Jack Knox | Times Colonist | August 15, 2004
"See the dope down to our left?" says the voice in the headset.
Um, no.
Peering out the window of the RCMP helicopter, several hundred feet up, it just looks like Vancouver Island down there. Green on green on green. How can these guys see anything?
The seven-seat Bell Long Ranger 4 circles in lower over a patchy clearcut and the marijuana comes into view -- maybe 20 clumps scattered over an area the size of your backyard.
The plants whip in the wind as the pilot gently sets his machine among them. It's a tight spot, full of logging debris and surrounded by fir trees planted maybe 15 years ago.
Alighting from the helicopter, Dennis, the pilot, and Grant, the spotter -- no last names, please, we're dealing with organized crime here -- find what they saw from the air: Black plastic bags of professional growing soil, each cut open and planted with three or four waist-high marijuana plants.
A black three-quarter-inch water line leads into the tangled bush, where more plants nestle among the trees.
A dozen bags here, a few there. Twenty plants, barely up to the knees, are in the hollow of a dead cedar filled with grow mix. Others, by a cluster of four 45-gallon water drums, reach your chest.
Dennis and Grant sweat in the heat, clambering through salal and over logs, following the water line hundreds of metres until it ends at an empty bog.
"They sucked it dry," observes Grant. Along the way they find more plants, more bags, more barrels.
Gradually the picture emerges. What at first seemed to be a site with a few dozen plants actually has a thousand, scattered here and there.
Use the standard $1,000-a-plant formula and ...
They have found a million-dollar marijuana grow operation.
Not that this is anything new to them. Dennis and Grant do this full-time from May through October, flying the skies of Vancouver Island, looking for the outdoor grows that feed B.C.'s marijuana industry. Last year, 650 such sites were identified here.
"We find dope every day," says Grant. "Every day we go out, we find marijuana."
He's working on contract now, a recently retired 35-year Mountie brought back to be the eyes of the two-year-old, summer-long air program. (Previously, the choppers only looked for dope in late August.) Dennis, also in his fifties, has been an RCMP helicopter pilot for 20 years.
They don't usually land in the grow-ops they find. Standard practice for the pair -- let's call them the Pot Patrol -- is to take a Global Positioning System reading off each site and forward it to the local RCMP. The locals then use their own GPS -- every detachment on Vancouver Island now has its own -- to track down and chop up the marijuana. It's a big step up from the old process, in which police often relied on back-of-napkin maps and imprecise directions given to them by hikers who had stumbled into plantations.
The eradication effort gets particularly busy each August when the help of the military is enlisted in Operation Sabot. Canadian Forces helicopters winch Mounties into remote, hard-to-get-to sites, where the plants, almost ready for harvest, are hacked down and hauled off in nets slung under the choppers.
Last year, Sabot got derailed by B.C.'s forest fires. The military's resources were diverted, meaning police were only able to hit about half the sites they had identified. The rest, presumably, were harvested by growers who didn't know they were lucky to keep their crops.
It's impossible to tell how big a dent the Pot Patrol puts in the outdoor-growing industry. Some estimates say $6 billion worth of B.C. Bud is grown, inside and outdoors, in this province annually. That's roughly equal to the value of B.C.'s softwood lumber exports to the U.S.
Last year, 44,000 plants were cut down or ripped up on Vancouver Island alone.
The Pot Patrol located 3,500 plants at Qualicum within a couple of kilometres of the new highway. Near Port Hardy were 1,200 plants so huge, yielding a couple of pounds of bud apiece, that the police rented chainsaws to cut through the stalks. (They usually they use machetes; clippers get gummed up by resin.)
An outdoor operation yields just one crop a year, as opposed to three or four for an indoor site, but comes with little risk of arrest. After setting up on Crown land or remote forest company property, a grower who has put in an automated watering system need only visit the site a couple of times before harvest.
Police almost never charge anyone at an outdoor operation. Even if convicted, growers often regard the resulting fine as little more than a business licence. The real penalty is loss of income.
"Some people we wipe out, at least for the season," says Dennis. Sometimes, when police find a few sites planted in an identical manner, they know they've hurt one grower badly.
Someone will certainly regret this day's million-dollar discovery, up here in the mid-Island clearcut. "We just spoiled some guy's trip to Mexico this winter," says Grant as he climbs back in the helicopter. "Too bad."
Back in the air, over Texada Island, the Pot Patrol enjoys the equivalent of the best fishing trip you ever had, getting one hit after another.
"Oh, here's a hell of a nice grow," says one voice in the headset.
"This stuff has really come up in the last couple of days," says the other.
Within minutes, they take GPS readings on four grow operations in remote, mountainous terrain. They land to talk to a local Mountie, take off again, and find some more plantations. Twice, Dennis and Grant simultaneously spot separate sites.
It has become an ongoing contest between them, the one who spots the most grow-ops winning a cup of coffee from the other. ("He cheats, always turns the helicopter on his side to get a better view," says Grant.)
Theirs is, relative to other police work, an enjoyable task. No messy domestic disputes. No highway carnage. Just cops and robbers, the cat-and-mouse game between police and those who knowingly break the law.
"When you're dealing with organized crime, it's fun to win," says Grant.
"See the dope down to our left?" says the voice in the headset.
Um, no.
Peering out the window of the RCMP helicopter, several hundred feet up, it just looks like Vancouver Island down there. Green on green on green. How can these guys see anything?
The seven-seat Bell Long Ranger 4 circles in lower over a patchy clearcut and the marijuana comes into view -- maybe 20 clumps scattered over an area the size of your backyard.
The plants whip in the wind as the pilot gently sets his machine among them. It's a tight spot, full of logging debris and surrounded by fir trees planted maybe 15 years ago.
Alighting from the helicopter, Dennis, the pilot, and Grant, the spotter -- no last names, please, we're dealing with organized crime here -- find what they saw from the air: Black plastic bags of professional growing soil, each cut open and planted with three or four waist-high marijuana plants.
A black three-quarter-inch water line leads into the tangled bush, where more plants nestle among the trees.
A dozen bags here, a few there. Twenty plants, barely up to the knees, are in the hollow of a dead cedar filled with grow mix. Others, by a cluster of four 45-gallon water drums, reach your chest.
Dennis and Grant sweat in the heat, clambering through salal and over logs, following the water line hundreds of metres until it ends at an empty bog.
"They sucked it dry," observes Grant. Along the way they find more plants, more bags, more barrels.
Gradually the picture emerges. What at first seemed to be a site with a few dozen plants actually has a thousand, scattered here and there.
Use the standard $1,000-a-plant formula and ...
They have found a million-dollar marijuana grow operation.
Not that this is anything new to them. Dennis and Grant do this full-time from May through October, flying the skies of Vancouver Island, looking for the outdoor grows that feed B.C.'s marijuana industry. Last year, 650 such sites were identified here.
"We find dope every day," says Grant. "Every day we go out, we find marijuana."
He's working on contract now, a recently retired 35-year Mountie brought back to be the eyes of the two-year-old, summer-long air program. (Previously, the choppers only looked for dope in late August.) Dennis, also in his fifties, has been an RCMP helicopter pilot for 20 years.
They don't usually land in the grow-ops they find. Standard practice for the pair -- let's call them the Pot Patrol -- is to take a Global Positioning System reading off each site and forward it to the local RCMP. The locals then use their own GPS -- every detachment on Vancouver Island now has its own -- to track down and chop up the marijuana. It's a big step up from the old process, in which police often relied on back-of-napkin maps and imprecise directions given to them by hikers who had stumbled into plantations.
The eradication effort gets particularly busy each August when the help of the military is enlisted in Operation Sabot. Canadian Forces helicopters winch Mounties into remote, hard-to-get-to sites, where the plants, almost ready for harvest, are hacked down and hauled off in nets slung under the choppers.
Last year, Sabot got derailed by B.C.'s forest fires. The military's resources were diverted, meaning police were only able to hit about half the sites they had identified. The rest, presumably, were harvested by growers who didn't know they were lucky to keep their crops.
It's impossible to tell how big a dent the Pot Patrol puts in the outdoor-growing industry. Some estimates say $6 billion worth of B.C. Bud is grown, inside and outdoors, in this province annually. That's roughly equal to the value of B.C.'s softwood lumber exports to the U.S.
Last year, 44,000 plants were cut down or ripped up on Vancouver Island alone.
The Pot Patrol located 3,500 plants at Qualicum within a couple of kilometres of the new highway. Near Port Hardy were 1,200 plants so huge, yielding a couple of pounds of bud apiece, that the police rented chainsaws to cut through the stalks. (They usually they use machetes; clippers get gummed up by resin.)
An outdoor operation yields just one crop a year, as opposed to three or four for an indoor site, but comes with little risk of arrest. After setting up on Crown land or remote forest company property, a grower who has put in an automated watering system need only visit the site a couple of times before harvest.
Police almost never charge anyone at an outdoor operation. Even if convicted, growers often regard the resulting fine as little more than a business licence. The real penalty is loss of income.
"Some people we wipe out, at least for the season," says Dennis. Sometimes, when police find a few sites planted in an identical manner, they know they've hurt one grower badly.
Someone will certainly regret this day's million-dollar discovery, up here in the mid-Island clearcut. "We just spoiled some guy's trip to Mexico this winter," says Grant as he climbs back in the helicopter. "Too bad."
Back in the air, over Texada Island, the Pot Patrol enjoys the equivalent of the best fishing trip you ever had, getting one hit after another.
"Oh, here's a hell of a nice grow," says one voice in the headset.
"This stuff has really come up in the last couple of days," says the other.
Within minutes, they take GPS readings on four grow operations in remote, mountainous terrain. They land to talk to a local Mountie, take off again, and find some more plantations. Twice, Dennis and Grant simultaneously spot separate sites.
It has become an ongoing contest between them, the one who spots the most grow-ops winning a cup of coffee from the other. ("He cheats, always turns the helicopter on his side to get a better view," says Grant.)
Theirs is, relative to other police work, an enjoyable task. No messy domestic disputes. No highway carnage. Just cops and robbers, the cat-and-mouse game between police and those who knowingly break the law.
"When you're dealing with organized crime, it's fun to win," says Grant.
