Nothing Done To Shut Down Crackhouse In Building Where 20-Year-Old Was Shot Dead, They Say

People in the Dundas St. highrise in Etobicoke where Jamie Hilton was murdered say they are scared for their lives.

No one gives their names, "because you don't want to be like him," said one resident.

And yesterday they said they're also angry that nothing was done to prevent what everyone says was inevitable, and nothing done to close down what they describe as a crackhouse.

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Project Interfere's 29-Count Indictment Against 3 Local Men Is Shelved

Nearly four years after they were nabbed in an undercover drug operation, a Superior Court judge has stayed charges against three Sault Ste. Marie men.

Justice Larry Whalen ruled last week that the 43 months it had taken for the case to get to trial was too long a delay.

As a result, Darryl Bozowskyi, Ira Middaugh and Ron Middaugh's right, under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to be tried within a reasonable time had been violated.

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It's one crop for which Lincoln Coun. John Kralt doesn't want his municipality known.

But after Niagara Regional Police busted another marijuana grow operation in the Town of Lincoln Monday, Kralt is growing worried the buckle of Ontario's fruit belt is reaping a reputation for a bounty of more than just peaches and grapes.

"Once you get off Regional Road 81 or the QEW, we've got miles and miles of country roads. It's not the image you want to portray," Kralt said. "We prefer to be the neat little wine community or tourist destination, not the grow-op capital of southern Ontario."

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Grow-ops and the consuming public truly are at odds and I wanted to applaud The Windsor Star's Home Section for publishing Joe Montaleone's insights into house buying on Oct. 20.

Star Justice Reporter Sarah Sacheli wrote a news piece on a judge handing out a harsh sentence to a Woodbridge, Ont., woman who used a Windsor home as a marijuana grow house, just days after Montaleone's insights were published. Sacheli's news piece on Oct. 23, makes it clear society is no longer going to sit idly by and watch our precious homes and neighbourhood's assets destroyed by the criminally sophisticated; we have grown uneasy with grow-ops.

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Re: Judge gets tough with pot growers, 21-month term more than Crown wanted. I was under the impression that the Crown attorney was here to protect the interests of Canadian citizens against the likes of Thu Thuy Tran. It's about time the judges took crime seriously, our prosecutors seem not to.

Lloyd Grandmaison

Kingsville

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Winning the war on drugs is becoming more difficult with each passing day.

With so much money to be made, organized criminals have moved into the drug trade in a big way.

In fact, they've set up grow-ops that are protected by helicopters, booby traps and even drug dealers dressed as police officers.

But the battle can be won, if ordinary citizens get involved.

A top law enforcement officer made that point during a speech in Sarnia on Thursday.

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They wander the halls, moving back and forth from group to group.

They make their way through our high schools, tempting each and every student.

Some lurk inside lockers.

Others hide in coat pockets, jean pockets...any place where students think they won't be found.

They are drugs.

Each student has heard of them and every high school has them in varying degrees, with more and more kinds making their way into the hands of students, says Detective Constable Ernie Garbutt of the Kawartha Combined Drug Forces Unit.

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After more than a dozen teens ended up at the hospital's emergency room from a jimson weed overdose, the medical officer of health is looking into whether the toxic plant can be made illegal.

"We want to make the minister (of Health and Long-Term Care) aware and to figure out what can we do," said the Eastern Ontario Health Unit's Dr. Paul Roumeliotis.

Over the past few weeks, staff at the Cornwall Community Hospital have dealt with at least 15 cases of teenagers who ingested the poisonous plant, which experts say has been known to cause hallucinations, fevers, seizures and even brain damage or death.

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Ordinary citizens have a big role to play in reducing illegal drug use, says a top regional enforcement officer.

Speaking in Sarnia on Thursday, OPP Western Region Det. Staff Sgt. Patti Dobbin said tips from the public are key to getting drugs off the street, which in turn reduces the overall crime rate.

"At times some tips can be a bit vague, but sometimes they can be the piece of the puzzle you need to make a case," she told an appreciation luncheon for Sarnia-Lambton Crime Stoppers.

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Editor:

In response to Mr. Smith's letter to the editor (October 6, 2007) I would like to begin by stating that (marijuana) grow operations are a major concern to public safety.

There are tremendous amounts of information and statistics available regarding the dangers of grow operations.

The data I researched and presented to council was obtained from many sources.

The main information was retrieved from the Drug Analysis Section of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Criminal Intelligence Service of Ontario.

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Halton Crime Stoppers And Local Hydro Companies Have Joined Forces To Help Combat Illegal Grow Operations.

This year, Milton Hydro, Burlington Hydro, Oakville Hydro and Halton Hills Hydro began distributing information brochures attached to residents' hydro bills.

These brochures, funded through donations by regional hydro companies, were produced to educate homeowners about the dangers associated with illegal grow-ops and to provide residents with tips on how to spot potential signs of a grow operation.

Don Thorne, Milton Hydro president and CEO, said the issue affects everyone.

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Former Scarborough Councillor And City Budget Chief David Soknacki Offers His Insight On Municipal Politics

In mid-October, police raided a residence near Brimley Road and Finch Avenue and found a drug lab with an inventory of about two million units of ecstasy.

This was the same property, belonging to the same owner, in which was found a commercial marijuana grow operation last year. Media reports describe garbage on site that had still not been cleaned up from last year's raid.

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The present situation of using crime to further political agendas under the guise of protecting citizens of Canada has reached new levels of insanity with the present direction of our federal government.

The new crime omnibus bill, the federal anti-drug strategy and the recommendations of the panel assessing Correctional Services Canada fail Canadians miserably. They fail all of us because the government has frozen out all of their own experts that recommend completely different strategies to reduce crime and substance abuse and positively rehabilitate offenders.

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RCMP Investigators On Sick Leave, Can't Testify Against Four Men

The Crown has dropped its case against four men charged in a massive cocaine-trafficking ring allegedly linked to organized crime because the investigating RCMP drug officers were on sick leave.

In a telephone interview yesterday, federal drug prosecutor Ted Graham said the five RCMP officers were his main witnesses and he had "zero" evidence to call because they weren't available to testify.

The officers made national headlines five months ago when they launched a $5-million lawsuit against their boss, alleging he'd poisoned their work atmosphere through intimidation and harassment, which caused them to take medical leave for post-traumatic stress.

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CLARINGTON - A recent police project which resulted in 40 arrests in and around Clarington high schools is welcome by school board officials, but not necessarily symptomatic of a major problem, says a superintendent with the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board.

Between Oct. 1 and 12, officers from the Clarington Community Resource Unit of Durham Regional Police took part in a plainclothes initiative in and around all of Clarington's high schools, in response to some complaints from the community. Project GROUND (Getting Rid of Unwanted Neighbourhood Drugs) resulted in 40 arrests, with 15 of those people eventually facing criminal charges. Eleven entered into "diversion contracts" under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

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We Overestimate the Risks of Consuming Illicit Drugs While Greatly Underestimating the Risks of the Legal Variety

A glossy brochure recently dropped out of my newspaper: "Discover your taste for whisky," it advised. As it happens, I discovered my taste for whisky long ago and so was not in need of this advice. But it struck me as surpassingly odd that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario is spending a considerable amount of money to convince the uninitiated to try potent forms of a psychoactive drug whose known risks include addiction, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disorders, liver cirrhosis, several types of cancer, fetal alcohol syndrome and fatal overdose.

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Ontario can crack down on crack houses by following the example already set by other provinces.

And the police chief in Lindsay and Ops Township and the police services board recommend that the Province adopt similar legislation to Manitoba's Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act to combat the drug trade.

"It deals with suspected grow ops, crack houses and those kinds of things," said Kawartha Lakes Police Chief John Hagarty.

The Act targets the owners and landlords through civil, as opposed to criminal, courts.

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21-Month Term More Than Crown Wanted

Saying the community is fed up with light sentences that do nothing to curb the "epidemic" proliferation of marijuana grow houses here, a Windsor judge Monday gave a Woodbridge, Ont., woman a 21-month sentence, six months more than what the prosecution was seeking.

"I'm very concerned about the public's opinion of the courts," Superior Court Justice Gordon Thomson said as he sentenced Thu Thuy Tran.

Tran, 52, was convicted of possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking and theft of electricity in relation to a grow house in the 5000 block of Colbourne Drive in Windsor.

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Increased Treatment Funding And Awareness Campaign May Mean Cutbacks To Harm Reduction Programs

Unveiling his National Anti-Drug Strategy in early October, Health Minister Tony Clement and Prime Minister Harper promised mandatory prison sentences for serious drug offences, a national awareness campaign targeted at youth, and more funding for drug treatment, but did not promise funding for harm reduction programs. This, combined with the government's promise to "refocus" existing drug programs, has many worried about cuts to existing programs.

Harm reduction aims to reduce the impact of drug use without forcing users to stop using drugs completely. Initiatives can include needle exchanges, methadone programs, and safe injection sites like the pilot Insite in Vancouver.

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To anyone who has followed the principled opposition of London, Ont. native Marc Emery to everything from a ban on Sunday shopping and potty mouthed rap videos to draconian laws against marijuana possession, his current status as drug martyr facing a possible life sentence in a dank U.S. prison can hardly come as a surprise.

I still remember Emery as the loquacious proprietor of the downtown indie book store, City Lights, during my mid-'80s tenure as a student at the University of Western Ontario.

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