COTTAGE COUNTRY IS GOING TO POT

The missed photo-op was surely the picture of Ray Westgarth, all 300 pounds
of him, stomping down the marijuana plants overflowing the huge bucket of
the rented dump truck.

"I had a smile on my face that wouldn't stop," he said. "As busts go, this
was a big one."

Staff-Sgt. Ray Westgarth is commander of the OPP's Bancroft detachment, a
swath of cottage country north of Belleville known as the Hastings Highlands.

And, on this day last September as part of Project Longarm, the anti-drug
task force launched in 2000, Westgarth was putting the final touches on the
takedown of a $2.6-million marijuana plantation hidden in the woods a few
miles out of town.

As the biggest guy in the detachment, he decided he best fit the bill when
it came to tramping down and flattening the illicit crop for transportation
to its secret burial spot.

"It was a sight to behold -- me jumping around the back of that truck,"
Westgarth said. "But I didn't want to make a second trip, simply for
security reasons. So I was trying to pack it down.

"Green marijuana is difficult to burn, especially when it is such a large
amount," he explained. "So we bury it under six feet of dirt."

It was "good old-fashioned police work" that did the job here. An OPP
officer on patrol talks to a man walking along a roadway. Something about
him raises the cop's antenna and then, up a remote driveway, the cop
somehow spots a thread pulled tight across the road -- a warning to the
growers that an intruder had stumbled upon their game.

BOOBY-TRAPS

When task force officers returned to take the operation down, they found
themselves being fired upon as the operators fled from the scene, to be
arrested later. They then found the marijuana grove booby-trapped with
tripwire branches embedded with nails. They found solar-powered generators
pumping well water into the plantation, and the plants ingeniously tied
down so they would not be easily spotted from the air.

"It was a pretty sophisticated operation," Westgarth said. "And a good one
to get."

It is safe to say, judging by recent statistics that indicate marijuana is
the province's third-largest cash crop -- surpassed only by beef production
and dairy farming -- that most necks of the woods have a illegal pot
operation under way.

The Hastings Highlands is one of those necks of the woods yet, if its
numbers are any indication, then these should be an eye-opener to the public.

One of Westgarth's top investigators, seconded from the Bancroft OPP to
work full-time undercover on the Project Longarm task force, has compiled
statistics from the day the operation was launched right up until the end
of February 2002.

>From the 94 warrants executed over the course of the campaign, 214
persons in the Belleville-Quinte West-Bancroft area have been charged with
a total of 429 offences.

Drugs seized included 13,372 marijuana plants; 76,290 grams of processed
marijuana; 3,645 marijuana clones and 2,480 grams of cannabis resin, for a
police-estimated street value of approximately $12 million.

On top of that, there was the accumulation of peripheral drugs -- small
amounts of cocaine, speed and a few handfuls of Ecstasy tabs -- all worth
another $200,000-plus.

NUMBERS TO RISE

In the Bancroft zone, illegal hydroponic pot-growing operations have not
yet taken hold, at least not like in the Greater Toronto area where there
was recently an $8-million Asian gang lab disrupted by a joint police
effort known as Operation Potluck.

"But I suspect we'll see more (hydroponic) operations popping up,"
Westgarth said.

Thus far, however, only two operations have been uncovered. One, still in
its infancy, was shut down before it could get into full gear when Hydro
One discovered a meter had been bypassed, effectively stealing the
electricity needed to run the hydroponic heat lamps and water distribution.

And so Hydro brought in the police.

The other takedown, a small home-grow deal, was discovered during a
parallel police investigation and, when police got a warrant for records of
the property's electricity consumption, their suspicions were confirmed.

Instead of a normal bill, the small house was drawing enough electricity to
run a good-sized farm.

In this case, as might be expected, Hydro One did not tip the police about
a certain hydro bill suddenly going out of whack, simply because the bill
was being paid without complaint, in full and on time.

In other words, Hydro One was making a good buck from whatever was going on
in that house.

Besides, who was to know?