Operation Kristy seized 141,000 cannabis plants in record 2008-09 season
New Zealand police seized 141,000 cannabis plants and arrested 1,125 people during the December-to-March National Cannabis and Crime Operation, Operation Kristy, also seizing 191 firearms, recovering $400,000 in stolen property and locating four methamphetamine labs.
New Zealand police seized 141,000 cannabis plants and arrested 1,125 offenders during Operation
Kristy, the National Cannabis and Crime Operation that ran from December 2008 to March 2009.[1]Officers also seized 191 firearms, recovered $400,000 worth of stolen property and located
four methamphetamine laboratories.[1]
The haul was the highest in ten years, up 17,000 plants on the previous season, Detective Senior
Sergeant Scott McGill told police magazine Ten One.[2]The potential community harm was put at
$379 million, based on a conservative estimate of 226 grams of cannabis per plant, and police
searched more than 820 houses and properties during the season.[2]
Cultivation-led increase
The year’s increase in cannabis offences was almost entirely driven by cultivation, supply and
possession offences detected through the extra resources invested in Kristy.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
31 March 2009 marks the end of the December-to-March operation, which police said had "just been completed" on 1 April 2009, rather than a published finish date.
The New Zealand Herald account survives only in a forum reprint; the paper's original page is no longer live.
No photograph of the 2008-09 operation with a recoverable direct image address was found in the opened sources.
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