WOMAN ANGERED BY POLICE OVER FOUND DRUGS

Finding a grocery bag of fresh marijuana while out on a walk with her
elderly mother, a local woman was rather shocked to be told police
were too busy to arrive and she would have to personally deliver it to
the local detachment.

A police dispatcher, identified to her only as #40, told her police
were too busy to come out to near Fraser River pipeline crossing on
Highway 7, says the woman. Now, she is questioning why local police
would not want to see where she found the drugs to check out the area
for a grow operation.

Afraid to leave the marijuana behind should a youth come across it and
smoke it, she says, she was equally afraid to put it into her personal
vehicle and drive it through town to the detachment on Old
Hope-Princeton Way. Doing her duty as a citizen just "wasn't worth
it," she says.

"If someone finds drugs the police don't just tell you to drive it in
yourself.... Where is the community involvement. The community
awareness is shitty here."

The woman, who asks not to be identified in case the drugs were left
there for someone else to pick up, says that she called police at 1
p.m., Monday afternoon, after finding the plastic grocery bag ducked
within some blackberry bushes.

"There was tons of garbage around, but this bag looked strange because
it was sitting" upright on one of those wooden pallets the truckers
use, said the woman.

"I don't drink, I don't do drugs, and now I am just shaking," she
said, moments after dropping off the bag to police. Attending the
local detachment office as well was not a good experience, she say.
Police simply added to her fear that she or her family may be
connected in some way to the drugs after it appears that officers were
not even notified by the dispatcher of her arrival. She says she had
to wait for several minutes until finally catching the attention of a
RCMP Highway Patrol officer who removed the drugs out of her vehicle
and questioned her on the ownership of the van she was driving.

"What would have happened if I had been pulled over before I got
there? They didn't even know I was coming to turn them in."

The Hope RCMP general duty detachment did not return the calls from
the Hope Standard, Monday or Tuesday.