POT WAREHOUSES 30 KM FROM CITY, OFFICER TELLS COURT

KITCHENER -- Marijuana grown locally is taken to three distribution
warehouses about 30 kilometres from downtown Kitchener before it begins its
journey to the United States, a Waterloo regional police officer testified.

Sgt. Daryl Goetz, a former drug officer, was testifying yesterday at a
sentencing hearing for Hien Le, a 44-year-old woman who pleaded guilty last
month in Ontario Court to operating a large marijuana lab in a two-storey
Kitchener home she rented with her husband.

Police raided the upscale Deer Ridge Drive house on Oct. 6, 2000. Inside
the furnished home, they found 276 marijuana plants, some just two weeks
away from harvesting.

Le's lawyer, Craig Parry of Kitchener, said his client was paid a small
stipend to take care of the house and plants, and she was allowed to live
in the house.

In exchange for Le's guilty plea, charges against her 54-year-old husband,
Thang Nguyen, were dropped. He remains in custody on similar charges in
Toronto.

Justice Donald MacMillan heard from officials with Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro,
police and a city fire-prevention officer who testified about the impact
these indoor, hydro-bypass operations have on the community.

At one point, MacMillan asked Goetz where the marijuana grown locally ends up.

"There is information that this marijuana grown here is being funnelled
down to the United States," though the events of Sept. 11 have made the
task more difficult because of increased scrutiny at border crossings,
Goetz said.

He said officers have identified "individual cells" which oversee eight or
nine houses where the indoor marijuana is grown; that marijuana is then
funnelled to one of three distribution warehouses about 25 or 30 kilometres
from downtown Kitchener. "It is an organization," he said.

Goetz said police once followed a marijuana shipment from a home where it
was grown to one of the warehouses, but didn't raid the premise.

Staff Sgt. Ray Massicotte, who heads the force's drug branch, said in an
interview that he doesn't know why the warehouse wasn't raided, and
declined to give more information about these operations, saying there are
a number of similar drug cases still before the courts.

In other testimony, Ron Charie, head of Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro Commission,
said these pot operations, which often steal power by bypassing normal
power lines, has cost the utility $250,000 in power consumed.

The utility now immediately disconnects hydro once it suspects a grow
operation and will not restore the power until it receives the money it is
owed, Charie said.

As a result of this new policy, the utility has recovered about $60,000, he
said.

But Charie said his biggest concern is that a worker could be electrocuted
while digging underground at these illegal bypasses.

The sentencing hearing continues April 25.