Pubdate: Sat, 17 Mar 2001
Source: Calgary Sun, The (CN AB)
Copyright: 2001 The Calgary Sun
Contact:  2615 12 Street N.E., Calgary, Alberta T2E 7W9
Fax: (403) 250-4180
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Author: Peter Smith

HIGH GOAL FOR DRUGS

Police Unit Sets Quota Of $1m A Month In Pot Busts

City police drug-unit pot busters have been ordered to hit a new quota of 
wiping out $1-million worth of marijuana a month.

And the new blitz is already ringing alarm bells among the city's huge army 
of basement pot growers.

Last week alone, city police and RCMP drug busts took $2-million worth of 
drugs off the streets.

"That's $2 million in one day in the city of Calgary," said Det. Gord 
Renke, who is in charge of the four-man marijuana "green team" within the 
drug unit.

"People we've arrested in organized crime tell us what effect we're 
having," Renke said. "The response I've been getting is our current 
campaign is making a lot of people nervous."

But police know they're fighting a huge uphill battle.

Crime intelligence suggests wiping out even $12-million worth of marijuana 
in the next year may hardly make a dent in the quantities being grown.

Even crime intelligence doesn't know the total amount of pot being grown in 
the multi-million-dollar industry flourishing in Calgary's basements. 
"That's what we call the dark figure," Renke said. "That's the unknown 
amount that's actually out there.

"We never actually know the full extent of the effect we're having."

Police believe there's at least $20 million worth of pot under lights in 
city basements, but the figure could be much more.

At least 200 potential drug-growing houses have been reported to police, 
but no one knows how many more are unreported.

The drug unit's four-man, marijuana-busting "green team" spearheads the 
uphill fight, but even their $1-million-a-month quota can only take out 120 
operations in a year.

Some may be as small as $70,000 busts, but many will rival two huge busts 
last week, when $500,000-pot-growing operations were dismantled.

Some criminals at the lower end of the organized crime scale keep their 
growing operations smaller so they won't get hit so hard by the courts when 
they're caught.

And a few pot growers are set up to start a new operation as soon as their 
existing one is wiped out by police.

One grower had a fake wall in his basement with equipment for a 
marijuana-growing operation hidden behind it, aiming to start growing again 
immediately police cleared out his first operation.

Eagle-eyed police saw the fake wall and took away both grows.

Calgary's growers have a high reputation in the drug world, with one pound 
of Calgary marijuana worth one pound of California cocaine on the U.S. 
black market.

"It's because they've got so much coke down there and we've got so much pot 
up here," Renke said.
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