'IF YOU GROW IT, WE WILL COME'

Police Sting Nets $8m In Home-Grown Marijuana

BRAMPTON -- The area's first "sting" operation to target organized crime's
booming indoor marijuana plantations weeded out $8 million in pot, police
said yesterday.

Raids conducted by "Operation Potluck" officers also pulled the plug on an
Asian crime gang that police said has established more than 1,000 pot
operations in Toronto-area homes in two years.

Elated by the success of the 10-month undercover operation, Peel Regional
Police drug enforcement Det.-Sgt. Ian Calder said pot growers should fear:
"If you grow it, we will come."

The arrest Wednesday of 21 people on cultivation and conspiracy charges,
the closing of four Mississauga hydroponic garden centres, and raids on
five homes is a serious blow to gangs who have been setting up home-grow
operations, Peel Acting Supt. John Nielsen said.

The task force, of Peel, RCMP and OPP officers, created "a real hydroponic
lab, that we operated ... as a sting operation," Nielsen told reporters.

To act as a home-grower and infiltrate the gangs, a Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) operative unknown in Ontario was seconded from the
United States, he said. The agent won the confidence of suspects, who
offered to harvest and buy the plants after they matured in about two months.

Gardening Lessons

After paying a $2,500 consulting fee, he said the agent was taught to
cultivate marijuana seedlings.

Peel cops seized marijuana worth $53 million from home-grow operations in
2001, $24-million worth in 2000 and $20.5 million since Jan. 1.

British Columbia pot farms were a favourite cash crop of Asian mobsters,
who trekked east after police started cracking down, Nielsen said.

The success of what Nielsen called a "sting operation" should send a
message to drug growers "that Peel Region has a zero-tolerance policy."

In addition to seizing 4,000 marijuana plants worth $8 million in five
Mississauga homes, police charged the owners of All Seasons, Sunlight
Hydroponics on Lakeshore Rd. E., Easy Grow Hydroponics on Dundas St. E.,
and Vitamax Gardens on Britannia Rd. E. with pot-related offences.

The sites, two homes, several autos with a total value of about $1.7
million were seized under court orders, along with $230,000 in Canadian
cash and $71,000 U.S. Police said they'll apply to have them surrendered as
proceeds of crime.