Pubdate: Sat, 16 Dec 2006
Source: Prince George Citizen (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Prince George Citizen
Contact:  http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/350
Author: Frank Peebles, Citizen staff

P.G. THE HUB FOR DRUG TRADE

Record busts of marijuana grow operations at either end of northern 
B.C. are proof organized crime is using the North as a drug factory, 
according to RCMP.

Police say Prince George is increasingly the command centre for the 
violence, extortion, trafficking, theft and prostitution that go 
along with the drug business.

Police intelligence and recent court testimony have drawn two 
pictures of organized crime in the form of the Renegades motorcycle 
club, and the Crew.

"The Crew is now very active in Quesnel as well, and I think 
everywhere in the North," said Sgt. Tom Bethune of the Prince George 
RCMP's task force section.

Police say each is a different puppet group of the Vancouver Hells 
Angels motorcycle club, but they work together and have a monopoly on 
the drug trade and regional underworld. The Renegades have been 
around for about a decade, the Crew only the last few years.

Quesnel RCMP have had a busy year detecting and dismantling grow 
operations. On April 3 they discovered a 300-plant crop and a gun in 
a home on Blackwater Road. On April 25, bud and plants were seized at 
a West Fraser Road residence. A raid on two rural residences on May 2 
uncovered 300 plants and substantial cash. Quesnel police located 200 
plants, guns and evidence of electricity theft at a place near 10 
Mile Lake on Oct. 17.

"There are a lot of people who think we shouldn't worry about 
marijuana, but let's face it, when organized crime groups are using 
that as a major fundraiser we have to target it," said Quesnel RCMP 
spokesman Sgt. Gary Clark-Marlow. "Several grow-ops we've taken down 
have more than 1,000 plants. That's not mom-and-pop stuff."

While court testimony in Prince George has revealed a pattern of 
violence used by the Crew as a fear tactic, Clark-Marlow said that 
kind of brutality has not emerged in Quesnel, but "I certainly know 
who the Crew is."

According to police, the marijuana trade is controlled by the 
Renegades, while the Crew works the crack side of things.

Sgt. Sean Neary of North District drug section said even if a 
card-carrying member of the Crew or the Renegades isn't doing the 
dirty work, they and/or the Hells Angels are definitely directing the traffic.

"We've received information over the past little while that the Crew 
is kind of spreading their tentacles into other areas outside of 
Prince George, although we have taken no enforcement action involving 
them in a regional sense to date," Neary said. "In respect to the 
Renegades, in the past two months or so two were convicted of charges 
and given conditional sentences, and another of their members is on 
conditions. I think their membership is fairly low and due to 
enforcement action, half of them are on conditions so we have had 
some success disrupting their activities.

Police have had some recent success. In what is possibly the record 
grow-op bust in northern B.C., RCMP took down a crop of more than 
7,200 plants at Doe River near Dawson Creek on Oct. 11, valued at 
more than $1 million. Charges are pending against two Lower Mainland residents.

Even more recently, Mounties in the town of Likely uncovered a 
grow-op Nov. 22 that contained more than 5,500 marijuana plants - 
enough, they said, to supply 2.8 million joints. Two Surrey men were 
charged in that incident.
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