DRUG COPS CUT TEETH ON OTTAWA 'GROW-OP'

OTTAWA -- An upscale neighbourhood on Ottawa's east side -- home to
prime ministers, high-tech titans and diplomats -- is also the
location of Canada's most-raided marijuana grow-op.

The seedy operation in a two-storey brick duplex, nestled among the
broad lawns and tony homes of Rockcliffe Park and Manor Park, is
well-known to drug cops across the country.

That's because many of them have trained here, at the RCMP-run
Canadian Police College, which uses a fake residence to teach
officers how to safely raid grow-ops and clandestine drug labs while
making arrests and preserving evidence.

This so-called "scenario house," also known as "Building G" on the
college campus, is crawling with police on a summer morning. Many are
shrouded head-to-toe in white suits, respirators and masks for
protection against unpronounceable chemicals and toxic gases.

"Make sure you carry the (chemical) barrels away from your body," a
Health Canada chemist warns a pair of suited-up officers, who are
being trained to remove hazardous chemicals from an illegal crystal-meth lab.

"You can get abrasions on your suit and acids or strong bases can get through."

The female chemist-trainer, like almost all the participants in this
exercise, insist their names and pictures be withheld because they
often participate in undercover drug stings.

There's little danger of injury in this strange classroom. No real
chemicals are stored in the kitchen-like lab, although all of the
equipment -- from cookers and distilling tubes to mixers and
pill-pressers -- are genuine, seized from actual labs as evidence and
no longer required in court.

Next door, an elaborate grow-op also features a full set of genuine
equipment, from hot lamps and carbon-dioxide emitters to ozone machines.

But the small marijuana cuttings in one room and the mature plants
under the lights in two other rooms are quite unsmokable: they're
plastic look-alikes, supplied by an American firm.

RCMP Sgt. Norm Leger, who's in charge of the college's three-week
drug course, points out some hazards raiding officers face inside
grow-ops. Hot lamps can drive indoor temperatures to above 40 C, but
it's dangerous to open windows because condensation from cool outside
air can make the bulbs explode.

Carbon-dioxide producing devices can malfunction and fill a room with
deadly carbon-monoxide, Leger says. And dangerous electrical charges
can linger in devices up to 30 minutes after the power supply has been cut.

And then there are the booby traps -- tripwire guns, fish hooks
embedded in railings or electrified doors. "We still encounter them
quite a bit," he says.

The two-week "clan-lab" course is advanced training, after the basic
drug course has exposed students to the full investigative process,
which includes how to safely raid grow-ops.