Cocaine worth $3m seized in Freeport chase

Po­lice seized more than $3 mil­lion worth of co­caine fol­low­ing a ve­hi­cle in­ter­cep­tion ex­er­cise in Freeport ear­ly to­day.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­port­ed that of­fi­cers re­cov­ered 72 pack­ages of co­caine af­ter a co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tion along Roops­ingh Road and Joyce Road South around 12.00 a.m.

The ex­er­cise, led by ACP An­tho­ny Re­my, co­or­di­nat­ed by Snr Supt Rudolph Bhag­wan­deen, and su­per­vised by Supt Frank and ASP Mark Her­nan­dez, be­gan af­ter of­fi­cers at­tached to the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion act­ed on a hot pur­suit trans­mis­sion.

Po­lice en­gaged a sil­ver Nis­san B15 mo­tor ve­hi­cle, with the pur­suit co­or­di­nat­ed by the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre and of­fi­cers of the Freeport High­way Pa­trol. The chase end­ed when the ve­hi­cle stopped abrupt­ly at the end of the road­way.

One male oc­cu­pant ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle and ran in­to near­by bush­es, evad­ing cap­ture de­spite search op­er­a­tions by of­fi­cers of the Ch­agua­nas CID, Cou­va CID and Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force.

Of­fi­cers searched the ve­hi­cle and found one black garbage bag and two white bags con­tain­ing mul­ti­ple pack­ages of a white pow­dery sub­stance re­sem­bling co­caine.

A fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion at the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion re­vealed 23 in­di­vid­u­al­ly wrapped pack­ages in one bag, 25 in a sec­ond bag and 24 in a third bag.

Po­lice said the 72 pack­ages had a to­tal weight of 77.81 kilo­grammes and an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $3.1 mil­lion.

Dur­ing the search, of­fi­cers al­so found a wal­let con­tain­ing sev­er­al forms of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and of­fi­cial doc­u­ments, which po­lice said pro­vid­ed strong leads in­to the iden­ti­ty of the sus­pect linked to the in­ci­dent.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.