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Nailing Marijuana Growing Operations
Pubdate: Wed, 09 Nov 2005
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Chad Skelton
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
NAILING MARIJUANA GROWING OPERATIONS
Delta police may have the best, and simplest, way to deal with illegal
drug growers -- investigate, arrest and make sure criminal charges
stick.
Of the many strategies Lower Mainland municipalities are using in
their war against marijuana-growing operations -- from beefed-up city
inspections to fining negligent landlords -- the approach taken by
Delta may be the simplest.
Investigate the growing operations.
Arrest the growers.
And make sure criminal charges stick.
It might not seem like much. But the commitment Delta police have made
to pursuing charges against growers sets it apart.
Many police forces in Greater Vancouver have become so overwhelmed by
growing-operation complaints that they no longer spend the time to
build criminal cases against growers -- instead focusing resources on
simply doing more raids.
A study by the University College of the Fraser Valley last spring
found that from 1997 to 2003, the percentage of growing-operation
raids that resulted in "no-case seizures" -- in which police seized
plants but didn't pursue charges against anyone -- jumped from 35 per
cent of all raids to 64 per cent.
And the study's author, Darryl Plecas, found that cities with the
highest rate of no-case seizures were also the ones with the biggest
increase in new growing operations.
"There have to be consequences [to growing]," said
Plecas.
Growing operations are a problem in every community in the Lower
Mainland and how best to tackle them is a matter of debate among civic
politicians seeking election on Nov. 19.
Sgt. Harj Sidhu, head of the Delta police drug section, said charges
are laid in about 90 per cent of the growing-operation raids in his
city.
And the strategy seems to be working.
Over the past four years, the number of reported growing operations in
Delta has dropped by about a third -- one of the best success rates in
the region.
Charging suspects in growing-operation cases isn't always
easy.
Many growing operations are only visited occasionally by
growers.
That means police must put in hours of surveillance before a raid to
figure out growers' schedules, so raids can be timed for when they're
most likely to be home.
Officers also have to spend time writing reports for Crown
prosecutors, who ultimately decide whether to lay charges.
"Grow-ops are quite complex in terms of the time it takes to
investigate them," said Sidhu. "It can take anywhere from 60 to 70
man-hours in order to do one grow operation from start to finish."
But Sidhu said Delta police believe that without charges, growers
won't be deterred -- and will simply start up somewhere else.
"We want to hold people accountable for their actions," he said. "So
we spend the extra amount of time to set up surveillance and identify
who these people are who are responsible for these grows ... We hope
that when someone says they're going to set up [a grow-op] in Delta,
someone may say, 'No, they charge everybody in Delta.'"
Delta didn't always have such success with growing
operations.
In late 1999, the drug squad's four officers had almost 70 open
growing-operation files on their plate -- and fresh complaints were
coming in every week.
"The resources we were allocating before obviously weren't enough
because the numbers kept going up," said Sidhu.
In early 2000, the force more than doubled the size of its drug squad
- -- to nine officers -- and began to work through the backlog,
eventually whittling it down to just a handful of open cases.
There are now eight full-time officers working in the section,
including Sidhu, and the force has committed to not letting its
backlog get much above 30.
When that happens, said Sidhu, extra officers are seconded to the unit
to get the numbers back down to a manageable size.
The latest crackdown, launched last fall, got the number of open cases
in Delta down from about 35 to 10.
Last year, Delta police raided 35 growing operations, seized 12,000
plants worth about $4.3 million and collected enough evidence to
charge 53 suspects.
While Delta has been primarily using the justice system to go after
growing operations, across the border, Surrey is taking a different
approach.
While Surrey RCMP continue to pursue criminal charges against growers,
the volume of complaints has become so huge that police have begun
handing off some files to a new team of city inspectors.
Ever since March, the new electrical and fire safety inspection team
has been tackling growers in Surrey.
The team begins with a list of suspected growing operations police
don't have the time to tackle.
A formal request is then made to BC Hydro for information on those
addresses' electricity consumption.
If the consumption rates are abnormal, the team pays a visit to the
address to see if there is any obvious reason for that -- such as a
swimming pool.
If there isn't, a notice is posted on the door demanding that the
owners allow inspectors in within 48 hours to look at the electrical
work -- or risk having their electricity shut off.
Almost all owners comply with the request, said Surrey Fire Chief Len
Garis, who heads the project.
By the time inspectors are let in, any marijuana has usually been
removed -- but the dangerous wiring typical of growing operations
generally remains.
The inspectors usually shut off the power to the home, and don't turn
it back on until the owners have brought the house back up to a safe
standard.
During the first two and a half months of the project, the electrical
team shut down 118 growing operations.
During the same period, the RCMP shut down 75.
And while the average cost of a typical police growing-operation
investigation is $7,000, said Garis, the average cost for his team is
just $1,500.
Garis acknowledges the central weakness of the program -- growers are
not criminally charged -- but he said it is still useful because it
largely targets growing operations police wouldn't get to otherwise.
"We want to give the police some capacity to focus on more fruitful
investigations around things like organized crime," he said.
Surrey has received inquiries from several municipalities, including
in the Tri-Cities and on the North Shore, about how the project works.
Garis said he is hopeful the provincial government will soon make it
easier for municipalities to access electricity consumption records
from BC Hydro.
At the moment, under privacy legislation, consumption records are only
available to police or inspectors if they already have some reason to
suspect a given address may be a growing operation.
At the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in late September, the
provincial government said it would look at changing the law so that,
every billing period, Hydro could simply give municipalities a list of
addresses with abnormal consumption.
Garis is optimistic such a list could allow police and inspectors to
virtually wipe out residential growing operations.
Municipalities are continuing to explore other ways of cracking down
on the marijuana trade.
One method is seizing growers' homes.
In the past three years, prosecutors in Surrey have forced six
marijuana growers to forfeit their homes to the Crown -- homes that,
combined, were worth about $2 million.
Langley had its first growing-operation home forfeited in August and
another dozen such cases are still before the courts in Surrey.
The next big front in the battle against growing operations, said
Plecas, is hydroponic stores.
Dozens of such stores across the Lower Mainland provide growers with
almost everything they need to set up shop -- including nutrients,
fertilizers and high-powered grow lights.
Municipalities have just recently started to look at how to deal with
them.
In late June, for example, Vancouver city council asked its legal
services department to look at whether it's possible to draft a bylaw
that would prohibit such stores from selling growing equipment.
Some have suggested a bylaw could require hydroponic stores to keep a
record of their customers -- a system similar to what already exist in
some cities for pawn shops.
OPERATIONS BY THE NUMBERS:
Number of new reported grow-ops for every 10,000 people,
2003:
Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows 17.7
Coquitlam & Port Coquitlam 16.8
Langley City & Township 14.2
Port Moody 11.6
Surrey 11.5
Burnaby 10.8
Richmond 10.4
White Rock 6.1
Vancouver 5.7
Delta 4.7
New Westminster 4.1
North Vancouver City & District 1.3
West Vancouver 0.9
Source: Darryl Plecas, University College of the Fraser Valley, Vancouver
Sun
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin