WEEDING OUT GROW-OPS

It's time to consider grow-ops and meth labs a public safety issue
and get away from relying on a "failed" court system, Surrey fire
chief Len Garis told a Langley City forum last week.

"B.C. bud is potentially a $12 billion industry. If we take away
organized crime's ability to earn money, we win," Garis said Thursday
to the more than 100 realtors, politicians, bylaw and police officers
who attended the half-day forum put on by the Fraser Valley Real
Estate Board at the Cascades Convention Centre.

"We are turning the tide, but as the drug industry adapts to our
strategies, we must find new tools," said Garis. "If we sit back, the
whole thing will re-energize itself."

Grow-op busters

Since the Surrey fire department began its public safety inspections,
which use BC Hydro consumption records to root out homes using high
amounts of electricity, it has seen more than a 50 per cent drop in
grow-ops, he said.

It was a problem the Surrey RCMP had a hard time tackling, hampered
by the need for judge-approved warrants and other restrictions.

Because of what the justice system requires of police, processing of
each criminal case has gone up by two-thirds, says Dr. Darryl Plecas,
RCMP research chair of the University of the Fraser Valley.

"It used to take (police) nine steps to process a marijuana grow
operation. Today, it takes 64," said Plecas, one of six experts to
speak at the forum.

"It used to take one hour to process an impaired driver. It now takes
five hours. If we want to help efficiency, we must demand efficiency
in the courts. They are not accountable and this tragedy has gone on too long."

A general consensus at the forum was prevention and deterrence will
have to come from avenues other than the courts.

Since getting the Ministry of Children and Families involved with
seizing children living within grow homes, the number of kids in
these residences has plummeted, Garis said.

"We started with one in four grow-ops having kids (present), then one
in 15. Now, in 2008, it's one in 50," he said.

Despite lawsuits filed against Surrey fire department's inspection
team, Garis will continue inspecting and shutting down power to homes
suspected of illegal drug operations, he said. Langley Township has
disbanded its inspection team, pending the outcome of a Supreme Court
challenge against it.

"We're not giving up," Garis said.

Plecas said that while organized crime is behind these illegal drug
houses, those who run the operations will be punished.

"It's the rinky-dink wannabes that are doing these grow-ops, and they
are going to go to jail," predicted Plecas.

Protecting home buyers

At the forum, realtors called for action to protect home buyers from
purchasing former grow-ops and meth labs. Two years ago, the FVREB
put together a committee to look into the challenges around houses
ruined by illegal drug activity. There is no proper way for a
potential home buyers, realtors or property managers to obtain a
house's history, the committee found out. Realtors want to
standardize how illegal drug houses are documented with each
municipality while also making that information easily accessible.

Hitting them where it hurts

Langley City Mayor Peter Fassbender said the City just fined a woman
$10,000 under its drug/premises bylaw, after police found a large
meth lab in a garage of a house on 56 Avenue.

In that case, the female owner allowed her son to rent out the house.
He rented it out in a month by month cash basis to a meth cook.

"The cost to the community was in excess of $100,000. Neighbours had
to be evacuated. There were costs for policing, fire, Hazmat. The
woman asked for leniency because she didn't know her son was doing
this but it's unacceptable danger to the community," said Fassbender.

Most communities in the Fraser Valley have established a bylaw that
allows each municipality to recoup emergency costs incurred to clean
up a grow-op or meth lab.

"In Surrey, we have a lot of out of country landlords who just don't
care (about who rents). So we fine them," said Surrey Coun. Barbara Steele.

Fassbender wants the focus on civil forfeiture of homes to hit
organized crime in the pocket book. He told the crowd it is a waste
of time to try and go after organized crime through the "stupid" court system.

Chilliwack Mayor Clint Hames suggested RCMP should create a new
integrated team dealing solely with forfeitures of crime.

"We spend 12 per cent of our policing budget on integrated police
teams, like homicide and dogs. This should be another team. A
detachment as small as ours could never handle that sort of thing," he said.

While privacy issues are "the enemy" to most of these initiatives,
points out Plecas, there are ways to accomplish lofty goals like
this. Garis said part of the privacy issue is taking the fear from
government stakeholders.

He pointed to BC Hydro believing it wasn't able to provide customer
records because that breached privacy laws. But once BC Hydro was
educated that the information was in the interest of protecting
public safety, the records were handed over.

Landlord horror stories

The Residential Tenancy Act has hampered landlords so much that one
tenant won the right to keep a suite from being rented to anyone else
while he or she was in jail, said one realtor at the forum.

A realtor from Vancouver said he found a grow-op in his tenant's
suite and attempted to evict the tenants. He ended up having to give
the damage deposit back and provide moving costs because the renters
weren't convicted of a crime.

A possible way around these nightmares is establishing a rental
contract stating that illegal activity is cause for eviction.