Cops bust driver with bales of weed in back seat
Back in the seventies and eighties marijuana was a major Belizean export, but with the growing demand for cocaine in the States and development of very powerful strains of domestic weed in North America, Belize’s cannabis trade over the last two decades has become more of a local business. The quantities sold can still run large, however, as the latest bust by police demonstrates.
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
We do not know what thirty year old Frank Jacobs was thinking when he decided to pass through the police check point at mile four and a half on the Western Highway with a record load of marijuana on the back seat of this Isuzu Rodeo. According to authorities the SUV arrived at the western check point around nine thirty on Tuesday night and a very alert police officer sense something was amiss.
G. Michael Reid, Police Press Officer
?The driver was acting suspicious. The police questioned the driver and conducted a search of the vehicle which resulted in what we have here. It is quite a substantial amount of marijuana, with fifty-four kilograms or a hundred and twenty eight pounds. We must applaud the police officer of course who was on duty at that time, who did his job and arrested the individual confiscated the drugs and the vehicle. As a result we have him now going to court and facing the justice.?
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
?Do the police believe the drugs were intended for sale??
G. Michael Reid
?At this point that is pure speculation. We think though from the quantity of the drugs it might be for shipment as oppose to local consumption. Although you just never know.?
Jacqueline Godwin
?Do you know where he was coming from??
G. Michael Reid
?We believe it was coming from somewhere from the border. That in fact the marijuana came from across the border, Guatemala, and he just travelled down the Western Highway and was bringing it into Belize City.?
Police Press Officer G. Michael Reid says Jacobs who was the only person inside the vehicle at the time of the incident has been charged with drug trafficking. News Five understands he bought the weed from an unknown person for two thousand dollars.
Authorities say it is not the first time that Jacobs has been arrested for drug trafficking. Meanwhile, off the coast of Barbados a combined British-U.S. operation pursuit has resulted in the arrest of ten suspects and the destruction of what is believed to be five tons of cocaine with a street value of one point two five billion U.S. dollars.
