Three arrested after police serve warrant on Highway 24 property north of Simcoe
Officers descended on a suspected marijuana grow-op in Norfolk County on Tuesday morning to find thousands of cannabis plants, with an estimated value of $20 million, already destroyed.
Acting Sgt. Ed Sanchuk said officers from several detachments and the provincial cannabis enforcement team executed a search warrant at a property on Highway 24 north of Simcoe.
Officers arrested three people “without incident” and then found the plants, which according to Sanchuk “had been cut prior to police arrival.”
He did not provide any information about the three arrested and what charges had been laid, saying that information had not yet been sworn before the courts.
“Police are continuing to investigate and anticipate further arrests,” Sanchuk said in an email.
Insp. Shawn Johnson, interim detachment commander in Norfolk, praised Tuesday’s raid.
“Our community street crimes unit has been very effective with proactive drug investigations,” Johnson said in a statement to media.
“This is yet another example that highlights how the police and Norfolk County bylaw enforcement continue to work with members of the community in partnership to resolve crime.”
The proliferation of marijuana grow-ops in Norfolk has been on the radars of police and politicians for several years.
In 2013, the county became the first jurisdiction in Canada to craft comprehensive cannabis zoning bylaws, with the council of the day envisioning marijuana as a new crop for the agricultural hotbed known as Ontario’s Garden.
That move attracted growers looking to produce medical marijuana under federal licence in facilities that are regularly inspected and must adhere to extensive regulations regarding odour, light use, safety and biosecurity, explained Mat Vaughan, a former Norfolk County planner, during a January 2020 public meeting in Waterford as reported in Ontario Farmer. But other entrepreneurs — many from the Greater Toronto Area — snapped up available farmland, put up unregulated greenhouses and started growing more marijuana than was legally permitted after the Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that medical marijuana could legally be grown by third-party producers, according to the Ontario Farmer report.
Residents living near these unregulated greenhouses — which have no controls for odour or light — started complaining of unbearable smells, excessive light pollution and increased traffic.
In a report to council in 2020, Jim Millson, the county’s supervisor of bylaw enforcement and a former OPP officer, said many local marijuana growers were “producing well in excess of the maximum licensed number of plants.”
“It has become clear that the excess being produced by designated growers is being funnelled to the illicit market, which is mostly controlled by organized crime,” Millson said.
The OPP found that some marijuana grown in Canada is smuggled across the American border in exchange for guns and narcotics, and the grow-ops themselves are targets for armed robbery.
Last spring, Waterford-area councillor Kim Huffman brought forth a plan to combat the proliferation of grow-ops in Norfolk, which were estimated to number 130 at the time, up from several dozen just a few years prior.
The plan called for an “open line” between bylaw officers and residents suffering the effects of living near the grow-ops, along with stepped-up enforcement of building code provisions and setback rules.
Police would be brought in if producers were exceeding the legal limit or there was other evidence of criminality.
Tuesday’s raid recalls a major pot bust in August 2020 that saw police seize 60,000 illegal marijuana plants from a Norfolk County greenhouse. The seizure was part of a provincewide operation that netted 101,000 plants worth an estimated $42 million from sites in 11 municipalities.
The following month, police arrested 27 people at a massive cannabis grow-op near Simcoe and seized pot plants worth $2.1 million.
SOURCE: https://www.thespec.com/news/crime/2022/05/19/norfolk-county-cannabis-grow-op-raid.html
RMS
