TOUGHER GROW-OP LAWS URGED

Coquitlam homes that used to have pot farms will have to be brought back up
to standard before they are re-occupied under a proposed city bylaw.

Mayor Jon Kingsbury said the bylaw is expected to be introduced this year
and will be similar to regulations brought in by Port Coquitlam and Burnaby.

"If a house is found with a grow-op, it will have to be brought up to the
top code," he said. "We've had consultation with other municipalities
[about the planned bylaw] and this seems to be what we're all pulling
together to do."

Speaking at a community awareness meeting Wednesday night on Westwood
Plateau, where police have dismantled several pot farms recently, Kingsbury
said the city will soon provide avenues where realtors and prospective
homebuyers can find out if a home has housed a marijuana grow-op in the past.

Christy Clark, B.C.'s deputy premier and Port Moody-Westwood MLA, said the
province is also planning to introduce civil forfeiture legislation under
which the possessions - house, car, boat, for instance - of a convicted pot
grower can be seized; the legislation is expected to be introduced this
spring and will likely be passed this fall.

Victoria is also lobbying the federal government to increase the penalties
for criminals involved in drug-related activities, she said. "Grow
operations are a threat to our community because they are supported by
organized crime," Clark told the crowd, noting organized crime funds the
sex trade, methamphetamine labs and the illegal gun trade, "and all of that
is poison to Coquitlam." MP James Moore said organized crime is an
$8-billion to $9-billion business in this province, or "40 times the size
of the fishing industry in B.C."

The Conservative MP took aim at the federal government for "soft, hollow
laws that don't treat criminals as criminals," for failing to put police at
the Port of Vancouver and for proposed legislation to decriminalize small
amounts of marijuana. "I don't want B.C. to become North America's
Amsterdam," Moore said. "It's not in our best interests to let that happen."

Many Plateau residents at the meeting, which was put on by Westwood Plateau
Community Association and had translators available for Farsi-, Korean-,
Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking homeowners, talked of having pot growers
as neighbours. (Police say cultivators have chosen the subdivision because
of the large homes - up to 6,000 square feet - with room to grow and
because new homes have wiring that makes the job easy).

One resident complained of the size of Coquitlam's drug squad - four
officers for Coquitlam, PoCo, Anmore and Belcarra. Kingsbury defended the
detachment's officer-to-resident ratio - one of the lowest in Canada -
saying RCMP can deploy members from other jurisdictions for projects and
the city puts money into crime prevention programs such as Block Watch.

Still, most people at the meeting raised their hands when asked to indicate
whether they would be willing to pay more in taxes to have additional
police officers.

Police say dismantling a grow-op can take 50 investigational hours from the
time the tip is acted upon to getting a search warrant, and "the threshold
is very high to get into a person's home without permission," an officer said.

He said Coquitlam RCMP receives an average of one tip each day about a
grow-ops and "we are not going to get all of them." But one resident said
people are fed up with the number of grow-ops in Coquitlam. "I have lived
here for 10 years," he said. "I will not give it up to these bastards."

* Kingsbury, Clark and Rich Coleman, B.C.'s solicitor general, will speak
about marijuana grow operations at a meeting March 16, 7 p.m., at Coquitlam
city hall, hosted by Coquitlam-Maillardville MLA Richard Stewart.

* For comment on the human costs of drugs and crime, see column, p.
A10.