WEST-END RAID YIELDS $500,000 WORTH OF POT

Police Uncover 500 Marijuana Plants In Basement Of Lewis Estates Home

EDMONTON - The people who moved into 112 Phillips Row in Lewis Estates
last fall were unusually quiet and didn't go out of their way to meet
other homeowners in the cul-de-sac.

The neighbours, including a police officer, learned Monday afternoon
why they were never invited over when city police and RCMP found
$500,000 worth of marijuana plants growing in the basement of the
west-end home. "We've always known the people next door very well but
not in this case," said Stuart Brooks, who said he saw the home's
residents for the first time Sunday.

Police seized 500 marijuana plants growing under brilliant, hot lights in
three rooms.

"There was nothing else in the basement, except for the furnace," said

Const. Gary Reed, a police drug custodian, as he hauled out two
garbage bags brimming with fresh plants.

It appears to have been a fairly sophisticated grow operation, which
grew the marijuana with 24 lamps containing 1,000-watt bulbs, burning
day and night in shifts.

To bypass the likely astronomical and suspicious electricity bills,
someone bored a giant hole through the house's concrete foundation and
tapped directly into the cable carrying electricity to the home, Reed
said.

That way, the home's meter couldn't keep track of the electricity being
used.

Kevin Marion, who lives across the street from the home, said: "This
is not something you'd expect in this community, but perhaps that's
what those guys had in mind when they set up here."

Marion said a grey pickup truck he had spotted on the street during
the past week was probably police watching the home.

On its exterior, the house has the markings of typical suburbia.
Icicle Christmas lights are strung over the garage, and there's a
satellite dish on the roof.

Three men who were in the home at the time of the raid were led away
in handcuffs.

Police had not made public the charges and the names of those arrested
by late Monday.

In February, police made one of the city's largest marijuana busts at
an east-end warehouse masquerading as a cabinet-making business.

Officers seized 5,600 plants, with a street value of $5.6 million.

Finding a marijuana grow-operation in the suburbs is nothing new, Reed said.

Police have found marijuana growers in neighbourhoods of nearly all
description in Edmonton, just as in cities and towns throughout Canada.