Pubdate: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON) Copyright: 2004, Canoe Limited Partnership. Contact: http://www.canoe.com/NewsStand/TorontoSun/home.html Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457 Author: Mark Bonokoski, For the Toronto Sun Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) OPP MISS THE BOSS, BUT NAB 'GARDENER' POLICE GOT the "gardener" a few days back, raiding a sprawling acreage of farmland north of Bancroft near the village of Maynooth, home of the Arlington Hotel's Shot &Bottle Lounge as well as an annual Black Fly Festival. But they never got the "boss." "Very rarely do you get him," said Staff-Sgt. Ray Westgarth, head of the Bancroft OPP detachment, indicating that there are often too many layers between the "gardener" who takes the fall and the "boss" who takes the (occasional) loss. "But the boss will be there to front another operation somewhere else," said Westgarth. "That's the problem we are facing up here, and the sudden increase in Asian marijuana grows in our area is becoming a concern." This year alone, there have been seven in these highlands 150 km due north of Belleville -- not all Asian, but enough of a spike in Asian grow-ops not to go unnoticed. There wasn't much left at the old farmhouse to indicate the early-morning police raid. Bolt cutters had lopped off the chained lock on the gate along East Lake Road, therefore providing easy access to the kilometre-long dirt road that leads to the now-abandoned farm house, its empty barns, and the fields where hundreds of thousands of marijuana plants were growing before they were hauled off by the drug cops assigned to Project Longarm. "They were ready for harvest," said Westgarth. "Never saw anything quite like them before. The plants were squat, only two or three feet high, but they were wide, and loaded with bud from top to bottom." Today, that seizure lies buried, its estimated street value of $8 million rotting away at a secret location which was only described as being "very, very deep in the bush." There is a ramshackle screened-in porch at the back of the ramshackle farm house, its floor found littered with Chinese-language newspapers, all which would go a long way to explain why the "gardener" asked for a lawyer who could speak Cantonese. He was asleep on a mattress in the farmhouse living room when the police quietly rolled up that 1 km stretch of road before sunrise -- 12 cops in all, and one of them driving the large U-Haul truck that would leave a few hours later with some 8,000 marijuana plants in its cargo bay. The "gardener" had no car. He had only food and drink, and he was there alone,-- 24/7 -- until the crop he was cultivating for the "boss" was ready for market on the streets. According to police, the only book at his bedside was an English-Chinese dictionary, all of which goes nowhere towards explaining how he could be attending York University when his proficiency in English was described by police as being almost non-existent. According to one of the undercover officers who helped orchestrate the raid, the 26-year-old "gardener" wasn't in jail very long before bail was posted -- $10,000 cash, and two sureties totalling $15,000. "But you won't find the boss's name anywhere near (that transaction)," said Westgarth. Same with the farm house. Same with the land. Word is that the property was purchased by a numbered company a year ago for $230,000, bought from an American who had bought it from a mechanic who had bought it from the original farmer and who had then put in a dirt airstrip to service small planes, a business that never took off. There is a corner store not far from that land, directly across the street from the Arlington Hotel's Shot & Bottle Lounge in fact, that sells gas, groceries and live bait. The owner of that store said his wife used to ride her horses through that farmland where the cops had woken up the "gardener" and had left a few hours later with $8 million in marijuana stuffed into the back of a U-Haul truck. But then the barbed wire went up, and the front gate got locked. Then No Trespassing warnings were posted on land where there was once a free rein to reign. "And that's when we began thinking something was up," he said. "And it turns out we were right." - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager