BARRIE: THE BIG SMOKE

Police Fear Doorway To Ontario's Cottage Country Has Become A Haven For
Drug Lords

BARRIE -- Greenhouses filled with thousands of marijuana plants, a private
plane laden with eight hockey bags stuffed with cocaine, hidden fields with
acres of pot plants, vats of the date-rape drug, GHB, being sold on the
Internet, two dead bodies lying in a field. "Hometown" Barrie, the doorway
to cottage country, ain't what it used to be.

The number of drug busts labelled "Ontario's first" and "Canada's first" in
recent years have officials wondering if Barrie is becoming the bedroom
community to Toronto's drug dealing criminals -- or if Barrie is just
getting bad all by itself.

"It's hard to keep up with it all," says OPP Det. Staff-Sgt. Rick Barnum.
"I can definitely say this is one of the busiest areas in the country."

Barnum's team, the OPP combined Huronia drug enforcement unit which uses
officers from Barrie and other Simcoe County police forces, is struggling
with the "absolute epidemic" of marijuana grow operations.

While marijuana is the "soft drug" in the public eye, Barnum says the giant
grow operations that turn over crops of "super plants" are not about pot --
but have everything to do with cocaine and organized crime.

"The marijuana industry is directly related to cocaine - there is no doubt
about it," he says.

"High-grade marijuana is produced here, the hydro is stolen from here, the
water is stolen, our insurance rates go up and basically the criminals
produce it for free.

"But guess what? It's not marijuana that's being sold on our streets --
it's cocaine."

While our "triple A grade" marijuana often called "B.C. Bud" gets shipped
south, cocaine is coming north in the exchange between drug lords, and
Barnum says the public and politicians have lost focus by not grasping that
link.

"The amount of cocaine hitting our streets in the past year is
unprecedented," he says. "It's unreal. It's unheard of. And it has
everything to do with grow operations."

Barnum was one of the officers involved in Canada's largest indoor drug
bust Jan. 9 when tactical units swarmed the massive former Molson brewery
that overlooks Hwy. 400.

Police uncovered a giant $100-million a year pot plant operating at such a
sophisticated level that even hard-nosed drug squad members were shaking
their heads in astonishment.

"It was incredible, I sat down and looked around and thought -- holy cow,"
Barnum says, recalling his astonishment as he gazed around the jungle of
30,000 plants.

Living accommodations were provided for so-called "gardeners" who tended
the crop around the clock, cranking out a harvest three or four times a year.

"It was kind of sad," Barnum says. "I thought, man oh man, if this is what
it's come to, how are we going to keep up? We need help."

The giant Barrie bust effectively put Canada on the map as the number one
pot producer in the world.

"It's not the distinction the City of Barrie was hoping for," says Barrie
Police Chief Wayne Frechette, who noticed the irony in a road sign on the
outskirts of the city that welcomes people to "the most popular destination
for business" in Canada.

"The same things that make it popular for legitimate business make it
popular for illegitimate business," he says, citing accessibility to Hwy.
400, airports, a central location and cheap labour.

Barrie's nearness to two gambling joints -- Casino Rama and Georgian Downs
- -- are two more big attractions for organized crime, he adds.

"What better place to launder money and loan-shark than gambling?"

Barrie and cottage country are especially good targets for grow operations,
Barnum says.

"Hwy. 400 is a great little conduit to Toronto ... real estate to buy
houses or land for grow operations is cheap compared to the city ... and
cottage country with all its winding creeks and rivers has amazing growing
conditions," he says.

The span of thickly forested cottage country just to the north makes a
perfect hideaway, he adds.

Considering the cocaine connection, it isn't just a coincidence that days
after the giant Molson drug bust, a trial began in this same city to delve
into a criminal underworld where two known Montreal drug lords apparently
used Barrie as the drop-off point to unload eight hockey bags stuffed with
269 kilos of 84% pure cocaine from a plane at a small airport just north of
this city.

During the trial court heard ominous-sounding wiretap evidence from the
so-called drug lords that read like an old-fashioned gangster movie.

Transcripts of RCMP wiretaps show dialogue between known cocaine kingpin
Dean Roberts, now spending 19 years in prison, and others who talk in code,
with cryptic phrases of "threatening my guys," and of starting a "war" if
ploys go wrong.

The wiretaps reveal colourful players with names like "Poppa," "Moustache
Pete," "Big Freddy," "Porcupine," and "The Magician."

There is a boss named "Crazy" known to go "looney-tooney" and scream,
holler and "freak out" if plans get messed up.

Code language for an aircraft is a "limo," money is "cake" and if you have
a cold and can't use the cellphone, it really means the "heat" is on to you.

It was only a couple of years earlier that an area just north of Barrie was
the hot spot of then "Ontario's largest" pot bust. Police helicopters
spotted acres and acres of marijuana as harvesters ran out of the fields.

Fifteen armed policemen spent 10 hours hacking the plants down with
machetes. They stuffed 30,000 plants into 70 trucks and carted them off to
the Orillia dump.

But that night die-hard pot-smokers headed for the dump with shovels and
flashlights and found the potent heap hiding beneath a pile of compost.

"It was like pot heaven," says one unnamed source who was there. The "dump
weed" was on Orillia streets for months.

In the end, the man who was charged with running the sophisticated grow
operation got off with a light sentence.

Yun Ming Tin, 40, of Scarborough, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30
months in jail Jan. 19, 2003.

Nobody knows how many previous crops might have been produced on the farm.

Justice Elizabeth Earle-Renton said she took into account the impact the
"ordeal" had on Tin's wife and family.

"You do not have a criminal record, you appear to be an extremely
hard-working individual and a person who has great concern for the welfare
of his family ... I am keeping in mind your guilty plea and the impact that
all of this has had on your family," she said in sentencing.

Two other hired hands on the farm got conditional sentences. For
comparison's sake, a local man convicted of smuggling a single joint into
the Barrie jail got a four-month jail sentence.

Federal prosecutor Denis Parent had asked for a five-year jail term in the
farm grow operation and he says he is not happy with the sentences handed
down by judges who are "blind" to the growing impact of drugs here.

"We are definitely seeing more and more drugs coming into this area, and
it's getting scary" says Parent, who prosecutes several hundreds of drug
cases a year in Simcoe County. "People don't think we have organized crime
or drug addicts in Barrie - we do."

'BRAINS' GET AWAY

Parent says the law needs to do two things: Get tougher on the "gardeners"
who tend grow operations and work harder to catch the "brains" behind them.

"The reason why it hasn't been nipped in the bud," Parent says, "is the
gardeners are always left behind and the brains get to walk away."

Light sentences in grow operations are a thorn in the side of both Barnum
and Frechette because undercover drug cops take huge risks and use up hours
of surveillance time trying to catch the bad guys who choose to operate in
Canada where conditional sentences are the norm.

And it's not just the organized crime element that judges should consider,
they say.

THC levels that make the plant potent have increased from 3% to betwen 18
and 30% since the '70s and '80s and grow houses use dangerous chemicals
that infect our atmosphere, pollute our water and damage the lungs of
vulnerable children who live nearby.

And thousands of houses that were secretly used as grow houses are slapped
with a fresh coat of paint and resold to unsuspecting buyers after the
interiors have already begun to mould and rot and wires are rusted and bare
from the humidity, making them "death traps."

Targeting and infiltrating the brains at the top is the direction the drug
unit is heading, Barnum says.

Organized crime is so deep-rooted, he says, that a crooked business man
would have a hard time starting up a new operation because territories are
already "marked" by the bad guys at the top.

"If you try to close in on another person's territory somebody will leave
you a little reminder on your doorstep," Barnum says.

Wherever there is a grow-op, organized crime is lurking nearby, he says.