Pubdate: Sun, 22 May 2005
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 The Province
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/theprovince/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Mike Roberts
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

TOUGHER MUNICIPAL LAWS FOR GROW-OPS

Weed Wars: Additional Searches By Property Owners Likely To Meet Resistance 
 From Tenants

Sick of a "losing battle" against illegal marijuana grow-ops, frustrated 
municipalities across the Lower Mainland are beefing up their civic 
arsenals with tough new dope-busting bylaws.

Tired of waiting for Ottawa to pass two-year-old legislation that would 
double jail time for large-scale grow operators, and fed up with lenient 
sentences that put only 10 per cent of convicted B.C. bud growers in jail, 
nearly a dozen Lower Mainland municipalities have enacted so-called 
"remediation bylaws" that hold property owners financially accountable when 
grow-ops are discovered on their property.

The bylaws force owners or their agents to regularly inspect properties for 
criminal activity.

They must also pay whopping fees and fines of anywhere from $3,000 to 
$10,000 for the take-down and subsequent clean-up of the indoor dope farms. 
And spend tens of thousands to bring their premises up to current building 
codes before a re-occupancy permit will be granted.

Under most of these new bylaws, property owners are given a break on some 
penalties if they can prove they did "due diligence" in keeping their 
tenants in check.

Caught in the crossfire of this war on grow-ops are innocent tenants, 
unwitting landlords and property management companies that must now find 
the diplomacy and resources to knock on doors as often as once each month 
looking for the bud that fuels much of B.C.'s $6-billion marijuana trade.

Mel Folkman, a Chilliwack councillor and an architect of the first 
remediation bylaw in the region, says the move is justified in the war on 
grow-ops and their attendant organized criminal violence.

Grow-ops are menaces, he rightly argues, that continue to flourish 
unchecked throughout the region.

Behind closed blinds and locked doors, they too often house toxins and 
weapons and bring electrical hazard, fire, chemical explosions and gangland 
violence to otherwise peaceful neighbourhoods.

He insists property owners must be made to keep an eye on their tenants.

He worries about gangs hitting "the wrong house when they're coming out 
from Vancouver to frighten a few people" and says he's seen RCMP reports on 
cases where small children have been living in grow-op homes amid chemicals 
and moulds.

"We're going to continue to be fighting a bit of a losing battle, but we 
will continue to fight that battle because it's important to do so," he 
says. "It's just not right that they should continue unchecked."

Burnaby resident Wendy Jenkinson agrees. The retiree lives in a family 
neighbourhood across the lane from a house busted in a grow-op raid late 
last year.

"I'm not for locking him up and throwing away the key," she says. "But 
there should be something; he was back the next day."

Burnaby has no bylaw that specifically deals with grow-ops. Jenkinson 
suspects that if it did, the neighbouring renter she calls "the gardener" 
would have left long ago.

Jenkinson says neither the city nor police in Burnaby gave her "much peace 
of mind" during her grow-op saga, which included regular visitations by 
"three thugs" peering in the windows of the grow-home.

B.C. Hydro cut the grow-op's power lines right back to the utility poles, 
but days later, "the gardener" was cruising the neighbourhood with an 
extension cord looking for more power, ostensibly to clean up the grow-op raid.

"He asked for power, and I gave him power up one side and down the other," 
recalls Jenkinson, who has lived on the street for 18 years and says she 
was too angry to be afraid. "I don't believe that they are mom-and-pop and 
little operations. It's organized crime. They are very nasty.

"They have guns and they don't have a conscience."

City of Abbotsford spokesman Jay Teichroeb agrees with Jenkinson that 
property owners must be held accountable.

The city of Abbotsford has passed a new bylaw to go after growers with up 
to $10,000 in fines for everything from building-code violations to 
water-connection fees.

The Grow-op Public Safety Pilot Project, launched last month with an 
$80,000 provincial grant, has three specially appointed city officials 
patrolling the streets with scanners that can detect the heat signatures of 
grow-ops.

Under the new Controlled Substance bylaw, rental properties are to be 
inspected at least once every three months.

Teichroeb insists inspectors would look for some "very telltale signs that 
would lead to the high probability of a grow-op being in place" before 
waltzing in on an innocent resident or tenant.

But Richmond tenant Nigel Carr, who received notice last week his property 
manager will be making the rounds monthly once the city's grow-busting 
bylaw is enacted July 1, says the bylaws are a "total violation" of privacy.

"If you're a home owner, they have to get a court order and a search 
warrant," maintains Carr, who has already contacted provincial and federal 
civil liberties organizations about his concerns.

"Renters are being delegated second-class citizens with less rights."

The monthly inspections are legal, under the Residential Tenancy Act, 
provided a tenant is allowed 24 hours' notice.

Still, says Carr, who lives in a townhouse on Bath Road with his two 
brothers, "going into people's apartments or townhouses like that is not 
acceptable. Every three months was one thing, now they're going to be doing 
it every month."

"They're just whittling away at your rights, and pretty soon people are 
just going to stand there and let people come in and do strip searches 
because they've been told it's going to make it a safer world. I don't 
think so."

Less Jail Time

According to a recent B.C. RCMP-commissioned study released by the 
University College of the Fraser Valley, prison sentences were handed out 
in 19 per cent of grow-op cases and conditional sentences used in only 15 
per cent of cases in 1997.

In 2003, by contrast, the percentage of prison sentences had dropped to 10 
per cent while conditional sentences were handed out in 41 per cent of cases.

Additionally, the study showed, 57 per cent of all grow-op suspects had at 
least one prior conviction for a drug offence.

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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman