THE HEAT IS ON

SAANICH - Another week, another grow-op busted. It's a standard
headline in Saanich as police crack down on marijuana growers plying
their business within the municipality.

And while police still build their cases the old-fashioned way, they
also rely on a little help from technology. It sounds a little sci-fi
and comes with its own controversy, but the Saanich police
department's thermal imager helps turn hunches into search warrants.

Sgt. Doug Newman is Saanich police's expert with the device. In fact,
he's considered one of the best in North America when it comes to
thermal imaging and has travelled the continent teaching other officers.

Saanich's thermal imager is the Palm IR250, manufactured by Raytheon,
with a price tag of $15,000. The department bought the device in 2000.

It's slightly larger than a household camcorder and doesn't actually
record what it's seeing. Unlike the glass lens of a video camera, the
Palm IR250 uses a lens made of germanium, an element transparent to
the infrared spectrum. When used in the thermal imager, the lens
depicts variations in temperature as shades of grey.

"It's seeing the unseen," Newman said about picking up heat coming out
of a home. "It's seeing what can't be seen with the naked eye."

The Saanich device is old enough that it uses analog technology, while
newer versions translate information into a digital read out. Many
modern thermal imagers also use colours to show temperatures, though
Newman says he prefers basic black and white for police work. "White
is hot, black is not," said Newman, who is on the board of the Law
Enforcement Thermographers Association.

Of the 12 recent grow-ops busted by Saanich police as of last week,
Newman says he used the thermal imager on three of the cases.

"Some are a slam dunk," he said. For example, a house reeks of dope
and there's no other possible source for the smell. In other cases,
police rely on the thermal imager to provide a final piece to the puzzle.

"Using a thermal imager is the last thing you do before you make an
application for the search warrant," said Newman, noting police
require reasonable and probable grounds to search a home.

He won't talk about how he specifically deploys the thermal imager,
for fear of educating growers. He will say that it's part of the
investigative process for police officers.

"If the people who are investigating have good grounds but they can't
step over that threshold (to get a search warrant), it's the extra bit
of evidence that is going to allow for something like that," Newman
said.

Most grow-op investigations start with either a tip or a suspicion and
then police build a case. Newman won't take a thermal image of a home
unless all the other groundwork is done. It's a matter of integrity,
said Newman, who is also an ordained minister.

"In my mind it would be called random virtue testing," he said, noting
Canadian law is so well written on this subject that he wouldn't want
to risk compromising the legislation. Earlier this year, the Supreme
Court of Canada ruled that the device is a non-obtrusive instrument.

"Thermal imaging doesn't see through anything," said Newman,
explaining that the device shows an image of the first thing it comes
in contact with. "If I go and look at a house, I can't tell you
there's a grow-op in there. I can tell you if there's a heat anomaly."

As an example, Newman notes that on hot summer days people hang out in
their basements to stay cool. So when he investigates a house in the
evening, the expectation is that the top floor retains more heat.

"And if I notice the basement is warmer, something's not right," said
Newman, who spent two-and-a-half years as a sergeant with the Saanich
street crime unit.

During that time, he helped bust hundreds of grow-ops and underwent
formal drug enforcement training at police college.

Newman has even grown marijuana himself, he says, laughing as the
statement generates the incredulous look it always does.

He grew pot under license, he points out, in order to better
understand the process.

His experience makes him an expert who is often called upon to testify
in court.

"B.C. is a mecca for dope," he said. "We have great dope
here."

Newman also laughs at the notion of many marijuana advocates who say
that most grow-ops are small scale and only produce enough marijuana
for someone's personal use.

"Our grows are very sophisticated," he said, noting one example of a
grower who used seven homes for his operation. "I have to tell you,
it's a business."

Thermal imagers are standard issue for most RCMP units. In fact, the
first time Newman used the device was in 1997 when he was seconded to
the RCMP drug section green team.

During that same year, a thermal imager played a role when a Saanich
house was the first property ever seized under the then new Controlled
Drugs and Substances Act.

A report by RCMP Const. J.D. Johnston (from the LETA website) states
that the home was a half-million dollar bed and breakfast that had
been converted into a grow-op.

"The investigation began with surveillance of a local hydroponic
supplier, which revealed the target residence, followed by Hydro
consumption records showing extremely high usage," reads the report.
"Subsequent night surveillance revealed a smell of marihuana (sic)
coming from the target residence and a hand held thermal imager
indicated a gable vent was very hot compared to similar adjacent dwellings."

Apparently, the gable appeared hot because it was venting air used to
cool more than a dozen 1,000-watt grow lights.

While thermal imagers are best known for their use in investigating
possible marijuana growing operations, they have many other uses, such
as locating fugitives or missing people during search-and-rescue operations.

A few years ago, dogs and teams of searchers couldn't find a missing
woman who was believed to be somewhere in Rithit's Bog near Royal Oak,
Newman recalled.

He went up in a Coast Guard helicopter and, while hanging out the
window with the thermal imager, he located the woman's body 12 days
after she had gone missing.

"All I can say is I saw a white spot like this," he said, holding his
hands up in front of him, his thumbs and index fingers forming a
saucer-sized circle.

The device was also used to catch a ring of auto thieves suspected of
stealing 200 to 300 vehicles.

Police had members of the ring under surveillance when the suspects
disappeared into a park. An officer used the thermal imager to track
the group until they reemerged from the wooded area and police could
resume their surveillance.

"When I was on patrol, I took it with me all the time," Newman said,
recalling his days with the street-crime unit. The device worked well
for finding kids who would "terrorize their neighbourhood" and then
hide when police showed up.

Whether it's busting criminals, gathering evidence at a crime scene or
locating dead bodies, the thermal imager is a proven asset in dealing
with the darker side of police work. But perhaps it's another use, one
that results in a happy ending for everyone, that best shows the value
of the device.

"There was a Down syndrome girl a number of years ago who had gone
missing in Richmond and they found her (alive and well) with a thermal
imager," Newman said. "Tell me the price of that."