A Clax­ton Bay man has been ar­rest­ed af­ter of­fi­cers seized more than 60 cannabis plants dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing an­ti-crime ex­er­cise con­duct­ed by the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force Area South.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, the op­er­a­tion was car­ried out be­tween 12:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. on Tues­day, un­der Op­er­a­tion Steady Guard. The ex­er­cise tar­get­ed the Clax­ton Bay, New Set­tle­ment and Dow Vil­lage, Cal­i­for­nia dis­tricts as part of on­go­ing ef­forts to re­store pub­lic or­der, sup­press vi­o­lent crime, dis­rupt gang ac­tiv­i­ty and en­sure pub­lic safe­ty.

Act­ing on in­tel­li­gence re­ceived re­gard­ing firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed to a res­i­dence on Ben Win­ches­ter Street in Main­got Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, where a search was con­duct­ed.

Dur­ing the search, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered a makeshift green­house lo­cat­ed on the west­ern side of the prop­er­ty. In­side the struc­ture, they found more than 60 cannabis plants at var­i­ous stages of growth. The plants were re­port­ed­ly cul­ti­vat­ed in con­tain­ers of dif­fer­ent sizes.

Of­fi­cers al­so seized sev­er­al items be­lieved to be used in the cul­ti­va­tion process, in­clud­ing four seedling trays, one wa­ter­ing can and three bags of ma­nure.

A 33-year-old man was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the dis­cov­ery.

The sus­pect was tak­en in­to cus­tody fol­low­ing the find and is as­sist­ing po­lice with on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Re­my, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Bhag­wan­deen, Su­per­in­ten­dent Frank and In­spec­tor Ram­per­sad. It was su­per­vised by Sergeant Samuel and led on the ground by Act­ing Cor­po­ral Joseph, along with of­fi­cers at­tached to the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force Area South.

Po­lice said the ex­er­cise forms part of con­tin­ued ef­forts to tar­get il­le­gal drug cul­ti­va­tion and as­so­ci­at­ed crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty across the di­vi­sion, with fur­ther op­er­a­tions ex­pect­ed in the com­ing weeks.