Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jul 2006 Source: Maple Ridge Times (CN BC) Copyright: 2006 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc Contact: http://www.mrtimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1372 LEAKY LOCKER LEADS TO HUGE POT BUST Ridge Meadows RCMP hauled pounds of pot out of a storage complex in the 20100 block of Stewart Crescent on Thursday. All that bud had a street value of nearly $1 million, said RCMP spokesman Const. Dan Herbranson. "It's not that often that something around this type, this scale, comes around," he said. "It is a substantial seizure." RCMP were tipped off when water was reportedly leaking from one of the units into another. When they arrived on the scene, police executed warrants on five different units in the complex, finding pot in all. In total, Herbranson said 2,900 pot plants in various stages of growth were recovered. While the investigation is ongoing, no charges have yet been laid. Most often, when RCMP receive tips about a grow-op, those tips come from neighbours and that grow-op exists in a private home. Finding such a large-scale operation in a storage facility, said Herbranson, isn't typical. "Grow-ops are a continual problem for police. I can suspect that we will see more of this type of complaint come in," he cautioned. "But is it more common? I'm going to say no, it's not, at least it hasn't been a big target." Setting up a grow-op in a storage facility might have a few benefits to those involved, in that neighbourhood surveillance would be far less. But according to Herbranson, this type of endeavour also comes with added risk. "You'd have to mask the smell. I would think that would be more difficult to mask" in the storage facility, he said. And as for the owners of such facilities, there are things they can do to lessen the chances that they'll take on a pot-producing tenant. Along with obtaining proper documentation for the rental of the units, which Herbranson couldn't confirm had been done in this case, owners of storage facilities should also be wary of renting out multiple units to a single person. "Alarm bells would go off if someone came in wanting to rent several lockers at once," he said, but added criminals are often savvy about how to avoid raising suspicions. "Was it just one person who rented all of these? If you've got one person wanting to rent, that's not odd, but if one person wants to rent seven of them..." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake