Belleville

POLICE NEED PUBLIC'S HELP TO CLAMP DOWN ON POT GROW HOUSES

Is there a house along your street that always has the curtains drawn, the
windows clamped shut at all times and condensation dripping down the inside
of the glass? Is there only one person who comes to the house periodically
but there never appears to be anyone living there? Does the snow in
wintertime pile up in the driveway or is the grass always overgrown in the
summer?

Or far more telling ­ do you smell the pungently sweet smell of marijuana
in the air? If you do then you may have a marijuana grow house in your
neighbourhood and police will want to know about it. Left unchecked,
illegal drug operations allow organized crime to become entrenched in a
community and the Quinte area is no exception. In fact, outlaw motorcycle
gangs, such as the Hells Angels, are already represented here, according to
the person in charge of the Belleville Police Service's drug and
intelligence unit. "Why not?" said Staff Sergeant Mike Graham who also
co-coordinates the region's anti-drug joint forces operation, Project
Longarm. "No area is immune to it. Anybody could decide to set up shop."

In fact, Longarm efforts have clamped down on between 15 and 20 large-scale
indoor commercial pot grow houses in the last couple of years in the
Napanee area and throughout Hastings and Prince Edward counties. Two of the
larger illegal grow houses operating out of two brand new homes in the
Stanley Park Subdivision were shut down by police in Belleville in
December, 2002; three arrests were made, more than 1,000 marijuana plants
were seized and the theft of hydro was valued at $23,000. In addition, the
estimated street value of the seized drugs and property was more than
$1-million.

A reality check on the marijuana situation was recently delivered by the
Belleville Police Service Tuesday responding to a major new study, compiled
by police intelligence sources throughout the province. Entitled Green
Tide: Indoor Marihuana Cultivation and Its Impact On Ontario, the document
reveals big numbers that spell bad news for both rural and urban
communities across the province. The large-scale grow operations, in which
hundreds of pot plants are being cultivated for sale, are costing consumers
millions of dollars in stolen electricity and higher insurance costs.

According to the report, an estimated $85-million worth of electricity was
stolen in 2002 alone to feed grow operations throughout the province.

And the number of these commercial indoor grow operations are on the rise.
The 56-page Green Tide report reveals that between 2000 and 2002 the number
of operations increased by 250 per cent. Not only that, grow houses
produced and housed at least 1.2 million kilograms of marketable pot and
related products generating $12.7-billion in revenue; stats show 15,000
grow houses were in operation and 1.2 million plants were seized in 2002.

The danger of the marijuana drug trade can touch every community, including
the Quinte region. There is tremendous potential for fire to start in a
grow house where high-intensity heat lamps are used to feed the
tropics-loving plants. "In a lot of (grow) houses people do their own
wiring," Staff Sergeant Graham said. The grow house operators bypass the
hydro meters so their suspiciously high usage won't be detected. Such
actions have resulted in $200,000 to $300,000 homes burning to the ground
elsewhere. A couple of years ago in Belleville a small marijuana grow house
operation with 20 or 30 pot plants resulted in fire and $20,000 to $30,000
in damages to the house, the drug investigator said. According to the Green
Tide report the chance of fire breaking out in a grow house is 40 times
higher than in a regular home.

The Green Tide report, released by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of
Police, also reveals that as many as 10,000 children and their families may
have lived in grow houses to tend to the marijuana crops between 2000 and
2003. "Often recent immigrants, they are exposed to health and safety risks
and physical violence associated with these operations," a media release on
the study states. Their health is also put in jeopardy not only by fire but
also from the unsafe storage of toxic chemicals and fertilizers used to
feed the pot plants. The substantial buildup of mildew and condensation in
these large-scale grow houses further makes the premises unsafe as well as
uninhabitable for adults and children, Graham explained.

Danger also lurks in the form of money and power-hungry organized crime
rings which appear to be directly linked to the expansion of the
industrial-scale marijuana operations. "These criminal groups are
well-organized, well-financed and ruthless in pursuit of their business,"
said Belleville Police Chief Steve Tanner in a recent statement to the
media. He plans to solicit commitments from local elected officials and
business leaders to help police educate the public on the subject as well
as come up with a plan of action to stop the grow houses from spreading
further still.

There's certainly plenty of money at stake. Staff Sergeant Graham said the
current market value of a single marijuana plant is $1,000 once the
material is dried out and sold in gram quantities. "It's a serious business
with the violence and everything else," the Longarm co-coordinator
revealed. As such, there is serious and potentially deadly competition
between dealers and growers and local residents could become caught in the
middle. "One of the groups will rip another off," the staff sergeant said.
Other types of illegal drug activity are just as dangerous and have local
police just as concerned. Two Toronto residents were recently arrested on
separate occasions but in the same week in Belleville for trafficking crack
cocaine and possessing loaded guns. "Crack cocaine is really a concern,"
said Graham, because of the very real possibility of violence. "We're
seeing a ton of it here."