One hundred charges laid in major Metro Vancouver drug bust
Posted March 3, 2015 10:49 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Twelve people in Metro Vancouver have been hit with a total of 100 charges after a huge drug bust aimed at stopping the lacing of street drugs with fentanyl.
Fentanyl can be up to 100 times more potent than what people think they are getting and using it to lace other drugs has been increasing trend.
The seizures include more than half a million different pills, seven vehicles, cocaine, and marijuana.
Burnaby Chief Superintendant Dave Critchley says this bust includes an attempted murder charge in connection with a shooting in South Burnaby in December. “The alleged shooter who has now been charged and remains in custody was believed to be involved in the drug trade and was a named target in this project.”
Police say they’ve worked their way up to one of the Lower Mainland’s biggest distributors and they wouldn’t be surprised if some of the drugs seized were meant for overseas.
“The goal of this project was to target those who were peddling poison in our communities, and to disrupt the local supply of fentanyl-laced drugs that were being distributed throughout the Lower Mainland and beyond,” says Chief Superintendent Kevin deBruyckere, head of the RCMP Federal Policing Program in BC.
“Project Tainted” began in the fall of last year and on February 17th, 2015, police executed 11 search warrants throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, and North Vancouver.
Full list of seizures:
7 vehicles
$215,000 cash
pill press
13,000 oxycodone
29,000 fentanyl pills
147,000 pills believed to be Alprazolam
503,000 coloured pills (yet to be analyzed)
9.5 kgs of crack cocaine
5.5 kgs of powdered cocaine
19.5 kgs of marijuana
1 kg of methamphetamine
3 kgs of hash
.5 kg of heroin
2,200 flaps of heroin
various other drugs including steroids and methamphetamine
various drug paraphernalia
4 guns
2 replica guns
1 bulletproof vest
