POLICE SEIZE 800 POT PLANTS FROM CITY HOME

Marijuana plants were found in this 25 Anglerock Dr. house yesterday.
Reporter Staff, The Cambridge ReporterThe raid of a marijuana home-grow in
an upscale Cambridge neighbourhood yesterday is among the largest regional
police have found to date.

More than 800 plants - worth an estimated $500,000 - were seized, including
about 520 that were ready for harvest. A 46-year-old woman was arrested in
the morning bust.

Waterloo Regional Police entered 25 Anglerock Dr., off Burnett Avenue in
north Galt, under the cover of pre-dawn darkness using a
theft-of-electricity warrant. While investigators were searching the
basement, a light fixture shorted out and started smoking as a result of
the tangle of crude wiring used to bypass the electrical meter to avoid
detection.

Some grow-houses draw 10 times the amount of electricity of normal houses.
Hydro officials monitor consumption in co-operation with police.

A hydro worker, who accompanied police into the Anglerock home yesterday,
disconnected the fixture but not before flames charred the rafters.

Fire is just one of many hazards associated with home-grows that emergency
personnel and innocent neighbours face. Two pot houses in Cambridge and
Kitchener were gutted by fire in the past two years.

"It's a dangerous practice for many reasons," said Staff Sergeant Ray
Massicotte, head of the regional police drug squad.

Yesterday's grow operation was similar to the 70 regional police have
raided since June 2000. Holes were punched into the foundation of the
brown-brick, two-storey home, which still had Christmas lights strung
outside. A tangle of dangerous electrical wires were strung about the
basement joists overhead.

The lower level of the home had been converted into a hydroponic garden
with vats of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, huge heat lamps and
reflectors. An upstairs bedroom served as a drying room for mature plants.

In this case it appears as though the unidentified Vietnamese woman
arrested in yesterday's raid lived in the residence. In others, the houses
are dressed up to look lived in to hide the criminal activity happening inside.

Massicotte said the people operating the local grows are part of an
organized crime cell growing dope for profit.

"If we can remain vigilant and keep up the pressure then we may make it so
it's not so profitable for them here. I'd like to see them out of this
region and eliminated from across Canada," he said.

Last week an Ontario court judge sentenced a Kitchener man to 12 months in
jail for operating a marijuana grow. It was a precedent-setting move
because to date, local courts have handed out conditional sentences to be
served at home to those convicted of operating marijuana grows.

Massicotte says the jail sentence is a step in the right direction. It's
his hope that stiffer sentences and the threat of regularly losing
home-grows to police raids will act as a deterrent.