I DON'T THINK IT'S A HARMLESS CRIME

Fire. Gunfights. Families in the line of fire.

Wendy Jenkinson envisioned all these possibilities in her North Burnaby
neighbourhood when she discovered a man had set up a marijuana growing
operation behind her home.

"I'm trying not to get angry. I'm trying not to get overwrought. But maybe
you have to," said Jenkinson.

"It's the danger, because I don't think these are 'mom and pop' operations.
It's all controlled by gangs, of all stripes.

"I don't think it's a harmless crime. These are not nice people. This is
not me with my tomatoes."

Jenkinson said she was furious that the man "would put neighbours that I
love and trust in danger."

She describes the community where she's lived since January 1987 as a
little slice of Canadiana.

"We're a typical, what I would like to think of, neighbourhood," Jenkinson
said, explaining there are people with backgrounds from around the world.

"We've always been this real mix of people, which I love. It's very friendly."

After her husband died a little more than two years ago, her neighbours
rallied around because she had no other family nearby.

"They've been great with me. I have a great support system here. So I don't
like it when something like that happens."

There's not much the retired woman misses - she's frank about her interest
in the neighbourhood's goings-on.

"When I'm on the phone, I lift up the curtain and I look out," Jenkinson
said emphatically. "I make no subterfuge - I look out. That's what I do."

Sometimes she'll wave at a neighbour or invite a friend in for coffee and a
chat - it's that old-fashioned, extended-family type of community.

In May or June last year, a man moved into the house that backed onto hers.

"He led us to believe he was the owner," Jenkinson said.

The man also talked of a wife and two sons, one still in school, the other
grown up - but she never saw them. As with all the other neighbours, he was
welcomed.

"He would talk to us and I would talk to him," Jenkinson said. "I didn't
know anything (was going on)."

After the first week, no one else in the neighbourhood saw anyone other
than the man, who'd introduced himself as "Michael."

A mattress and a box spring arrived early on, but there were no other
indications anyone was moving in.

"We never saw a furniture van," Jenkinson said. She wasn't immediately
suspicious, however, because she doesn't live by the kitchen window.

"I see a lot, but I'm not here all the time.

In retrospect, there were some signs something odd was going on - but
nothing extremely obvious.

"He pretty well had the blinds down, but a lot of people have their blinds
down," Jenkinson said.

The mail slot had been closed up and a mail box added.

None of these things were unusual in a security-conscious home, but still,
the neighbours wondered.

"We kept laughingly calling it a grow op. We knew there was something silly
going on."

When she saw three "thug-like" characters hanging out around her new
neighbour's home, Jenkinson told Michael and suggested he call the police.

But he didn't agree and instead asked her, if she saw them again, to not
call the police but contact him at work instead.

When she noticed someone loitering around the home shortly after, Jenkinson
called Michael, who asked her to go out and chase them away herself instead
of calling the police - something she declined to do.

Burnaby RCMP's Green Team - the anti-marijuana grow operation division -
raided the home in mid-December and arrested the man, but it wasn't long
before he was back in the home.

"I was so amazed that he was able to come back and carry on like nothing
had happened," said Jenkinson, who saw him there a few times.

But it was a strong indicator for Jenkinson that the homeowner knew about
the grow op.

"If I was an owner and discovered there'd been a grow op, the place would
be boarded up."

She was stunned, however, when the man - whose electricity had been cut off
because of the grow op - was wandering around the neighbourhood recently,
extension cord in hand, looking for somewhere to plug it in.

"He just wasn't getting it," Jenkinson said. "He just wasn't getting it.

"I'm sure that if (the opportunity of) tending plants in another home comes
along, he'll take it," she said.

She contacted the community police office to find out what could be done
and didn't get a response, and she had problems finding someone at any
level of government who could help her.

For Jenkinson, it wasn't an issue of the legal, moral or other aspects of
using marijuana - it was all about the growers who put her neighbourhood in
danger for their profit.

She says she realizes that, in the bigger scheme of things, a grow op
barely registers. But in her neighbourhood, as in many other neighbourhoods
in the city, the region and the province, it became their problem -
something no one seemed to understand.

"There are more horrendous things going on," Jenkinson said. "But everybody
gave me so little and left me hanging as to what would happen.

"I was a little frustrated by it. Somewhere along the line, somebody has a
duty to make the community feel safe."