10 ARRESTED IN LARGE POT SWEEP

Ritzy, Empty Homes Were Used To Grow Marijuana, Police Say

RCMP arrested 10 Halifax-area people Monday after searching 19 sites
involved in a sophisticated marijuana-growing operation that used
expensive homes just for growing the drug.

More than 100 officers from the RCMP, Halifax Regional Police, Truro
Police Service, federal Immigration and Passport service and Canada
Border Services Agency worked on the case. More than 4,000 plants, 10
vehicles and a significant amount of cash were seized.

"We have a very successful investigation here," RCMP spokesman Const.
Gary Smith said at a news conference.

"It's organized crime. There could be more arrests, there could be
more seizures."

He wouldn't say who was running the operation, whether police
apprehended the leaders or if the growing activity was linked to a
similar setup police busted in Moncton on July 27. Some sources said
there is a connection.

Monday's arrests involved nine men and a woman. Immigration officers
attended the raids because police weren't sure all the suspects were
Canadian.

"I understand that there are people of Asian descent that are
involved," Const. Smith said.

He described the arrests as uneventful.

The 10 people will face charges of cultivating marijuana, possessing
marijuana for the purpose of trafficking and theft of
electricity.

Police simultaneously searched many homes worth more than $200,000 in
Fall River, Sackville and Tantallon, plus one on Saywood Drive in
Bible Hill. Many were uninhabited, with the plants inside being tended
to by people living in apartments and condominiums in Clayton Park and
Bedford. Those residences were also searched.

The houses were partitioned, with rooms arranged according to the
plants' stage of maturity.

"A lot of sophistication has gone into this," Const. Smith
said.

He said the use of expensive homes was meant to provide more security
for the illegal activity.

"Obviously, it's a way of concealment by going into upscale
residential areas," he said.

In the July raid in Moncton, 15 homes were searched and 13 people of
Vietnamese descent arrested. Some 5,100 plants and 31 kilograms of
dried pot were seized. Police said the total haul was worth $10 million.

Const. Smith wouldn't attach any monetary value to Monday's
seizures.

He said police have communicated with their New Brunswick counterparts
but he wouldn't elaborate.

The provincial Community Services Department carried out a child
apprehension order involving two children at a home in the Glen Haven
area near Tantallon. A Vietnamese translator was required.

Sources said other child apprehension orders were also carried
out.

Police invited the media to the site of a raid at 55 Kata Ct. in Upper
Tantallon. They displayed a 1.5-metre plant and a large amount of
harvested plant buds sitting in the box police found it in.

The house's underground wiring was reworked to bypass meters, giving
the house illegal electricity for free.

Const. Smith said that type of wiring - along with the use of
chemicals and the potential for a buildup of mould - displays the
dangers of growing operations.

The electrical system of another raided house appeared quite dangerous
to police, he said.

"The wires themselves were very hot," he said. "I think it was an
underground electrical connection."

The Kata Court house is very clean and at the end of a cul de sac.
It's less than two years old and the current owners bought it from the
previous residents last fall, neighbours said.

The house is assessed at $199,300 and the owner is listed as Duc Lu
Tin, according to Property Online, the province's Internet real estate
site.

A neighbour down the street who asked not to be identified said area
residents expected police to go to that house sooner or later.

"A neighbour was suspicious," she said.

The lone, male resident of number 55 didn't associate with others and
came and went at strange times, creating an uneasy feeling among the
neighbours, she said.

"You were just always kind of suspicious . . . wondering what they
were up to."

She had just one meeting with a man at the house, last Halloween when
she and others went there with children. A man there looked anxious
and wanted to keep people away from the property, she said.

"We just went up to the top of the street and he was coming out of his
driveway. He just rolled down his window and threw some candy at us
and that was it."

Asked to describe the man, she just said he was Asian.