By Douglas Quan,
Postmedia News August 19, 2010
RCMP in Surrey B.C. discovered a marijuana grow op hidden behind an industrial-quality door obscured by a bookshelf in a raid in June 2009.
Photograph by: RCMP, Photo Handout
The recent discovery of several wild bears near a marijuana grow-operation in British Columbia is just one of many examples of the extraordinary lengths people will sometimes go to protect their pot, police across the country say.
While no one on Thursday could recall another instance involving bears, there was a case several years ago involving a crocodile. In 2003, drug officers raided a home in Scarborough, Ont., and found 164 plants growing around a concrete-lined oval pond in the basement.
It turned out a two-metre-long croc was swimming in the pond's murky water.
Police discovered tanks of fish and six cages of rats — apparently food for the scaly reptile.
Pot-farm caretakers not inclined to use wild animals or armed guards have been known to devise elaborate booby traps designed to thwart police and ward off pot-plant thieves.
"Some of these setups are done to a professional level," said Sgt. Chan Dara, national co-ordinator of the RCMP's marijuana-enforcement program.
Investigators, he said, have come across trip wires rigged to fire rifles or shot guns, even door knobs designed to give intruders an electric jolt.
Det. Sgt. Mark Dennis of the Ontario Provincial Police drug-enforcement unit said some outdoor grow-operations are surrounded by fishing lines with sharp hooks designed to catch you in the face or wooden boards on the ground with nails protruding from them.
Just last year, an officer got caught in a bear trap. While he wasn't seriously hurt, he had to be carried away by fellow officers, Dennis said.
Criminals will also go to great lengths to conceal their grow-ops.
Dennis said investigators once discovered a grow-op located underneath the detached garage of a residence. The entrance to the basement was concealed by a fake staircase that lifted up hydraulically with the flip of a toggle switch.
In Chilliwack, B.C., last year, RCMP discovered an underground bunker with more than 11,000 pot plants. A Quonset hut was built atop the bunker to give "the illusion of a legitimate out building on the property," police said.
The bunker was also equipped with booby traps rigged to shoot bear spray.
And in Surrey, B.C., last year, police discovered a residential basement grow-op located behind an industrial-quality door. The door was hidden behind a bookshelf that opened partially on a hinge "much like one typically associated with an old English manor house," police said.
But none of these cases has garnered as much attention as the case of the pot-protecting bears.
RCMP announced this week that officers dismantling an outdoor grow up in the Christina Lake area of B.C. were confronted by 10 docile black bears.
Police said it appeared to them that residents had fed the bears to encourage them to keep coming back to the property to essentially serve as guards for the plants.
"Absurd and surreal," RCMP Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said Thursday.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/can ... z0xLCjKQu3
thats hilarious, however it could easily backfire.. i think i would give gorillas machetes. nobody fucks with a machete gorilla.