INSIDE DOPE ON THE GREEN TEAM

When you get down to basics, your average cop isn't much different
than your average electrician - a professional, with specialized
skills, doing a job.

So when you get a room full of narcotics cops talking like some
college undergraduate ethics seminar on the nature of law, you know
something fairly weird is going on.

"See, in today's society ..." begins RCMP Cpl. Lorne Adamitz, over the
groans of his Edmonton Police Service colleagues on the joint-forces
Green Team, gathered together for an interview. (Around the office,
Lorne's known as something of an armchair philosopher.)

"There's this whole debate going on about how much a marijuana grow
operation is worth to the public," Adamitz continues. "You increase
the sentences for grow ops, you increase the operator's motivation to
fight the case. That increases the court costs to the public.

"So what's the law worth to us as a society?"

"I've never tried marijuana, so maybe my perception of it is different
from someone else's," says EPS Det. Darren Derko. "That doesn't mean I
think all the people involved with grow ops are really bad people. I'm
not on some crusade - I'm just doing my job."

"Is marijuana good, bad or indifferent?" EPS Det. Clayton Sach, the
veteran on the squad, asks the room rhetorically. "Hell, people, let's
make up our minds."

This is odd talk for narco cops to be making, but the Green Team - the
RCMP-EPS task force that chases marijuana grow operations in and
around Edmonton - is in an odd position these days.

With the federal government pushing a decriminalization agenda, and
with recent polling showing more Canadians support lighter sanctions
against users, the Green Team cops have to ask themselves the
question: do people want us to do this work anymore?

Not that anybody's slacking; the Green Team members are still
personally convinced the weed needs to be kept in check, and business
is booming. Last fiscal year, the team collected 14,000 plants; this
year to date they've already picked up 19,000 in various busts, and
the year's only half over.

That could be a statistical blip or it could be something else. "It
could be a result of this whole legalization debate, an increasing
social acceptance of the drug," says RCMP Const. Luana Giroux, the
newest Green Team member.

"It bugs me that there's this perception out there that marijuana is
somehow the 'natural' narcotic, 'cause it's a plant, right?" says
Adamitz. "You have any idea the amount of pesticides they dump on this
stuff to control spider aphids, the chemicals in the soil? You never
know what's in marijuana."

The team members acknowledge public attitudes towards pot aren't what
they used to be. Citizens who can be counted on to alert police to a
crack house on their street may wink at a grow op, unless it's causing
a parking problem.

Frequently, the people they end up busting are the "sitters," third
parties hired by organized crime types to watch over small grow ops.

"Perfect example - we busted this guy recently, no record," says Sach.
"Said his baby was stillborn, he and his wife couldn't afford $5,000
for a lawyer.

"Or another old guy we nailed, said he'd worked for 30 years at a
recycling plant for $16 an hour, freezing his ass off. Now he's making
big money for lying on the couch. People think it's just weed, right?
So it's no big deal."

A decade of light sentences for marijuana trafficking have made the
trade particularly attractive for organized crime groups looking to
"diversify": you need something to pay the bills while your crack
dealers are in prison.

The feds' decriminalization proposal includes the promise of tougher
penalties for grow ops, and more resources for tracking them down. But
Ottawa's plan throws the weight of the law against those who grow and
sell, while at the same time it lifts the criminal stigma from having
the stuff.

And that's a troubling contradiction for a cop to swallow.

"Maybe we're dinosaurs," says Sach, grinning. "Maybe the public would
rather we concentrated on the heroin and meth dealers. Never heard of
anyone dying from marijuana.

"Know what motivates me? I look at these grow ops, these guys are
driving SUVs and clearing $100,000 per crop without paying a dime in
tax.

"I just like kicking down their doors and taking their damn money
away."