Sticky's_Queen
04-27-2008, 12:42 PM
THE boys in blue have hit on green solutions for dealing with equipment and compost seized in a string of raids on cannabis-growing "factories" in the city.
Police have had great success busting city homes converted into drug dens for production of the illegal crop, taking apart 18 so far this year.
And they have also hit on useful ways of dealing with the mountains of lights and other equipment they discover behind the anonymous front doors of the apparently ordinary houses.
Rather than simply bin the contents and use up precious space in the city's Dogsthorpe tip, police have given away bags of compost to schools and environmental projects.
BioBizz - Chock full of bio-bizziness
They have also had electrical transformers stripped of their valuable copper, with the proceeds ploughed back into the force's crime-fighting funds.
Detective Constable Shanie Nayar, who has helped dismantle 64 cannabis factories under the police's "A door a day" campaign, said: "We can't auction off this equipment and risk it getting back into criminals' hands, but it would be a shame to just throw it all away when it could have a legitimate use, so we need to have a strategy."
The sight of a skip outside a house steadily filling with lights, cables, and extension sockets as police strip out another cannabis factory has become almost familiar in the city.
Inside, the property has usually been filled from top to bottom with cannabis plants and growing paraphernalia, often overseen by a lowly "gardener" who is paid to tend the crop while living in cramped conditions.
The equipment seized can be worth tens of thousands of pounds, with the gear in one room alone in a London Road factory raided last October valued at £15,500 by police.
Rather than simply dump the contents, since early last year officers have been working to put their finds to good use.
Compost has been given away to schools, including Northborough
Primary, to help in pupils' gardening projects.
Copper has also been salvaged from electrical transformers by metal recyclers, who paid the police for the scrap material.
And the powerful lamps used to bring on the plants – which would need toxic mercury removed from them at 50p a time before they could be landfilled – are instead sold for £1 to legitimate companies.
Butterfly parks and a turtle farm have snapped up some of them.
Neighbourhood police officer Pc Mike Jackman suggested to Dc Nayar that Peterborough-based Eco Art Projects could also put some of the seized property to good use after paying a private visit to the group's Dogsthorpe Road allotments. On Tuesday, his idea paid off when founder member Renny Antonelli took around 20 bags of compost off the force's hands.
It had been seized when police swooped on a cannabis factory in St Paul's Road, New England.
Eco artist Mr Antonelli said it had come like "manna from heaven" and had been spread on the vegetable patch at Werrington Primary School.
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk
Police have had great success busting city homes converted into drug dens for production of the illegal crop, taking apart 18 so far this year.
And they have also hit on useful ways of dealing with the mountains of lights and other equipment they discover behind the anonymous front doors of the apparently ordinary houses.
Rather than simply bin the contents and use up precious space in the city's Dogsthorpe tip, police have given away bags of compost to schools and environmental projects.
BioBizz - Chock full of bio-bizziness
They have also had electrical transformers stripped of their valuable copper, with the proceeds ploughed back into the force's crime-fighting funds.
Detective Constable Shanie Nayar, who has helped dismantle 64 cannabis factories under the police's "A door a day" campaign, said: "We can't auction off this equipment and risk it getting back into criminals' hands, but it would be a shame to just throw it all away when it could have a legitimate use, so we need to have a strategy."
The sight of a skip outside a house steadily filling with lights, cables, and extension sockets as police strip out another cannabis factory has become almost familiar in the city.
Inside, the property has usually been filled from top to bottom with cannabis plants and growing paraphernalia, often overseen by a lowly "gardener" who is paid to tend the crop while living in cramped conditions.
The equipment seized can be worth tens of thousands of pounds, with the gear in one room alone in a London Road factory raided last October valued at £15,500 by police.
Rather than simply dump the contents, since early last year officers have been working to put their finds to good use.
Compost has been given away to schools, including Northborough
Primary, to help in pupils' gardening projects.
Copper has also been salvaged from electrical transformers by metal recyclers, who paid the police for the scrap material.
And the powerful lamps used to bring on the plants – which would need toxic mercury removed from them at 50p a time before they could be landfilled – are instead sold for £1 to legitimate companies.
Butterfly parks and a turtle farm have snapped up some of them.
Neighbourhood police officer Pc Mike Jackman suggested to Dc Nayar that Peterborough-based Eco Art Projects could also put some of the seized property to good use after paying a private visit to the group's Dogsthorpe Road allotments. On Tuesday, his idea paid off when founder member Renny Antonelli took around 20 bags of compost off the force's hands.
It had been seized when police swooped on a cannabis factory in St Paul's Road, New England.
Eco artist Mr Antonelli said it had come like "manna from heaven" and had been spread on the vegetable patch at Werrington Primary School.
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk