Praetorian
14-04-2011, 04:05 PM
$3m crystal meth bust second largest in Canada
Ron Albertson/The...
Ron Albertson/The...
Performance Enhancers
Among the drugs on displat at the Central Police Station were these "performance enhancing" drugs.
Sidebar
Crystal Meth
A powerful and highly addictive central nervous system stimulant that alters brain’s production of dopamine. User requires more and more over time to get the same high.
Synthesized by using ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in cold medicines along with other chemicals. Forms small glass-like fragments or blue white rocks often called ice. Smoked in a pipe. Some types can be snorted or swallowed as tablets.
Relatively easy to make in short time Meth labs have been found in homes, garages, motel rooms and even vehicles.
Meth production is dangerous. Significant fire and toxin exposure risk from chemicals and fumes. For each pound generated, up to five pounds toxic waste created that meth cooks often dump into streams or sewers.
Induces a euphoria that can last from two to 24 hours.
Health impacts include irritability, nervousness, paranoia, nausea, hot flashes, heart palpitations, and hypertension.
Severe impacts include damage to small vessels in brain that can lead to stroke, inflammation of lining to heart, psychosis that can persist for months or years, long-term brain damage, significant tooth decay, sexual dysfunction, risks of contracting HIV and hepatitis B and C.
Overdoses lead to death by extreme body heat elevation and cardiovascular collapse.
It started with a tip to police that they should take a look at a guy involved with a nutrition store in upper Hamilton.
Eighteen months later, Hamilton police announced that Project Newton had cracked a major drug ring dealing in large quantities of methamphetamine (crystal meth), anabolic steroids, cocaine, marijuana, and ketamine worth about $4 million.
Project Newton also led to Hamilton police charging one of their own officers with breach of trust for allegedly passing on secret police information to the main target of the multijurisdictional investigation.
By the time 175 cops from nine different police agencies finished a series of predawn raids at 23 homes and businesses in Hamilton, Halton, Niagara, Peel, Haldimand County and Sudbury earlier this week, some 26 kilograms of nearly pure crystal meth had been seized.
Twenty-one people were arrested as a result of the raids -- nine from Hamilton, three from Burlington, two from Caledonia, two from Beamsville, and one each from Grimsby, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Mississauga and Sudbury.
Policed placed the street value of the drugs at over $3 million, and said they believed it was the second-largest crystal meth seizure in Canada, not counting raids of actual production labs.
The busts also turned up over $1 million in illegal anabolic steroids that police say were being sold through two nutrition stores in Hamilton and one in Grimsby.
“Project Newton uncovered a network of individuals who worked together as an organized group conducting illegal activity throughout southern Ontario from Niagara Falls to the Greater Sudbury region,” said Hamilton police acting Superintendent Dan Kinsella.
Police say Reiner Ruska, 34, of Hamilton who operated of Herc’s Nutrition on Upper James Street was the main target of the investigation and is among those charged.
On Thursday, police also charged Constable Andrew Pauls with breach of trust. Hamilton police allege Pauls accessed information from a confidential internal police computer and passed the information on to Ruska at some point after Project Newton was started, but before he was suspended last August and charged for with stealing drugs from the police evidence locker. Those charges are still before the courts.
Police only became aware of Pauls’s alleged information leak to Ruska after he was suspended, said Hamilton police Chief Glenn De Caire. De Caire refused to provide any further information about the leak.
With info from B.C.’s Crystal Meth Secretariat
pmorse@thespec.com
905-526-3434
Ron Albertson/The...
Ron Albertson/The...
Performance Enhancers
Among the drugs on displat at the Central Police Station were these "performance enhancing" drugs.
Sidebar
Crystal Meth
A powerful and highly addictive central nervous system stimulant that alters brain’s production of dopamine. User requires more and more over time to get the same high.
Synthesized by using ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in cold medicines along with other chemicals. Forms small glass-like fragments or blue white rocks often called ice. Smoked in a pipe. Some types can be snorted or swallowed as tablets.
Relatively easy to make in short time Meth labs have been found in homes, garages, motel rooms and even vehicles.
Meth production is dangerous. Significant fire and toxin exposure risk from chemicals and fumes. For each pound generated, up to five pounds toxic waste created that meth cooks often dump into streams or sewers.
Induces a euphoria that can last from two to 24 hours.
Health impacts include irritability, nervousness, paranoia, nausea, hot flashes, heart palpitations, and hypertension.
Severe impacts include damage to small vessels in brain that can lead to stroke, inflammation of lining to heart, psychosis that can persist for months or years, long-term brain damage, significant tooth decay, sexual dysfunction, risks of contracting HIV and hepatitis B and C.
Overdoses lead to death by extreme body heat elevation and cardiovascular collapse.
It started with a tip to police that they should take a look at a guy involved with a nutrition store in upper Hamilton.
Eighteen months later, Hamilton police announced that Project Newton had cracked a major drug ring dealing in large quantities of methamphetamine (crystal meth), anabolic steroids, cocaine, marijuana, and ketamine worth about $4 million.
Project Newton also led to Hamilton police charging one of their own officers with breach of trust for allegedly passing on secret police information to the main target of the multijurisdictional investigation.
By the time 175 cops from nine different police agencies finished a series of predawn raids at 23 homes and businesses in Hamilton, Halton, Niagara, Peel, Haldimand County and Sudbury earlier this week, some 26 kilograms of nearly pure crystal meth had been seized.
Twenty-one people were arrested as a result of the raids -- nine from Hamilton, three from Burlington, two from Caledonia, two from Beamsville, and one each from Grimsby, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Mississauga and Sudbury.
Policed placed the street value of the drugs at over $3 million, and said they believed it was the second-largest crystal meth seizure in Canada, not counting raids of actual production labs.
The busts also turned up over $1 million in illegal anabolic steroids that police say were being sold through two nutrition stores in Hamilton and one in Grimsby.
“Project Newton uncovered a network of individuals who worked together as an organized group conducting illegal activity throughout southern Ontario from Niagara Falls to the Greater Sudbury region,” said Hamilton police acting Superintendent Dan Kinsella.
Police say Reiner Ruska, 34, of Hamilton who operated of Herc’s Nutrition on Upper James Street was the main target of the investigation and is among those charged.
On Thursday, police also charged Constable Andrew Pauls with breach of trust. Hamilton police allege Pauls accessed information from a confidential internal police computer and passed the information on to Ruska at some point after Project Newton was started, but before he was suspended last August and charged for with stealing drugs from the police evidence locker. Those charges are still before the courts.
Police only became aware of Pauls’s alleged information leak to Ruska after he was suspended, said Hamilton police Chief Glenn De Caire. De Caire refused to provide any further information about the leak.
With info from B.C.’s Crystal Meth Secretariat
pmorse@thespec.com
905-526-3434