Here in the Texas Panhandle, I-40 cuts right across. On I-40, almost every week (sometimes several in a day) there will be a large drug bust.
200 pounds of pot, 70 lbs of coke, $250, 000 in cash. Sometimes combinations, sometimes more, sometimes less.
All. The. Time.
Routine traffic stops turn into massive drug busts. I could imagine a large bust every so often, but these are just so common anymore it’s just mind boggling. Think of all the cars they don’t stop…
It’s obvious that the police have a certain profile they are looking for (not racial…these people are a pretty broad cross section IMHO), like rental cars, cars that looked “lived in” instead of travelers, stuff like that.
So are these “Super Troopers”, just extra lucky, patrolling a “target rich environment” and snag some dope now and again??
Any guesses??
Anybody else have weekly or daily super large drug busts in their part of the world??
To me (and I’m no expert), it sounds fishy. I live in South East Texas where drugs are pretty common; we always here about the busts. I hear about maybe one every other month or so. NOT a huge bust every week. And most of the busts here are done out of houses, not cars.
I’m way to suspicious of the government to be able to give you an unbiased answer or veiw. But I’ve never heard of that many drug-busts. And this town is kinda small; not much else to do but drugs, and we don’t get the many busts, know what I’m saying?
Well, there are pictures of the drugs and cash in the newspapers, the names of those charged appear in the paper, and the arrest record shows those same people being charged for drugs and/or money laundering. I seriously doubt it is staged, know what I’m saying?
Well, all of the cocaine that comes into the U.S. comes from South America. Pretty much everything that goes to the Eastern U.S. is going to be crossing Texas.
Pot, same deal. Of course people grow it here, but there’s still a hell of a lot of pot coming from Mexico. Why? It’s just cheaper. A $50-100 Mexican pound costs $200-300 in Texas and $400-600 in Louisiana. Some dealers in surrounding states who wouldn’t cross the U.S./Mexico border on a bet will gladly take a drive to the Lone Star State to get their pot for half or less what they’d pay at home. This info is based on people I knew three or four years ago who did this sort of thing, but I don’t keep in touch with them anymore, so prices may have changed slightly.
So basically you have a whole lot of pot and a whole lot of coke moving through Texas. If, as authorities estimate, they’re catching 10% of the traffic, that’s a hell of a lot of dope in Texas.
Whoops, forgot about Florida. I guess some of the coke comes in on boats from there. I’ve read about some of those busts, but they don’t seem to be as common as Texas coke busts. I can’t really say for sure. I haven’t met too many people who sell that crap and I don’t want to.
Here in Missouri, I-44 is also a major drug trafficway and the state highway patrol periodically announces big drug busts. In fact, earlier this week, there was a truck pulled over for something routine that turned out to have 14 illegal aliens in it.
Yes, but it’s preferable to go to a qualified plasic surgeon. Just for the insurance purposes.
What?
Anyway, is it just local police? Or is it coordinated with state and federal law enforcement? There could be many different reasons for the traffic stops, I suspect that these stops are not random searches but situations where police have been tipped to look for a specific car, or driver.
The interstate system is a boon to the general public and to law enforcement. It’s easier to watch one interstate highway than it is to watch 100 dirt roads.
Well, Where I live (greater Vancouver area) the popular thing is grow ops. Having them; busting them, wringing your hands about what society is coming to … Marijuana is, arguably, BC’s biggest export crop. So we hear about trafficking rings, grow ops / meth shops, import/export rings, probably every two weeks or so, from one area or another. De rigueur at the water cooler, apparently. Oh, and if you don’t like your neighbour, tell the cops you think he’s got something growing in the basement.
Well, I’m in West Texas on I-20, and we get a bunch here also. One of my neighbors is a cop with the Drug Task Force and gets to drive a black Camero Z-28.
Drug busts? Pfft! Around here, a fish dealer was caught with 200 kg or so of illegally-caught frozen abalone* last week. He was fined upwards of $150,000 IIRC.
That’s about the extent of our large sensational busts here in sunny Western Australia.
Dunno what they’re called overseas. Abalone are highly-regarded species of snail-like marine molluscs. During (highly restricted) abalone season, hundreds of people wade in the ocean around here and pick them off the reefs. Yum.
I used to be the planning director for a small Florida town. I worked closely with the police, so I had free access to the station, a small three-room building. One day, the K9 officer made a routine traffic stop; a Chevrolet Suburban that was driving far below the posted speed limit. He didn’t need the dog, because the fact that there were two scruffy folks driving a new Suburban, along with the stench of a chonger burning away in the ashtray, provided enough evidence to suspect that there was more than what met the eye.
Shortly after the bust, I went over to the PD to help out the chief with a problem he was having with MS Word. Opened the back door to the station, and the smell hit me hard. 400 pounds of primo kindbud, sitting on the counter, waiting to be shipped off to a more secure evidence storage area. Got my picture taken standing next to it, made the usual jokes about taking some to “determine what greenhouse in British Columbia it came from” … good times. Left with my clothes stinking like chronic, which made a questionable impression on visitors to my office later in the day.
The Suburban was a rental car, as was typical with a bigger bust. You can’t seize a vehicle if it doesn’t belong to the trafficers.
