CHOPPER OR NOT, POT RAIDS CONTINUE MEETING

Four Vaughan Houses Raided In Past Two Days

York Regional Police drug squad officers are not letting lack of helicopter
surveillance slow down their battle against indoor marijuana-growing
operations.

An average of two indoor grow operations a day are being raided in York
Region, an undercover member of the squad said yesterday.

"It's like writing tickets," said another officer at the scene of a raid on
Belvia Drive in the Dufferin Street, Rutherford Road area of Vaughan.

Four indoor growing operations were raided in the last two days in Vaughan
alone, with at least four people arrested.

On Glenkindle Avenue, near Major Mackenzie Drive and Jane Street, a police
dog found a man hiding in an attic with a cell phone and a flashlight
Tuesday, about an hour after police entered the house. A man and a woman
were arrested yesterday at a house on Sunset Ridge in the Major Mackenzie
Drive/ Islington Avenue area during a raid.

Earlier this month, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled police could not use
helicopters equipped with infra-red cameras to randomly locate suspected
growing operations. The technology is used to detect excessive heat
escaping from buildings which is typically produced by powerful lights used
to grow marijuana indoors.

One undercover drug squad officer said while not using the helicopter has
impeded investigations, police are still finding more than enough grow
houses to keep them busy.

Both yesterday's and Tuesday's raids resulted from tips by Hydro Vaughan,
which had discovered metre bypasses while doing random checks at the
houses. Indoor marijuana-growing operations typically steal power directly
from the underground power lines so the large amount of electricity used to
run the operation doesn't show on the hydro metre.

At the Belvia Drive address -- a one-storey house on a quiet, narrow street
- -- police removed almost 250 plants from the basement of a rented home.

An officer said the plants were about three weeks from harvest, with each
plant having a street value of approximately $1,000. Another 400 or so
young plants were recovered at a stylish two-storey home on Sunset Ridge
and almost 500 plants were found at each of the two houses raided Tuesday.