RAID ON COQUITLAM GROW-OP MET WITH CHEERS, APPLAUSE

Neighbours cheered last week as police raided a marijuana grow-op in an
upscale Coquitlam suburb.

"We were out on the street. We cheered and we clapped when the police came
back out of the house," said Sandy Barton, 45, who lives across the street
from 2520 Platinum Lane.

She said the neighbours knew for months that the house was being used for
hydroponic marijuana cultivation.

"We could smell it," she said. "We thought at first we had skunks living in
the back yard."

Barton said the nearly new 4,000-square-foot, $400,000 house on a quiet
cul-de-sac was sold in October.

No one got to know the people who moved in, which was unusual in the
tightly knit community of young families.

"We all know each other here," Barton said. "We look out for one another."

The people in the house hung out Christmas lights and put chairs on the
front porch.

"But we never saw them," Barton said. "They drove right in to the garage
and closed the doors. Two hours later, they were gone. The lights went on
and off again at the same time every day."

And then neighbours started noticing the condensation.

"The house was dripping," said neighbour Bruce Gray, 34, an electrical
engineer. "The condensation was running down the side of the house."

Barton and Gray said a number of the neighbours called police and waited
for them to get around to raiding the house. The swoop was one of several
in the Westwood Plateau area last week.

In the legislature yesterday, Solicitor-General Rich Coleman said his
government is reviewing ways to help police and communities fight grow-ops.

"Frankly, all tools that are available for us to fight back the marijuana
grow-ops are being reviewed at this point in time, to look at anything that
we can give the police that will help them with their job," he said.

One idea is to replicate Ontario legislation that allows authorities to go
to civil court to get assets related to criminal activity frozen, seized
and eventually forfeited to the Crown.