CRIME GROUPS BUYING UP LAND IN B.C.'S CARIBOO TO SET UP GROWING OPERATIONS

Organized crime groups have been buying up land in B.C.'s Cariboo and
setting up sophisticated marijuana grow operations of an unprecedented scale.

The RCMP's Federal Drug Enforcement Branch revealed Friday that 24
people have been arrested after a massive investigation into two
dozen grow operations with more than 54,000 plants.

"These large, commercial operations have direct links to the
international trade of guns and cocaine," Const. Michael McLaughlin said.

"Federal, provincial and local agencies have all been consulted,
along with local governments and the residents themselves, to make
sure that criminal networks are not comfortable with their efforts to
expand into the north."

Of the 24 arrested, "10 do not hold Canadian citizenship," McLaughlin
said, adding that many of the gardeners

taken in by police are Vietnamese in origin.

He said the gardeners tending the plants are being used by more
entrenched criminals behind the sophisticated drug operations.

"We appreciate that generally the gardeners are not the most senior
levels of organized crime. Still, when you have got a multimillion
dollar investment, which most of these operations were, you are not
going to put your most junior person in charge," he said.

More charges are expected.

"We are absolutely going up the chain-of-command in the organized
crime groups. So we are looking at all sorts of connectivity,
including property owners," McLaughlin said.

Residents of the rural section of B.C. were complaining to police in
record numbers about suspected marijuana farms sprouting up in the region.

In response to the complaints, the Cariboo Region Integrated
Marijuana Enforcement (CRIME) task force was started last September
to go after commercial-scale marijuana grow operations.

Before the task force formed, there had been a 60-per-cent increase
in active police investigations of pot operations in the Cariboo.

"The grow-ops are 33-per-cent bigger than they used to be,"
McLaughlin said. "Clearly, organized crime is fuelling the increase,
and the people of the Cariboo have told the RCMP's Drug Enforcement
Branch they want the criminals gone."

The task force has dismantled 27 marijuana grow operations since
September. In addition to the arrests, police have seized six
unregistered firearms.

The federal drug branch is working with local drug sections in Prince
George, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House and Quesnel as well as with the
Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, which combats organized crime in B.C.

"Our goal is to enforce Canadian law against marijuana growers whose
current operations occupy the north," McLaughlin said. "These
newcomers to the pristine Cariboo region have no regard for the land
that they occupy; streams are being diverted, growth-enhancing
chemicals and pesticides are leaching into the soil and garbage is
being left behind."