POLICE AND POT GROWERS

Courts Can Help

Police are looking for help from the courts in their battle against
large-scale marijuana growers. They should get it.

If judges don't start sentencing convicted growers to longer jail
terms, expect the grow industry to become more violent and dangerous,
the number of operations to continue to multiply, and drug enforcement
officers to become more disillusioned with what must seem like a
losing game.

That was the message OPP deputy commissioner Vaughn Collins, head of
the investigations and organized crime unit, delivered after six
gun-toting men dressed like a police tactical team were caught Sunday
harvesting what police say was an $18-million crop near Coboconk.

"I expect we were seconds away from a gun fight that could have
resulted in death or injury for our officers and members of the
public," Collins said.

The men were carrying handguns and a high-powered rifle. One was
wearing a bulletproof vest. They had police windbreakers, fake
identification badges, even police style batons. Whether they would
have shot at officers can't be said for certain but the threat was
clear. They were highly organized and meant business.

It wasn't the first time police have been put in danger while seizing
area marijuana crops. Three years ago an officer stepped on
7.5-centimetre spike, one of 10 hidden on the perimeter of a field
near Bancroft. As he did, someone fired a shot at the patrol. Nearby,
two tree branches had been booby-trapped with spikes and a trip wire.

Police estimate there are now 15,000 grow houses and large, outdoor
plots in Ontario, most tucked away in hidden rural corners. Most are
run by organized crime, often bikers or Asian gangs. They are ready to
use weapons to protect their investments, whether from rival gangs,
freelancers trying to harvest some "free" pot, or the police.

The level of potential violence isn't surprising given what's at
stake. Police use a value of $1,000 per mature plant -- what they
would bring if cured, bagged and sold by the ounce. In most cases a
more realistic figure would be $400 a pound, which would put the value
of the weekend seizure in Verulam Township at more than $7 million.

As Collins said, a return of $7 million to $18 million looks good when
criminals know that police don't have the manpower to find every field
and those who are caught don't get long jail sentences.

Collins's observation -- "$18 million in profits versus a few months
in jail isn't much of a deterrent" -- is much too close to the truth
to be ignored. Of four first offenders found guilty in local courts of
running grow houses during the past year, three got nine-month jail
sentences and one a year of house arrest. The nine-month sentences
would mean three months of actual jail time if the men walk a straight
line behind bars and qualify for parole after one-third of their sentences.

Marijuana is a big business that makes criminals rich. While the
Ontario government has been increasing the size of police forces and
the budgets for detection in recent years, investigators can't keep
up. And at the same time, interest in sentencing for drug crime has
focused almost entirely on small users and court rulings that
possession of less than an ounce of pot is not a criminal offence.

Regardless of which way the federal government goes -
decriminalization of minor possession is its stated intent - large
scale grow operations will continue to be illegal for the foreseeable
future. To back up the law, and support and protect police as they
attempt to enforce it, tougher sentencing guidelines must be issued by
federal and provincial governments.

If it is mostly lower-level criminals who get caught at the grow
plots, at least they will think twice about hiring on to tend and
harvest crops if they know they can expect sentences of two to three
years or more. When the big boys are caught, sentences can go up from
there.