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Mar 27, 2008 6:16 pm US/Eastern
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Coast Guard Crew Seizes 1.6 Tons Of Coke
FT. LAUDERDALE (CBS4) ―
Move over McGruff – a Coast Guard Dolphin and Bear have taken the latest 'bite out of crime'.
Thursday at Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale, crewmembers from the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bear unloaded more 32-hundred pounds of cocaine which was seized during a recent drug enforcement operation.
A Coast Guard C-130 Hercules airplane, based out of Clearwater, was on patrol in the Western Caribbean on March 18th when its crew spotted what they termed "a suspicious go fast vessel." As the crew tracked the boat from the air and called for back up, those on the boat tried to escape at a high rate of speed.
The Coast Guard Cutter Bear, which was tasked with stopping the boat, launched its MH-65C Dolphin helicopter and one of the cutter's small boats with a law-enforcement team onboard.
As the Coast Guard chopper and intercept boat closed in on the go fast boat, the smugglers began dumping bales overboard as they sped away in the opposite direction. The crew of the Dolphin fired several warning shots and tried to disable the go fast boat, but the smugglers eventually got away.
In the meantime, the crew from the Bear pulled 50 bales of cocaine from the sea; estimated value - $100 million.
"We are proud to have served on the front line of the U.S. Counter Narco-Terrorism efforts over the past two months, and are pleased to have kept more than 3,200 pounds of pure cocaine off the streets of America," said Cmdr. Raymond W. Pulver, commanding officer of the Cutter Bear
In 2007, Coast Guard crews seized a record 4.7 billion worth of cocaine.
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