LEAKY LOCKER LEADS TO HUGE POT BUST

Ridge Meadows RCMP hauled pounds of pot out of a storage complex in
the 20100 block of Stewart Crescent on Thursday.

All that bud had a street value of nearly $1 million, said RCMP
spokesman Const. Dan Herbranson.

"It's not that often that something around this type, this scale,
comes around," he said. "It is a substantial seizure."

RCMP were tipped off when water was reportedly leaking from one of the
units into another.

When they arrived on the scene, police executed warrants on five
different units in the complex, finding pot in all.

In total, Herbranson said 2,900 pot plants in various stages of growth
were recovered.

While the investigation is ongoing, no charges have yet been
laid.

Most often, when RCMP receive tips about a grow-op, those tips come
from neighbours and that grow-op exists in a private home.

Finding such a large-scale operation in a storage facility, said
Herbranson, isn't typical.

"Grow-ops are a continual problem for police. I can suspect that we
will see more of this type of complaint come in," he cautioned. "But
is it more common? I'm going to say no, it's not, at least it hasn't
been a big target."

Setting up a grow-op in a storage facility might have a few benefits
to those involved, in that neighbourhood surveillance would be far
less.

But according to Herbranson, this type of endeavour also comes with
added risk.

"You'd have to mask the smell. I would think that would be more
difficult to mask" in the storage facility, he said.

And as for the owners of such facilities, there are things they can do
to lessen the chances that they'll take on a pot-producing tenant.

Along with obtaining proper documentation for the rental of the units,
which Herbranson couldn't confirm had been done in this case, owners
of storage facilities should also be wary of renting out multiple
units to a single person.

"Alarm bells would go off if someone came in wanting to rent several
lockers at once," he said, but added criminals are often savvy about
how to avoid raising suspicions.

"Was it just one person who rented all of these? If you've got one
person wanting to rent, that's not odd, but if one person wants to
rent seven of them..."