Police going after drug traffickers wrong way

THE EDITOR: For once, I would like the Police Service, the Strategic Services Agency and the other intelligence agencies to use their intelligence to follow the drugs and traffickers they have been monitoring.

Recently, they held a person with marijuana worth over $24 million. There are at least two ways that this should have been, or can still be, played out.

One, follow the drugs (and traffickers) and see to whom and how they were going to be sold. Then they could charge more than the person delivering the drugs and get more people involved behind bars.

Two, see if a deal could be made with the “delivery man” to provide information such as who supplied him with the drugs, who he was going to sell the drugs to, and the other parties in the distribution chain etc.

Again, the police are more likely to get more than just the transporter. If it means making a deal with one person to get five bigger people, that’s the way to go. It’s the bigger picture that counts.

As we all know, drug trafficking is a form of organised crime. It is better to go after more than one person and take down as many as possible when given the opportunity.

The same goes when fields of marijuana are burned and no one is arrested. The authorities must know that people will return to harvest the plants, dry them, package them, transport them, store them etc. It is not a one-man job. If the marijuana fields are properly staked out, they can catch many more people involved in this crime.

The authorities must be more strategic in their fight against drug cultivators and traffickers. They must have the mindset first of all that they must get as many people as possible and don’t be happy with small rewards of burning fields and holding one or two people. Go after the entire network.

It makes me really wonder why these things have not been the standard operating procedure for such raids and arrests. After all, the police said they had been monitoring that one person for weeks. Why haven’t they held others?

KEVIN RAM via e-mail

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"Police going after drug traffickers wrong way"

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