owner of the tan-brick and vinyl-sided
home at 3324 Conservation Dr., assessed at $162,000 for 2004, is
listed as Anh Sy Hoang.

A home at 2335 Mercer St. was also among the 10 locations raided by
the drug squad. City records show the property, assessed at $113,000,
is owned by Nhung Trang Nguyen.

It wasn't until police raided the home on Conservation Drive that
neighbours noticed the owners had changed the four-digit street number
above their garage entrance, from 3324 to 3328.

A police officer used a ladder Tuesday to re-establish the original
address number.