POT RAID PRODUCES VAST HAUL

A nondescript warehouse near Pearson International Airport housed what Peel
Regional Police say is the largest indoor marijuana farm discovered in
Ontario to date.

Peel Regional officers raided the building in the early morning hours
yesterday and arrested four people after discovering roughly 9,500 plants
growing in the 3,700-square-metre storage area.

Constable Heather Andrews said the operation was not only mammoth but
sophisticated.

"What the people had done is make a second level and there were plants also
on that second level," she said. "There were plants inside grow pots
throughout the entire floor of this place with huge lights hanging down
overtop of them."

Each of of plants was over a metre high. Constable Harry Tam said the
estimated street value of the plants is $10.6-million.

In addition to the vast growing space, the drug cultivators had built a
small living area for themselves in the building that allowed them to keep a
constant vigil.

"They had surveillance cameras around the perimeter," Constable Andrews
said. The pictures taken were broadcast back to a television screen that
showed four images simultaneously.

The building had been rewired to accommodate the lighting needs of the vast
operation and hydro workers had to turn off the electricity before the
police could cut down the plants to prevent the possibility of
electrocution, said Constable Andrews.

The officers on his force were aware that a sizeable quantity of marijuana
would be found when they went into the building, he said. "We had an idea
that it was going to be a big operation. We just didn't know how big until
we went inside."

Neither Constable Andrews not Constable Tam would speculate on where the
marijuana would have been sold once it had been harvested. But, said
Constable Tam, "a lot of these plants are being transported to the [United]
States where [people] receive a much stiffer penalty if they are convicted
of having a grow operation."

Police said that associates of the four who were arrested yesterday, people
who have yet to be taken into custody, may also be charged.