Pubdate: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2006 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Rosie Dimanno Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Marijuana - Canada) INSIDE HIGHRISE, NEIGHBOUR SMELLED TROUBLE There was the pungent aroma that seemed to seep from the walls in the hallways, described as smelling "green and grassy," a bit bosky. There was a constant orange glow that cast its flush across the patio of the corner apartment, bleeding out between the drawn curtains. And the men, with their dolly cart, pushing large boxes along the corridor. Mirna Aguilar remembers them -- a nod, a curt hello, one of the fellows asking her for a light once in the elevator. "Ironic, huh? Him asking me if I had a light for his cigarette." The 29-year-old graphic designer was recalling yesterday the odd comings and goings of her mysterious neighbours on the 12th floor of a Jane St. building. They weren't around much, these men, at least not at normal hours. Mostly Aguilar encountered them around 3 a.m., when she would often drive her brother to work his graveyard shift. Aguilar was concerned and curious enough that she took her complaints - -- mostly about the odour -- to "Julie" the building's rental manager. "That was in September. She told me she would go to the police, ask them to check the stairwells more often because kids smoke drugs back there and the cops hadn't been around in a while. But the police never came. At least I never saw them." The rental manager also told Aguilar that she'd taken a look inside one of the two suspicious units. "She said there was nothing in there except a bed." "Julie" is the wife of Daniel Wallace, the building's superintendent. And Wallace, 47, has just been charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, this in connection with what police say was a massive marijuana grow-op in the modest, white-bricked apartment building, located just north of the Sheppard Ave. intersection. Two others, Tat Thang Nguyen and Dinh Pham were charged with multiple marijuana (or 'marihuana' as the police release insists on spelling it) production offences. A cannabis crop worth at least $7 million; possibly all the way up to $20 million, depending on its quality. Spread out over 17 two-bedroom apartment grow-houses and one drying unit, from the fourth to twelfth floor. Perpendicular pot for the highrise horticulturalist with a thumb for the green -- as in American currency -- if the long and vending trafficking route is to be believed, although this is only one scenario: From the Jane-Finch corridor to the world, and back again. Thousands of plants, probably all female, four-foot stalks stretching toward the warmth of thousand-watt lights -- plugged into the stove's 220-volt outlet -- leaves luxuriating in the controlled climate, thriving, blossoming, plump buds ripe for reaping after a couple of months, spread out to dry in another unit fitted for the purpose. A passerby, catching a glimpse inside the open door, would have seen only a domestic facade -- microwave oven on the counter, parquet floors, blond furniture, TV set, pictures on the walls, even shoes lined up in the entryway closet. It was all window-dressing, like a stage set, trompe l'oeil for the sophisticated nursery enterprise. "If someone's walking by, it just looks like people are living in there," said drug squad Det. Sgt. Dave Malcolm, who headed the police investigation that took only a few weeks between information received and raid launched. "It's basically dressing a room to make it look like it's as normal as it can be." The details are not being revealed, but Malcolm insisted there was no link between this case and a fire in the same building last April, which exposed another, single, grow-op unit. All the vegetative evidence in that case burned up. "I saw a lady a couple of times, an Asian lady, going in there," recalls a tenant on the 10th floor, just down the hall from a unit rousted by police Thursday night into Friday morning, crime scene investigators wide-eyed as their original warrant targets expanded, amazed by the extent of this operation. "I'm the kind of person that stays to myself and doesn't mind other people's business. But I did notice that, when I walked by her and she had her key in the lock, she waited till I moved past before opening the door. She made sure of that." Yet this resident sniffed nothing out of the ordinary -- and ordinary, to her, meant marijuana fumes in the stairwell. How was she to distinguish between the two, especially with the pot harvesters taping cardboard over the mail-slot in the doors to prevent the sweet smell from escaping, aluminum-shrouded ventilation pipes fumigating the environment, fans pushing air out the window, ridding the rooms of chemical spray and fertilizer odours, timing units that automatically turned the basking lights on and off, as if the plants were hatchlings. "I'm just shocked, like everybody else," the resident continued, declining to give her name. "My God, this was happening right next door to me." The operators went to great lengths to keep their venture concealed, plywood nailed across most windows with drapes on the outside. But they were sloppy, too, with wire coils strewn about, fertilizer dumped down the drain, spores and mould creeping up from the baseboards. The soil-based grow-op could have gone boom and chemically hazardous at any minute, if not so already, which is why investigators wore protective clothing as they bundled the apartment contents. Marijuana, a hearty plant, doesn't need much cultivating in the wild. But pushing the flowering cycle -- a three-month crop turnover -- that's methodical and exacting, requiring tender husbanding. The gardeners would likely have had to come by daily and were allegedly doing so for an entire year. "It's like any crop that you're growing, your lovely bunch of tomatoes at the side of your house," said Malcolm. "They're going to be feeding them in the morning and there's going to be a watering system and there has to be fertilization. You've got the timing boards, so the lights are going to be going on and off. There's going to be people coming and going at all hours of the day and night. But there's not going to be a lot of traffic. It's not going to attract a lot of attention." To irrigate the plants, hoses were hooked up to the shower and kitchen sinks, then filtered through "a chemical sludge of fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides," said Malcolm. Property manager Harry Birman told the Star he'd suspected nothing, had noticed no spike in Hydro consumed and fielded no complaints of strange smells -- though those would have gone to the superintendent. Birman hired Wallace three years ago, even though the man came with no recommendations. "It was Julie who had all the good recommendations. She was a terrific rental agent. Danny came with the package, a husband and wife team." He's also flummoxed by the dawning realization of faux tenants in those units. "We check everybody's background, proof of income, photo IDs, social insurance numbers. Only two out of 10 applications get approved. How much more are we expected to do? "Maybe they're false names, but they were real people." Or ghost tenants, gone in a puff of toke. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake