NO CHARGES LIKELY AFTER $1M C.B. POT SEIZURE

Georges River - It appears no one will be charged in a million-dollar drug
raid last Friday in Cape Breton County.

Cape Breton Regional Police Staff Sgt. Paul Jobe said there was
insufficient evidence to obtain a court-ordered warrant to search a barn in
Georges River containing a sophisticated growing operation and 1,000
near-mature marijuana plants.

But the force's street crime unit went ahead anyway, obtaining permission
from the owner of the property to enter the barn.

Officers seized the illegal plants and growing equipment, including 23
electrical splitters, fans, hoses, diesel engines and heat lamps.

The pot would have been worth about $1 million once harvested, dried and
sold on the street.

"We have a suspect, but I doubt there will be charges," said Staff Sgt.
Jobe, a veteran drug enforcement officer who recently moved up the ranks
into the force's management team.

"It's a sin, really. . . . It was one of the biggest professional grow
operations I've seen."

The plants - many of them clones or mother plants - were burned under an
emergency destruction order last weekend at the municipal incinerator.

"Most of the equipment is useless," Staff Sgt. Jobe said.

When asked why police went to the property without a warrant, the officer
said it was due to a "fear that (the pot) would hit the street and they
would lose it."

"The onus is for us to not let it hit the streets," he said.

"With a crop like that, in two more weeks it would have been out drying and
in a matter of two or three days after that, it would have been on the streets.

"We couldn't wait that long."

The drug seizure is believed to have been the largest find by the street
crime unit in recent years.