"Police intelligence" in Canada's wild west

"Whatcha got growin' in your garden, there, pardner?" That's what the cops on the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team ("ALERT" -- geddit?) asked Ryan Thomas Rockman back in July, before digging up more than 1,600 plants, shown in this picture taken by CP's Ian Martens at a press conference called by the cops to announce the detection and destruction of a huge marijuana grow-up, namely Rockman's garden. [Was it by any chance a rock garden? Ed.]

The Rock Man would be facing serious charges when he goes to court tomorrow except for a small weakness in the Crown's case, namely that the plants are not maryjane after all, but Montauk daisies, a fall-blooming perennial that the accused has been growing for ten years.

The red-faced ALERT have dropped the charge of producing a controlled substance, but are pushing on with a potful of other charges, because, as we all know, if the police arrest someone, he must be guilty of something!

Rockman told the Lethbridge Herald, "It made me look like a villain and it made them look silly.... It baffles me, to be honest. At the same time, I don’t want to try to point the finger of blame at them either because they’re still just trying to do their mandate and make it home every day."
How Canadian is that?! An American would have sued the bastards, right sharpish.

Insp. Dan Konowalchuk [How Albertan is that? Ed.], head of the combined forces special regional enforcement units, defended the officers’ actions when interviewed by the Toronto Star.
"I don’t think there is anything at this point for the guys to apologize for. They acted on what they believed to be the best information they had at the time.... We don’t know for sure they’re daisies," he said, even though test results, which came back this week, clearly prove the seized plants weren’t marijuana.

The plants were only about half as high as one would expect, and of course they were in Rockman's garden, not a clearing in a cornfield. But, Konowalchuk said, it might have been some "sub-strain" of marijuana, perhaps a dwarf variety. "There are some similarities to the (marijuana) plant when you look directly at the plant," he told the Star. "But are they identical? No, they’re not. (Even so) the guys thought they we dealing with a large grow operation and they responded accordingly."

Walt's question of the day: What are the chances of Mr. Rockman being found not guilty of anything at all in the courts of Canada's redneckiest province? Answer: The accused has two chances -- slim and none. Start building the scaffold.