DRUG-RAID POLICY SPLITS POLICE

Vancouver police are deeply divided over a department policy of not
recommending charges in connection with the marijuana growing operations
it raids, according to documents obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

A senior drug squad officer warned Chief Constable Terry Blythe in a
private memo last August that the public would be "appalled" if it knew
it was the department's policy to concentrate on shutting down such
operations while allowing the growers, in most cases, to go free.

The memo was contained in 267 pages of internal police documents
obtained by The Vancouver Sun under the Freedom of Information Act that
reveal sharply contrasting views of how the department should fight the
city's booming marijuana growing industry.

Last December, The Vancouver Sun reported that Grow Busters, a team of
patrol officers set up specifically to deal with the problem, hadn't
recommended charges against a single suspect despite raiding more than
100 growing operations over the past year.

During that time, however, detectives with the department's drug squad
continued to recommend charges, although they raided only about
one-third as many growing operations as Grow Busters did.

At the time, civil libertarians and defence lawyers raised concerns that
the policy might be an abuse of police power and other police forces in
the Lower Mainland questioned whether it deterred marijuana growers.

But the internal documents obtained by The Sun show, for the first time,
that the no-charge policy also faced strong resistance from members of
the department's own drug squad who felt the approach was ineffective --
and possibly illegal.

Inspector Val Harrison, coordinator of the Grow Busters program, said
this week the issues raised in the memos "have been resolved
effectively" and the policy now has the support of the rank and file.

Police have justified the no-charge policy -- believed to be unique in
the Lower Mainland -- by arguing that marijuana growers face such
lenient penalties in the courts that it is not worth the time and
resources required to build criminal cases against them.

In no-charge raids, Vancouver police seize the marijuana plants and
growing equipment from the home and have engineers with the city shut
off the power.

Courts have been lenient on marijuana growers in the past (a Vancouver
Sun investigation in 1999 found only one in five growers received jail
sentences, while most got fines).

But judges appear to have adopted a tougher attitude lately, sentencing
some growers to one or two years in jail.

And in the August memo sent to Blythe, the department's drug squad
coordinator cites several cases where drug growers have received
significant jail sentences.

"With this recent trend in sentencing that we have been waiting for, I'm
perplexed as to why our department chooses not to lay charges . . . in
the cases that are being cleared by the new Grow Busters team," the
officer writes. "People are being found inside the grow-ops and/or
documentation is found to indicate occupancy. With some work, charges
would be laid in most cases, and they [Grow Busters] are not doing so.
This results in the people who are responsible for these grow-ops going
un-checked. If and when they do get charged for another cultivation
[offence] by some other [police] agency, there is no documentation to
support a stiffer penalty."

The memo's author also raises concern that the department's no-charge
policy is making it difficult for it to work with other police forces to
expose the involvement of organized-crime in the marijuana trade.

And by not pursuing criminal investigations, he writes, the police are
not deterring growers.

"Some may view this action as a tolerance by the police," he writes.
"Some may begin growing because of this."

The officer writes that he is troubled by the fact the public is unaware
of the no-charge policy.

"At the moment, the perception that the general public has is that the
police are doing a great job. [That] when the police show up to get rid
of the problem in their neighbourhood the person is going to jail," the
memo states. "I think they would be appalled to know different."

The name of the memo's author was deleted from the copy provided to The
Sun, but the author's badge number, 1300, remained. That is the badge
number for Detective Constable Doug Bain, coordinator of the drug squad.
Calls to Bain's voice mail this week were not returned.

In another memo, sent to Inspectors Wayne Melymick and Val Harrison last
July, an officer whose name was deleted recounts a meeting with the RCMP
and the Organized Crime Agency to discuss strategies to deal with
marijuana growing.

"There was displeasure shown with the no-charges part of the
initiative," the memo reads. The "OCA representative . . . felt that
this was a regressive step, since we have finally observed a change with
the courts beginning to come on board. It was felt this would send the
wrong message to them, as well as the growers, and give them incentive
to move their operations into Vancouver."

In a memo sent to Deputy Chief John Unger on Aug. 23, another officer
whose name was deleted raises several concerns about the Grow Busters
program.

The author, identified only as the intelligence coordinator for the drug
squad, relates a conversation with a constable who told him that "in
approx. 1/3rd of the warrants executed, viable suspects were found at
the scene and were released without charges."

The memo also refers to an officer -- whose name was deleted -- who "has
spoken to numerous federal Crown counsel about the possible
ramifications of this department, as a matter of policy, executing
warrants at dwelling houses with no intentions of laying criminal
charges. All of these lawyers were unanimous in their condemnation of
this policy and felt it could lead to major problems in the courts down
the road."

Harrison said Monday police have received an independent legal opinion
and are confident their actions are proper.

Last fall, partly due to concerns raised about Grow Busters, the team
was amalgamated into the drug squad. But Grow Busters is still a defined
group of patrol officers who continue to focus on shutting down a large
number of growing operations rather than trying to charge perpetrators.

Harrison said the no-charge policy is the only way the police department
can effectively tackle the city's massive marijuana growing problem -- a
problem that, by some police estimates, has grown to 7,000 operations in
Vancouver alone.

In the first four months of 2001, she said, the department has raided
211 growing operations -- as many as it raided in all of 1999.

Grow Busters members now alert the drug squad when they find evidence
during a raid that they believe could lead to criminal charges, Harrison
said.

She said 17 per cent of all raids now lead to criminal charges -- an
increase from before, though she could not say by how much.

"My understanding is the drug squad is now fully supportive of this
initiative," she said. "The two teams are working together well now."