CITY MAKES HISTORY WITH COURT-ORDERED SALE OF METH LAB SITE

In what is the first-ever court-ordered seizure and sale of property used
for drug activity in Surrey, a local man has lost his warehouse.

When 29-year-old Sanjeev Singh Gill was sentenced Monday to two years less
a day for operating a methamphetamine lab in Newton, the Surrey Provincial
Court judge ordered Gill's warehouse unit at 8310 130 St., where the lab
was located, to be sold under proceeds of crime legislation. It's the first
time in the history of the Surrey RCMP drug section that real estate has
been seized and ordered sold for being offence-related property.

The move was welcomed by RCMP Insp. Keith Thorn, the officer in charge of
the Vancouver Proceeds of Crime Section that coordinates those enforcement
efforts province-wide.

"It just shows the initiative of the Surrey council and mayor," Thorn
commented Thursday.

"Surrey is the only police department in the Lower Mainland that has a
full-time officer assigned to proceeds of crime cases, and that has been
funded by the council."

It's the first court-ordered sale in Surrey since the federal laws were
amended last year to make enforcement easier.

Prior to the change, the law required police and prosecutors to prove that
a piece of property had been built for criminal purposes or substantially
modified for same. Now, the law allows applications to seize property
"obtained directly or indirectly as a result of ... the commission in
Canada of a designated offence."

However, any profits from the sale of the warehouse will be shared with the
provincial government, not the municipality - a fact that irks Surrey
council, which is lobbying to have the law altered so the money stays in
the local community.

Nine other properties in Surrey, all of them suspected marijuana grow ops,
are presently under the control of the federal agency that oversees
property when a court application is filed.

The warehouse that now belongs to the Surrey RCMP was described by a Health
Canada chemist as being the "most sophisticated lab seen in Western Canada"
after it was raided in January of 2002.