POLICE COLLEGE TRAINING GROW-OP LOCATED IN POSH OTTAWA NEIGHBOURHOOD

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 police 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, 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.

RCMP Sgt. Michael Renault, a clan-lab instructor since 2007, got his
basic training in the Netherlands, where police have developed
expertise because of the proliferation of illegal labs in that country.

But Canada is no slouch at cooking illegal drugs. The latest UN World
Drug Report, issued last month, placed Canada third behind the United
States and Netherlands in total seizures of ecstasy, 407 kilograms in
2009.

The report also calls Canada a leading exporter of methamphetamines to
the United States. Police here shut down 22 meth labs in 2009 along
with 12 ecstasy operations, many of them set up in kitchens using
instructions freely available on the internet.

"The vast majority of clan labs seized in Canada continued to be
located in urban areas, primarily in the Vancouver region, the Greater
Toronto Area and the Montreal region," says the RCMP's 2009 report on
illicit drugs.

Marijuana grow-ops are far more ubiquitous in Canada, with thousands
hidden in modest suburban homes. Police teams across Canada seized 1.8
million plants in 2009, many from grow-ops.

A recent Justice Department survey of first responders -- police,
firefighters and paramedics -- found that most of them wanted more
training and equipment to deal with the hidden dangers of grow-ops,
including toxic mould.

Renault says police are more often encountering bomb-making operations
inside drug labs, yet another danger that officers must be trained to
spot by identifying the precursor chemicals.

About 168 officers take the college's drug investigation course each
year, at both the Ottawa and Chilliwack, B.C., campuses. Another 54
enrol annually in the advanced clan-lab course in Ottawa.