Another day of cutting and slashing for Quebec provinccial police

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FruityBud

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It's harvest time in the Eastern Townships, near Montreal, but for many here who farm Quebec's most valuable crop — marijuana — there is no pot of gold in their field of dreams. Their plantations are being nipped in the bud by the cannabis cops.

Last week, a squad of provincial police went out on a daylong operation to eradicate a portion of the region's illegal crop. This would be only one day of many to follow, as the time for harvesting nears.

Before heading into the fields and hillsides, Charles Beaulieu, an agent with Quebec Provincial Police's Dunham detachment explained: "Every year, we find more and more plants. So far this year — and we are just getting started — we have found and destroyed 4,000 plants, which at around $1,000 a plant is a fair amount of money for the growers."

Now, with peak harvest time just a few weeks away, the seven-man team is going out every day.

By 9 a.m., the small convoy of a half-dozen vehicles pulls out of the station onto Highway 202 E., toward West Brome, about 75 kilometres southeast of Montreal. Fifteen minutes later, the entourage parks beside a small river where the agents mount ATVs and head along the banks to a site where a tip-off has reported a number of pot plants are flourishing.

Working like skilled pedicurists, but with pruning shears, the agents make fast work of the 60 plants that are hidden among the tall grasses on the banks of the river, a stone's throw from the beautiful town of Sutton. Most pot farms are very close to water.

Cutting the budding plants at their base, they tie them with baling twine and load them onto the vehicles, while a herd of dairy cattle chew their cud and watch from a neighbouring field. The confiscated harvest is loaded into a truck, and the ATVs are put back on their trailer.

"A small-time operation," Beaulieu says. As quickly as they showed up, the pot cops are on the road, this time to Brigham, Que.

The convoy heads west along Highway 104 and turns off at a dirt road flanked by corn fields and thick forest. It stops in front of a car that has travelled ahead to pinpoint the location. This had been relayed via the radio of a small airplane that was circling overhead, using a GPS to close in on the site.

"Most of the sites we find are the result of citizens calling our Crime-Info Line. They could be birdwatchers, hunters, hikers or farmers who don't want the pot on their property," the agent says.

The team is joined by three RCMP officers who have their own ATVs.

Jumping a culvert at the side of the road, the agents head through a thick wall of alder and black spruce on what is no more than a narrow deer trail. Forty-five metres from the roadside, they reach a small opening in the tangle where dozens of healthy pot plants stand tall and bulbous, with numerous buds.

These plants are much better endowed than the first group they had cut in West Brome, perhaps because they are in a plot protected by thick underbrush.

The weeds are decapitated with machetes and shears by one group of agents; another group, wearing safety goggles to protect their eyes from being gouged by branches as they drive their ATVs, fan out to look for more plots.

And they find them — a plot of 30 plants and another of 20.

Laying the cut plants in groups of 10, they tie the weed into bundles, then hoist the bundles onto their shoulders. They tote them out of the underbrush to the truck, where another agent is stacking them like cordwood. In the field, the atmosphere is businesslike and direct. There is little small talk, as they concentrate on the contraband crop.

All that is left at the scene of the crime are a few pathetic leaves and a bunch of stumps sticking out of the dirt. In a final coup de grace, Beaulieu ties a wide strand of police-scene tape across the narrow pathway leading to the naked patches of earth. Is this a taunt, a final insult? No.

"This is to let the grower know that the SQ (Surete du Quebec, or Quebec Provincial Police) took their plants and it wasn't a rival or a ripoff, which is often the case. It's sort of like a calling card," he chuckles.

In the pickup truck on the way to the next location, the apple-growing region of Frelighsburg, the driver says: "We move fast and get the job done. That last group of plants was easy, even though we had to carry them out. Sometimes we have to go into areas with imposing hills that the ATVs cannot manoeuvre on or get into, so we have to hike in and drag all the plants out over difficult terrain and at great distances. It can get quite physical."

Perhaps this is the reason the agents don't look a day over 25 and all of them are very fit.

By now, the hot cab smells like an Amsterdam cafe. The concentrated marijuana resin absolutely reeks, like a mixture of skunk, pine needles and sickly honey. It's a glue; it's in their hair; it's running off with their sweat, it's clogging everyone's noses. Clumps of leaves grip their muddy army-style boots. The khaki overalls are grimy. Everyone wears gloves. The agents relax and eat apples and chat as the radio crackles in the background, but the smell is like an invisible fog.

Approaching the rolling hills, a sign indicates the municipality of Frelighsburg. They turn onto a laneway leading past a well-kept barn and farmhouse where the convoy stops and unloads the ATVs.

A pair of farm dogs comes out of the house, wagging their tails and sniffing at the police, then veer onto an old trail furrowed by tractor wheels. One side is lined by an ocean of three-metre-tall corn. The other is a forested hillside. It is magnificent country, with leaves already showing tints of autumn coloration, and the gold and green corn shimmering like a landscape painting.

After following a machete-brandishing agent for 15 minutes, the ATVs have threaded their way through the gauntlet of ditches and other natural hazards to reach another small trail leading directly into the forest, where a large open patch of goldenrod and hawthorne covers the hillside, below which a beaver pond can be seen. Large patches of marijuana plants rise above the vegetation like bushy two-metre tall Christmas trees — a pothead's dream.

Some of the agents set to work slashing away at the hefty stalks, felling the bud-heavy giants, while others quarter the area looking for other plots. Three more groupings are found and the cutting party moves through them, dropping the plants to the ground. Heaving bundles onto the front and back of the ATVs, they bungee cable the sheaves securely for the rough ride back to the truck.

They have a difficult time negotiating the terrain of furrows, downed trees and fence wire and have to be pushed and cajoled over the quagmire. The agents' overalls are soaked with dew and perspiration.

The spotter plane turns in tight circles overhead with its engine whining like some giant hornet.

Three men are sitting on the porch of the farmhouse with cold drinks in their hands, watching the marijuana being transferred to the truck. One of the police officers chats with them.

"It doesn't bother us," one of the men says. "As long as we're reimbursed for the corn that was run over." None of them offers their name.

Next is a short break, and the agents fuel up on plastic-wrapped submarine sandwiches and candy bars. Only one of them smokes, a cigar. Then a message comes over the radio. The spotter plane has just stumbled upon 500 plants near Eccles Hill, just 10 minutes away.

Approaching their discovery, there's more corn, a large soybean field, and a 31/2-metre-wide creek. Then a grove of pine trees, then a thicket of goldenrods interspersed with stinging nettles and low, thick brush, proliferating along the banks of the creek.

The agents break up into groups of two or three and get to work hacking away at the deep green marijuana trees. It is picturesque, like a postcard view of farm workers in a sugarcane field in Cuba.

Three plastic buckets of fertilizer lay stashed under a thicket of hawthorne. The hacking and slashing sounds and the ripening smell fills the forest. The cut-a-thon and bundling go on for a good hour. Perhaps a dozen trips are made from the plantation back to the truck to drop off their loads.

There is a vibrant, upbeat pace among the agents.

"This is at least a quarter-million-dollar crop, though possibly much more," explains Beaulieu, as he wipes his brow of sweat and dust.

"In the next three weeks to a month, after the first couple of frosts, the plant's energy is concentrated to the buds and their THC content skyrockets. (THC is the chemical found in marijuana that produces the high.) Two people can run a plantation like this.

"It's not organized crime, just some locals. Someone else will buy it and transport it across the border, less than 10 minutes away from here."

Everyone begins saddling up for the next bust. And so the day goes.

At the end of it, they have raided seven plantations and confiscated 1,400 plants, a typical haul.

Value: well over $1 million. The pot will be buried in a landfill at an undisclosed site, leaving no carbon footprint. Only the worms will be getting high on this stash.

To a man (and woman — there is one female agent on this team), they love their work. There isn't any griping and there are no complaints. And there are many more harvest days to come.

But inevitably, the larger reality must set in, and as autumn bites, they will return to their more routine and mundane policing tasks, which are not without their own rewards. On the drive home, the six-car convoy is interrupted as the point car makes a traffic stop. They arrest a drunk driver. At 5:30 in the afternoon.

The convoy moves ahead. That is it. No one says much about it. No one says much of anything. There is just an air of satisfaction.

hxxp://tinyurl.com/p8f6vq
 
"Three men are sitting on the porch of the farmhouse with cold drinks in their hands, watching the marijuana being transferred to the truck. One of the police officers chats with them.

"It doesn't bother us," one of the men says. "As long as we're reimbursed for the corn that was run over." None of them offers their name."

Any bets that it was their pot? If they were that casual, they likely have done it before and that wasn't their only patch growing. I used to live on the US side of that border and you wouldn't believe what crosses that line. There are folks there that will bring across whatever you want for a fee. It's their job.
 
Wow.

That reporter needs a Literary award.



FruityBud said:
"In the next three weeks to a month, after the first couple of frosts, the plant's energy is concentrated to the buds and their THC content skyrockets.

Who feeds these people this information? :rofl:

:peace:
 
'as billy bob , jr. , and bubba k sat on the delapidated porch watching the leo load up thier hard seasons work, mary jane snuck up on leo.' bam. bam. bam. bam. bam. bam. bam. bubbas sks sounded off seven times. then billy bob approached the front yard area with his rocket propelled grenade launcher, took steady aim at the small 2 seater cessna circling about, and tapped one off. BooM. eewwwwjejfhvgrrrgeind. missed. he loads, takes aim, fires another, and down came the 2 seater into finnegans marsh in a fiery crash.' all the while , jr , and mary jane are hiding the atvs in the barn to be shipped across the border and sold for the destruction of thier corn...:D ;) :hubba: ... i take a bow... lol. lol. lol.

better watch thier six in the woods. some these hillbillys don't play that crap. and thats the hard facts. you spot someones crop, you best back on out the way you came, or i'm calling bubba k.:rolleyes: ;) :cool: ...
 
True, unfortunately. Some growers are really bad guys, plain and simple.
 

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