POLICE SLOW HIGHWAY DRUG FLOW
April 19, 1999
From The Topeka Capital-Journal
letters@cjnetworks.com
http://cjonline.com/
By Kevin Bates, The Capital-Journal (kevinbjournalist@hotmail.com)

Kansas law enforcement officers are making a dent—though perhaps a small one—in the amount of drugs flowing across the state’s highways.

Since the beginning of 1993, the Kansas Highway Patrol’s drug interdiction efforts have intercepted nearly 64,000 pounds of marijuana, more than 4,200 pounds of cocaine, almost 200 pounds of methamphetamine and about $9 million in cash.

See
Forfeiture as Enterprise By Kay Lee
and
HOW THE NARCS CREATED CRACK by Richard C. Cowan
The Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department drug interdiction unit, formed just more than two years ago, also has shown its ability to take drugs off the streets. The two officers in the unit have confiscated about 750 pounds of marijuana, about 20 pounds of methamphetamine and 41/2 pounds of cocaine, along with nearly $80,000 in cash.

Officers in each agency know their efforts are blocking only a small percentage of the drugs flowing through Kansas each year. And while it is difficult to get a handle on how heavy the drug traffic is, officers say most of it probably gets through unfettered.

"The rule of thumb has been that once law enforcement takes more than 10 percent of the drugs off the street, the drug organizations start getting worried and become a threat to us," KHP Lt. Kirk Simone said. "I don’t think we’re at 10 percent yet. We’re getting a small percentage, but we’re getting a lot more than we were 16 to 17 years ago."

(Marijuananews note: They don't know what percentage they are getting now, and they did not know what percentage they were getting them. All they know is that they are getting more volume. They have been doing this for decades and the problem is getting worse. This is real progress.)

The KHP on April 5 made the second-largest seizure in its history when two troopers stopped a U-Haul van carrying 1,015 pounds of marijuana that had been bundled and packed in wooden crates hidden beneath furniture and appliances.

The next day on the Kansas Turnpike, sheriff’s department deputies seized 55 pounds of marijuana hidden in a vehicle’s gas tank. Papers inside the vehicle led the deputies to believe the drugs were being transported from Chihuahua, Mexico.
(Marijuananews note: Last year over 900,000 pounds of marijuana were seized at the Mexican border. If it weren’t for marijuana prohibition what would they do?)

See
Run For Your Lives! "US Says Drugs, Terror Pouring In From Canada"!
Or, The Problems Of Living Next To A Superpower Run By Narcs.
"That’s pretty typical, pretty average for interstate transportation," said one sheriff’s department drug interdiction unit deputy, who didn’t want his name used because of the undercover nature of his work.

"We can’t know for sure how much is passing through town, because we’re not on the inside of the drug trade, but 10 percent is probably pretty close," he said. "We really have no way of knowing if we’re catching one out of 10 or one out of 50, but we do know that it’s going down the road every day."

Each sheriff’s drug interdiction unit deputy spends about 60 percent of his time looking for traffic violators and drug smugglers on the highways—Interstate 70, the turnpike, US-75 and US-40, in addition to the less traveled city and county roads. When one of the deputies stops a vehicle for a traffic violation, he usually can tell from a short conversation if there is reason to think the driver has something to hide.

"Your suspicion either grows or declines," the other interdiction deputy said. "You just ask more questions. There are people who try to buffalo us, but we try to keep our skills honed so we can identify deception."