Page three: police raid a pot grower's paradise
National Post
Sat 16 Oct 2004
Page: A3
Section: News
Byline: Brian Hutchinson
Column: Brian Hutchinson
Source: National Post

SEYMOUR ARM, B.C. - There are no signs of welcome on the road
to Seymour Arm. No mileage posts, not even a motel ad promising a
good sleep or a cup of coffee.

The drive here is intense: two hours off the Trans-Canada Highway,
most of it on a treacherous, twisting logging road that winds up and
down the lake's remote northern arm. Eight bridges, each one
skinnier and more slippery than the last.

This is off-the-grid wilderness, with no telephone wires or hydro
lines to clutter the view of long, meandering Shuswap Lake, about
400 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. It's a paradise for
back-to-the-earth types and self-sufficient retirees.

It was also a dope grower's dream, until one morning last week,
when 150 police officers wearing balaclavas and body armour stormed
the place.

Officers said they wanted to make an impression. They arrived in an
armada: unmarked Chevy Suburbans, regular patrol cars, a helicopter
and a large, chartered houseboat, which served as a floating command
centre.

They found large indoor marijuana growing operations, hundreds of
thousands of dollars worth of growing equipment and 20,000 marijuana
plants. Police also seized 50 weapons, ranging from shotguns to
semi-automatic assault rifles.

Fifteen men, including a 68-year-old, were charged with cultivation
of an illegal substance. One woman was charged with marijuana
possession. No one offered any resistance.

Half the town's population is involved in the drug trade, police
suggested. "Organized crime" is involved in the grow-ops, added
Marianne Ryan, operations officer for B.C.'s Combined Special Forces
Enforcement Unit, an elite group of drug busters from RCMP ranks and
municipal squads.

"It wasn't your typical type of organized crime," said Ms. Ryan, an
RCMP superintendent. "It works well below the traditional level of
organized crime, [but] it's very sophisticated and very
professional." She also spoke of "incidents of violence, threats,
and intimidation."

This came as a surprise to Seymour Arms' 90 permanent residents, at
least half of whom are retirees, conservative-minded men and women
in their 60s.

The lack of services, such as hydro power, helps keeps their
community small and untrammeled. They like it that way. The road in
actually acts as a barrier; it chews up the curious and swallows the
unprepared. A crumpled white sedan, rusting in a ditch halfway along
the route, attests to that.

Like a lot of year-round residents, Wayne Grant has owned property
in Seymour Arm for decades. He knows the place inside out; as
president of the Seymour Arm Community Association, he's as close to
a mayor as the community has.

I found him puttering about his lakeside property this week. He
paused and spoke to me about the local residents. Most are
good-natured folk, he says, even "the dope growers."

The grow-ops were not a secret. "We knew the growers by name,"
reveals Mr. Grant. Contrary to police reports, they caused few, if
any, disturbances. "The one issue people had was the noise from
their generators," he told me. "They had large generators, and they
would run all night. But we didn't sit around and talk about the
growers. We certainly didn't live in fear. I still left the keys in
my truck."

People here assume that police references to violence stem from a
home-invasion incident two years ago, when a 16-year-old boy was
held at gunpoint while two older men looted his parents' home.

No charges were ever laid in connection to the incident. But
Seymour Arm was suddenly on the police radar. "There was a
large-scale operation producing a tremendous amount [of pot]," says
RCMP Sergeant John Ward. "Our investigation lasted two years."

Yet Mr. Grant discounts remarks that "organized crime" had
infiltrated the community. "Over time, that might have happened," he
says. "But there were no gangs here. The growers didn't appear to
have a lot of money. They weren't living in fancy houses and driving
fancy cars."

Mr. Grant's closest neighbours are Chris and Wilma Dirks, both 29.
I drove up the road to see them. They have lived in Seymour Arm for
six years, on a boggy, bug-infested patch of land. They have three
children. By all accounts, they are helpful and polite. Mr. Dirks is
treasurer of the community association.

They enjoyed the laid-back, "pot friendly" atmosphere they found in
Seymour Arm. Both consume the drug; a glass bong -- a water pipe
used for smoking pot -- sits on their kitchen table.

"We don't lie about it or hide it from our children," shrugs Ms.
Dirks. "I would like to grow it legally and organically."

Mr. Dirks calls the area's pot growers "poor farmers just
struggling to get by." He estimates that Seymour Arm produced about
$3.5-million worth of marijuana each year, about a tenth of the
value police placed on the community's grow-ops. He would not say
how the product was shipped and sold, or to whom. Police are still
investigating the retail end of the pot pipeline.

Last week, the Dirks were sleeping inside their modest two-storey
house when five or six masked police officers burst inside. "They
yelled, 'Police, search warrant,'" recalled Ms. Dirks. "The next
thing I know, I'm looking at my husband lying on the ground, with a
cop stepping on his neck and another one pointing a gun at his
head."

Mr. Dirks was handcuffed. Police entered two long trailer homes
sitting on the Dirks' property and dismantled an alleged grow-op.
They removed hundreds of marijuana plants and confiscated a
generator and firearms.

Later in the day, Mr. Dirks was placed in a police vehicle, along
with several other men. They remained handcuffed, and their legs
were shackled. They sat on metal benches inside small cages. The
vehicle then joined a convey headed for Kamloops, where all 15 men
were charged and processed. Ms. Dirks, charged with possession, was
allowed to remain at home with her bewildered children.

"The only violence and intimidation we ever encountered was the day
last week when the police raided our house and pointed guns at us,"
said Ms. Dirks. "Why did they need so many people to arrest 16 of
us? How much did the whole operation cost?"

The police can't say. But the show of force was necessary, says
RCMP Sgt. Ward, both to make an impression and to protect their own
from potentially trigger-happy dope growers.

Mr. Grant is just happy the episode is over. "Despite everything, I
was actually glad to see the RCMP go after the grow-ops," he said.
"But it has created a bit of a rift in the community. People have
been very emotional since the raid. I've seen people crying."

He expects most of the growers to eventually leave Seymour Arm.
That will please some, but it's a gloomy prospect for Alf Daniels,
the community's only storekeeper.

"I'm going to lose a lot of business," he says.