Vancouver police ignore pot plants
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Pot plants sprout in storefront planter
Police ignore it, saying they're too busy to investigate
Ethan Baron
The Vancouver Province
A small marijuana plant, surrounded by coleus and impatiens plants, basks in the sunshine in front of Mario's Coffee Express on Howe Street in downtown Vancouver Monday. It's not known how the plant came to be in front of the coffee shop.
A tree may have grown in Brooklyn, but Vancouver's got pot growing on the sidewalk.
Downtown coffee shop owner Mario Trejier says he was shocked when two laughing tattooed men informed him that marijuana plants were sprinkled among the flowers in his sidewalk planters.
Trejier called the cops, and the receptionist said it wasn't a police matter.
"I know this is Vancouver, but in another city they'd be flying a helicopter over, a SWAT team would be dropping down," said Trejier, behind the counter at Mario's Coffee Express in the 500-block Howe Street.
"I'm sure they are busy with important stuff, but at least send someone by." The discovery of the plants was particularly surprising because of the shop's location in the heart of the business district, Trejier said.
"This is Howe Street. This is not Commercial Drive."
He admitted his business sometimes attracts suspicious types. "They're always stockbrokers," he said.
He hasn't pulled the eight plants, one coming into bud, out of the two heavy cement planters because the unasked-for crop hasn't created any difficulties.
"If this is any problem to me, I'll wheel them to Starbucks," he said.
Trejier said he wouldn't have recognized the plants, from eight- to 20-centimetres high, as marijuana.
"I'm an old-fashioned guy," he said. "If somebody needs that to live, I feel sorry for them. They haven't tried my coffee."
Someone may have dropped pot seeds into the planters, said Vancouver police Const. Tim Fanning.
"It's fairly minor," Fanning said. "We don't have any suspects, we're not going to have any charges, so there's not really any need to tie up police resources."
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Good Kannabis Growing!
