The million-pound cannabis farm

Police have busted a cannabis farm that would have been worth a million quid a year

Cannabis plants look like this, in case you’d forgotten. Photo: aeroSoul

A tip-off led police to a million-pound cannabis farm at Hall Lane, Walton Vale, Liverpool, at around 13:10 on Wednesday July 6 2016. There were 500 plants plus growing equipment. Rooms had been converted. The plants were at different stages of growth. Electricity was also abstracted, ie half-inched. No arrests were made. It was estimated that the operation would have yielded more than a million pounds a year.

A word of warning about cannabis farms

Merseyside Police Specialist Cannabis Dismantling Team removed the interesting stuff. Sergeant Kevin Coakley made the valid points that those who grow cannabis are generally involved in other serious organised crime and cannabis farms, with their hot lamps, fiddled electricity and overloaded electrical sockets, are a great fire risk. He highlighted that ?electricity and water are never a good combination? and the number of such fires is growing; flats were transformed into ?potential death traps.? He implored the public to turn grass and call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 if anonymity is required. Given the fire risk and the liability of landlords for prosecution for permitting cannabis farming, this would be excusable.

Oh, that Merseyside Police Specialist Cannabis Dismantling Team

Merseyside Police Specialist Cannabis Dismantling Team has been busy. At 20:35 on Monday June 27, officers found 150 plants and associated equipment spread over four floors of a building on Belmont Drive, Tuebrook. This one would have been worth over half a million pounds pa. Inspector Dave Herron used the same script as Sergeant Coakley, down to the ?potential death traps? line. Needless to say, electricity was abstracted.

On Friday 8 July, Karl Masterson was packed of to gaol for something less than all eternity ? a whole eight months ? for his farm on East Millwood Road, which was uncovered on Tuesday March 29. He had 30 mature plants worth around ?120,000 a year. Electricity abstracted blah blah blah. It was the turn of Detective Inspector Ian Warlow to do the ?potential death traps? thang.

A very large cannabis farm

These farms pale in comparison with that found elsewhere in Liverpool at a semi-detached house at Mather Avenue, Allerton, back in March. Police had been called to investigate a burglary. With 719 plants, it would have raked in ?2.8 million a year.