Pot plants from wall to wall

[boulder]

Neighbours wondered why the blinds were closed and no one was ever home at several city houses. They found out on Friday: FOUR HOUSES. 992 MARIJUANA PLANTS. STREET VALUE $1M

 

Renata D'Aliesio, Journal Staff Writer

 

The Edmonton Journal

 

Four homes raided by the police Green Team. Above: A home where two suspects lived at 12419 55th Street

 

Jugs of plant fertilizer crowd a kitchen counter at 13418 32A Street.

 

"This house was sweating. I've never seen it so bad. Even the dryer vents had icicles because there was so much condensation. This house may have to be condemned." Det. Clayton Sach, of Edmonton police

 

The middle-aged woman never seemed to stay for more than an hour or two.

 

Neighbours wondered why no moving trucks ever came to fill the large house with furniture, clothes and other such things.

 

Then there were the brown streaks on the white garage, and the brown and yellow icicles hanging and crashing to the side of the house. Metal bars were on almost every window and the blinds and drapes were almost always closed.

 

People in the four-year-old subdivision were a little suspicious of the new residents, but no one thought to phone police until the lights went out.

 

Two weeks of power troubles led Epcor workers to discover that someone was stealing electricity from a line shared by four homes. On Thursday, Edmonton and RCMP police swooped in on the house at 13418 32A St., arresting the middle-aged woman and busting up a marijuana- growing operation which included 992 plants, $75,000 in equipment and four houses worth about $700,000 in the city's north end.

 

"This house was sweating. I've never seen it so bad," Edmonton police Det. Clayton Sach said of the home. "Even the dryer vents had icicles because there was so much condensation. This house may have to be condemned."

 

Sach is with the Green Team, a four-member unit of Edmonton and RCMP officers formed in 1998 in response to the increasing popularity of hydroponic marijuana operations in Alberta.

 

The unit disabled 64 operations last year, seizing 11,700 plants worth an estimated $11.7 million.

 

Thursday's bust was worth nearly $1 million, Sach said. Three of the four houses were showing signs of condensation, brown streaks or icicles. Grow houses draw on massive amounts of electricity to power high- voltage lamps and maintain hothouse temperatures.

 

"This was bigger scale than we normally see," Sach said. "In terms of size, we're really happy with this bust."

 

Police have charged two men and two women and expect to charge a fifth man soon.

 

Nhan Le, 44, Bau Van Le, 47, Jade Le, 39, and Quay Din Mu, 47, face numerous charges, including production of a controlled substance, possession for the purpose of trafficking and theft of telecommunications.

 

The city's gang unit has been asked to look into the case to determine whether the operation is connected to an organized-crime group.

 

The bust comes just days after Calgary police ambushed a semi-trailer carrying a $66-million shipment of marijuana and cocaine destined for the

 

United States, and a week after a marijuana-grow operation

 

was discovered in seven townhomes in a cul-de-sac east of Calgary.

 

Police found about 2,000 marijuana plants and hydroponic growing equipment worth $3 million.

 

The raid led investigators to three more houses and another $1.5 million worth of drugs.

 

Police estimate at least 50,000 houses in Canada are being used exclusively for growing pot.

 

They range from homes worth as much as $600,000 in downtown Vancouver to middle-class houses in suburban neighbourhoods, such as the ones

 

Edmonton police raided Thursday.

 

In November, the problem prompted law-enforcement, hydro and real-estate officials to band together to tell Ottawa the battle against marijuana-

 

growing operations is being

 

lost.

 

In Canada, grow houses started as a West Coast phenomenon a decade ago. They have

 

since spread across the Prairies and Central Canada, and are popping up in the Atlantic

 

provinces.

 

Ninety-five per cent of the operations are run by criminal gangs, police say. Most of the marijuana is smuggled into the U.S.

 

Sach did not know where marijuana from Thursday's bust was headed. The basements of three of the homes -- the one on 32A Street and ones at 13811 128th Ave. and 15248 54th St. -- were filled wall-to-wall with pot plants. The fourth house, a grand stucco home with a red-tiled roof near 124th Avenue and 55th Street, is where two of the suspects have lived since 1989.

 

"They were always very nice to me," said a neighbour, who did not want her name used.

 

"But they always kept their blinds closed, even in the basement."

 

Green Team investigators had been following one of the suspects, a middle-aged woman, since Sunday. They even asked a resident on 32A Street to keep an eye on her comings and goings. He kept a daily log until the arrest.

 

The other three suspects were arrested about 1 a.m. Friday at the 54th Street address.

 

Police found one of the suspects in the basement, while the other two were upstairs hanging drapes.

 

A neighbour said he got to take a peek inside the house at 32A Street.

 

He saw no furniture except some folding chairs and a cot. And containers of fertilizer cluttered the kitchen.

 

"In a neighbourhood like this, who would think something like this would happen," he said from his front porch.

 

© Copyright 2003 Edmonton Journal

 

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