4 BUSTS BEFORE MOURNING

Cops Take On Drug Crime

This is the first in an occasional series of feature stories dealing with
drug enforcement by Hamilton police. Toronto Sun crime reporter Rob
Lamberti rode with officers of the service's Vice and Drugs Unit and the
Break, Enter, Auto theft and Recovery Unit. Today, we look at the vice and
drugs team, which spent two days this past week raiding two marijuana grow
operations and three crack dens, arresting 23 people.

Jeepers clicks his two-way radio Thursday afternoon and calls out to Gochy
and Shaggy, two constables with his vice and drugs team. He tells them the
details are still sketchy, but the tally in Alberta at that point is one
dead Mountie green team member and others who aren't responding at a
marijuana grow raid.

For them, the streets of Hamilton just became a little colder and
potentially a little more dangerous. The unit is preparing to stage four
raids: Three on alleged crack houses and a small grow already secured by
the auto squad.

The depth of the Alberta tragedy won't be known by the unit until their
work is done in the early hours of Friday, after the dope is bagged, the
crack houses are closed and the suspects processed.

Deaths, like those in Alberta, are heartbreaking. They're not unexpected,
but the slaughter of four shocks them.

But the tragedy doesn't change the job of this drug team. Or any other.
Anywhere.

The unit's boss, Det.-Sgt. Mike "Jeepers" Thomas, says Thursday's bloodshed
and the danger associated with drug trafficking aren't going to stop the
war against drugs along the west end of Lake Ontario.

"It's what police do," Thomas says. "We hate to hear it, when someone gets
hurt or killed, and it was the extreme, what happened Thursday night.

"You know what? We'll send officers out there," he says. "We can't stop, no
police department can stop. We got to keep going after these problems."

The tragedy is not going to stem their resolve to control what is becoming
increasingly difficult to control.

There's a lot of sympathy for the crack addict among the vice and drugs team.

"The addicts are the unfortunates of the community and the dealers are the
ones you need to lock up," says Det. Chris "Bulldog" Calvert.

"I have a lot of compassion for the user," adds his partner, Det.-Const.
Mike Goch. "It's just like any other addiction. But gambling, alcohol, they
take time. Crack, it's an instant."

Calvert says most addicts come from "normal families who were normal
people, if you want to use the word normal, and somewhere along the line
they tried this stuff."

"They're not bad people. They're just people that are addicted to a s---ass
drug that's just ruining their lives," Calvert says.

"When they're really on a run, they don't know what day of the week it is,
they don't care," he says.

They recall people who have lost everything to chase the initial high the
drug will never again provide -- Farmer John, who lost a
multimillion-dollar business; Kasey, who has been a sex-trade worker for 15
years, the same amount of time she's been smoking -- the list of victims
grows, unabated.

"If you're looking for a crack house, look for a congestion of
prostitutes," Calvert says. The smoking den is the epicentre of the crime
that plagues a neighbourhood, the prostitutes who trick-and-smoke, the
burglar who breaks in and smokes, the bandit who robs and smokes.

PRICE OF CRACK

The price of crack, Goch says, is reflected in the prices set by sex-trade
workers. The $40 for oral sex equals a 40-piece of crack; it's $60 for
intercourse and $80 for half-and-half.

The most the two cops have heard of a dealer earning is $8,000 a night.
Another claimed he averaged $2,000 and $3,000 a night.

"But you never know who's coming to get you and you don't know when,"
Calvert says. "It makes you paranoid."

The drug unit has found only one grow operation that was booby-trapped, he
says, involving a mister that sprayed a chemical and an electrified door.

A cop was left gasping for air when he was hit with a blast of chemicals,
but no one was electrocuted because police entered through the back door
instead of the front.

On Wednesday, the green team leads the raid on a three-storey Stirton St.
home. No one is expected to be home, but no chances are taken -- the front
door is opened with a battering ram.

A couple with seven children is arrested. Police found they were painting
over thick mould in preparation to sell the house to an unsuspecting buyer.

Furnace and water-heater ducts were disconnected to provide the 240 plants
in the basement with carbon monoxide. The gas and the electricity were shut
off.

"He's burning his furnace straight into the basement," Det. Paul Johnston
says. "He's got the exhaust system hooked up to the chimney. All that hot,
humid air is going through the house.

"He's replastered every room in the house, he's cleaned all the carpets and
he's ready to sell this to some unsuspecting person," he says.

The Children's Aid Society is called in to deal with the kids, aged from1
1/2 to 19 years old.

Johnston says the green team has worked 32 days so far this year and has
raided 22 grows. Police have seized $7 million in dope. It's going to be,
he figures, a very busy year.

Later that night, a warrant is signed, allowing the battering ram to open
an upper apartment door on King St. E. Six people are arrested and six
grams of crack are seized.

On Thursday, there's no time to mourn.

The team goes to a house after the auto squad checked out a car on which it
looked like someone had tampered with its serial numbers. At the car
owner's Upper Gage Ave. house they find four replica pistols and there's a
smell of dope in the air.

Then all thoughts of dinner are abandoned as first a row house and then a
rooming house are targeted for being crack houses. If the team has any time
left after dealing with those premises, there's a third crack house to take
down.

"Crack's a problem," Thomas says. "We just got to get out of heads that
simply going out and doing one or two (crack houses) here is going to solve
the problem.

"What I see, when the 407 opened up, it was a bit of a funnel for people
from Peel and Toronto, and they were coming to Hamilton," the former
homicide detective says.

"What it appeared to do was raise the level of violence. We had a couple of
murders" involving outsiders.

"When it's not going their way, their level of violence just escalates
right to the point where firearms are involved," Thomas says.

"When we talk to (dealers), they're all from Toronto," Goch says.

"Hamilton is 35 minutes away, and realistically, they won't get shot."

"It seems to us ... they get the drugs from Toronto, bring it to Hamilton,
and disperse it," Calvert says.

He's been in the drug unit since 1999 and says there's been a "huge growth
in crack."

That's brought an increase in violence as desperation among addicts forces
them to turn to crime, Calvert says.

Goch and Calvert say dealers from North York, Brampton, Toronto and
Mississauga are moving into Hamilton because the odds are in their favour
of not getting whacked.

It all adds up to more missed suppers -- and more danger -- for Hamilton police.