Pubdate: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 Source: Peterborough Examiner, The (CN ON) Copyright: 2003 Osprey Media Group Inc. Contact: http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2616 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) POLICE AND POT GROWERS Courts Can Help Police are looking for help from the courts in their battle against large-scale marijuana growers. They should get it. If judges don't start sentencing convicted growers to longer jail terms, expect the grow industry to become more violent and dangerous, the number of operations to continue to multiply, and drug enforcement officers to become more disillusioned with what must seem like a losing game. That was the message OPP deputy commissioner Vaughn Collins, head of the investigations and organized crime unit, delivered after six gun-toting men dressed like a police tactical team were caught Sunday harvesting what police say was an $18-million crop near Coboconk. "I expect we were seconds away from a gun fight that could have resulted in death or injury for our officers and members of the public," Collins said. The men were carrying handguns and a high-powered rifle. One was wearing a bulletproof vest. They had police windbreakers, fake identification badges, even police style batons. Whether they would have shot at officers can't be said for certain but the threat was clear. They were highly organized and meant business. It wasn't the first time police have been put in danger while seizing area marijuana crops. Three years ago an officer stepped on 7.5-centimetre spike, one of 10 hidden on the perimeter of a field near Bancroft. As he did, someone fired a shot at the patrol. Nearby, two tree branches had been booby-trapped with spikes and a trip wire. Police estimate there are now 15,000 grow houses and large, outdoor plots in Ontario, most tucked away in hidden rural corners. Most are run by organized crime, often bikers or Asian gangs. They are ready to use weapons to protect their investments, whether from rival gangs, freelancers trying to harvest some "free" pot, or the police. The level of potential violence isn't surprising given what's at stake. Police use a value of $1,000 per mature plant -- what they would bring if cured, bagged and sold by the ounce. In most cases a more realistic figure would be $400 a pound, which would put the value of the weekend seizure in Verulam Township at more than $7 million. As Collins said, a return of $7 million to $18 million looks good when criminals know that police don't have the manpower to find every field and those who are caught don't get long jail sentences. Collins's observation -- "$18 million in profits versus a few months in jail isn't much of a deterrent" -- is much too close to the truth to be ignored. Of four first offenders found guilty in local courts of running grow houses during the past year, three got nine-month jail sentences and one a year of house arrest. The nine-month sentences would mean three months of actual jail time if the men walk a straight line behind bars and qualify for parole after one-third of their sentences. Marijuana is a big business that makes criminals rich. While the Ontario government has been increasing the size of police forces and the budgets for detection in recent years, investigators can't keep up. And at the same time, interest in sentencing for drug crime has focused almost entirely on small users and court rulings that possession of less than an ounce of pot is not a criminal offence. Regardless of which way the federal government goes - decriminalization of minor possession is its stated intent - large scale grow operations will continue to be illegal for the foreseeable future. To back up the law, and support and protect police as they attempt to enforce it, tougher sentencing guidelines must be issued by federal and provincial governments. If it is mostly lower-level criminals who get caught at the grow plots, at least they will think twice about hiring on to tend and harvest crops if they know they can expect sentences of two to three years or more. When the big boys are caught, sentences can go up from there. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake