POT ERADICATION EFFORTS UNDERWAY

An OPP helicopter takes to the sky from the Lindsay airport as a long
convoy of police vehicles make their way east towards the rural
recesses of the former Emily Township.

Marijuana harvest season is here and it's time to haul in the crop. On
this day, OPP officers - some clad in tactical gear and camouflage -
would emerge from property on Colony Road just west of Settlement Road
with about 75 pot plants.

It was far from the only crop of narcotic-yielding plants that police
would cut down this week.

As of mid-afternoon Thursday, OPP officers had already seized some
15,000 plants in the City of Kawartha Lakes, said City of Kawartha
Lakes OPP media relations officer Const. Mark Boileau..

At this time of year, officers use the information they have gathered
throughout the year to seek out illegal crops, he said.

With most grows found in large tracts of rural land, the municipality
is an ideal location for growers - and one scoured by police who also
use a helicopter to search out crops often easily visible from the
air.

Citizens can do their part to help by reporting anything out of the
ordinary to police, Boileau said.

Signs of a grow operation on your property could include new trails,
and tools.

Seeing a cube van or other mode of moving large quantities of weed
would be another very obvious sign.

"That's when you should start calling us," he said.

Most important, is that citizens never take a situation into their own
hands should they encounter suspicious activity that could be
connected to a grow operation, Boileau said.

Marijuana cultivation sites are often booby trapped. Local police have
even arrested suspects protecting them with real weapons while wearing
fake police gear.

A multi-billion dollar trade, suspects will go to any extreme to
protect their crop, or steal someone else's, Boileau said.

"You never know what's going to happen," he said.

One year earlier to the day, an armed suspect who would never be
caught, fled a $5 million grow operation just a few kilometres east of
where officers found marijuana plants off of Colony Road Tuesday.
Police have seized everything from machine guns to assault rifles,
detonator cords to blasting caps and even bullet proof vests at grow
operations busted locally in recent years.

Police disassembled a $10 million grow operation in North Kawartha
Township already this week.

In 2006, OPP destroyed over 138,993 marijuana plants and investigated
or discovered 450 indoor and outdoor marijuana grow operations.

More than 20,000 plants alone were seized outdoors by the Kawartha
Combined Drug Forces Unit.

In 2005, eradication efforts of the drug unit led to the seizure of
12,443 plants valued at over $12 million across its coverage area,
which includes the City of Kawartha Lakes, Peterborough and
Northumberland county's. Those numbers do not include indoor
operations or those found during regular police operations.