A GROWING CONCERN

Marijuana Cultivators Becoming More Violent: Police

The Ontario Provincial Police say marijuana grow-operations are
becoming more dangerous and the people behind them more violent as
they protect their multibillion-dollar industry.

At a news conference in Napanee marking the end of the annual outdoor
eradication effort, Det.-Supt. Frank Elbers said police investigated
450 grow-ops this year and seized about 140,000 marijuana plants.

The number of such indoor and outdoor grow-ops is increasing, but
Elbers said what concerns the force is not just that the numbers are
increasing, but that the operations are being protected by booby
traps and gun-toting growers.

In the past, growers might have set up fish hooks on a line or put
razor blades in plant stems to discourage petty thefts of the plants
if someone stumbled across them.

Now they are increasingly using potentially fatal methods to protect
their crops against raids from criminals known as "pot pirates."
Those traps also could injure or kill police or people who happen to
stumble across them.

"Pot pirates are individuals, many of whom are armed with weapons and
some who are dressed to imitate police, who steal the marijuana
crops," he said.

"Police are seeing elaborate booby traps aimed to kill and maim and
viewing observation and security posts that are dug into the earth or
constructed from tree growth to conceal the person's location."

Police showed photos of some of the booby traps, which included a
wooden pallet filled with logs and rocks suspended from a tree with a
tripwire release, and a sapling studded with nails and blades that
was bent over so it would lash out at anyone who passed.

Other traps include a series of shotgun shells rigged to fire into a
patch of marijuana and nail-studded boards covered with leaves and
branches set out around the operations.

"They're going to elaborate lengths to protect their ops," he said.

"These are things you'd see in a warfare situation."

Police also seize increasingly large numbers of weapons along with
the pot. Elbers said 2,700 weapons charges have been laid in the past
five years, close to 500 weapons have been seized in this year's
sweep and the firepower increases annually.

"We're seeing everything imaginable, from machete-type cutting
instruments to machine guns."

However, despite the regular raids, police don't seem to be putting
much of a dent in production.

The vast majority of marijuana grown here is exported to the United
States, and there is enough money to be made - marijuana sells for as
much as US$7,000 a pound in some areas of United States - so there is
no shortage of growers or product to supply the market.

"What we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg," Elbers said.

He said the days of a person planting a few pot plants in someone's
back 40 are over. Large-scale growers are purchasing isolated tracts
of farmland and turning them into commercial operations, in part
because it is much cheaper than running indoor hydroponic operations.

"We're seeing a shift from indoors to now where most of our grows are
outdoors," Elbers said.

"It's easier to buy a farm than to buy 15 or 20 houses."

While the OPP searches for crops using a helicopter, they also rely
on tips from the public about suspicious activity or grow-ops in their area.

Because they are growing ever more dangerous, police are telling
citizens to stay away from fields of marijuana they happen to find.

"We're telling people, 'Don't deal with it. Call police,' " he said.