Posted on 11/06/2004 10:36:22 PM PST by CWOJackson
KEY WEST
More than 37 tons of cocaine with an estimated street value of $2.3 billion was hauled off a Navy frigate Friday, adding to a record year of seizures as part of a joint effort to stop drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific.
The 75,000 pounds of white powder is from five separate seizures at sea between Aug. 31 and Sept. 26, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.
The largest cocaine discovery in the history of Coast Guard's East Coast operations was made Sept. 17 when a Coast Guard detachment from the frigate, the USS Curts, found 30,000 pounds -- 15 tons -- on the fishing vessel Lina Maria about 300 miles west of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
On Sept. 23, a Coast Guard team aboard the USS Crommelin discovered about 26,775 pounds of cocaine aboard the fishing vessel San Jose roughly 650 miles southwest of the Galapagos.
That was the third largest such find in the history of Operation Panama Express, a joint effort between the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa, the Coast Guard, Immigration of Customs Enforcement, Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI and the Navy.
Thirty-one people were arrested in the five boardings and will face prosecution in federal court in Tampa.
i did think later as I went to bed about how we would catch crew doing stuff at times....with sometimes a 30-40 man crew and all those hiding places to stash a kilo or two...it was a chore.
We caught a welder filling his tanks with blow in Miragoane Haiti once and things like that.
I had a captian busted coming off port in Savannah once in some local-fed crackdown where they stopped everyone leaving port gate...he had a bag of weed in his pants and I had warned him already.....he got a fine and they didn't hassle the ship fortunately...
Any cargo from Colombia or VZ or practically anywhere down south always carried the possibility of dope in the cargo and the ship or charterer would never know if some cartel guy had an in with the local cement plant or bagged fishmeal or whatever....that is not uncommon....or in containers too.
It's a zoo working the Carib basin to be sure.
And how is that?
You are entitled to your opinion
I'm still trying to figure out what your opinion is... If drugs were legal, as you would like, how would we "pay for the war with that seizure"? What would there be to seize?
Exactly. You don't find a small fishing vessel in the middle of the Pacific by accident.
Per your post, the 37 tons of cocaine have a street value of $636,400,000. Phenomenal. Someone is going to get killed over that. All they have to do is let the fellows go and announce it publicly. The drug lords will have them cheaply and efficiently eliminated at little or no cost to U.S. taxpayers. Let them go and announce it.
I can only recall one instance that I actually felt sorry for one of them. We were closing on a boat and one of the crew decided to shoot at us; with a .12 gauge at 500 yards. The gunner was begging me to allow him to return fire. I actually felt sorry for the bozo with the shotgun; my gunner was a wizard with a .50.
Death is an inherent part of the drug trade always.
Could certainly be terrorist dope. If not this seizure, then maybe the next one will be. We know it is out there being exploited with profit by al qaeda.
LOLOLOL!
We will need to start using that line more now that daschle is a goner. ;)
Clinton will do!
Completely wrong! Because if you take out the "risk premium", cocaine would go for something like $3/LB, wiping out 99% of the profit you think the government would gain.
All of the profit would be wiped out by the added social costs. This is a delusional loser issue.
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