The Hammond Police Department said the aircraft landed at the Hammond Northshore Regional Airport Wednesday evening. The department said it had received a tip that the plane was heading from California to Miami with a load of illegal drugs.
Police surveilled the landing strip and moved on the private jet after it stopped to fuel up. After getting permission to search the aircraft, officers found duffel bags and suitcases full of suspected marijuana, marijuana vape cartridges and pre-rolled marijuana cigars.
The department estimated the street value of the drugs to be around $750,000 in total. The plane, a Learjet 55, was also seized by the district attorney's office and is pending forfeiture. The total value of the seized items was said to be more than $1.6 million.
A passenger, identified as 40-year-old Leonard Lopez of Miami, was arrested. The two pilots of the aircraft were interviewed and released.
Pot busts are still a thing?
ReplyDeleteIt is if it's in large numbers like this and you aren't registered as a pot dealer in states where it is legal. Drug running never went away. Land, sea, or air as in this case. The old way of flying drugs into the US was low over the Gulf of Mexico through either Texas or through the Caribbean. The modern way is flying an empty mule out of Mexico up the West coast to SoCal or even further north (the further away from the Texas border the safer for them). From there, the drugs already in the US that made it across the (open) border at various staging locations are loaded there on a filed flight and flown to any FBO in the US without any worry and dispersed to distributors. Pull up ADSBEX at any given time of the day and see how many legit bizjet flights go in and out of Mexico daily.
DeleteAnd will be too, just like hauling large amounts of tobacco or liquor over state lines is. The taxman cometh.
DeleteWhy not ? It's an illegal drug - and illegal drugs have no business in an airplane or anyone's body.
DeleteInhaling a foreign substance into the lungs that has an temporary effect on the brain is not a good idea and it is a poor personal choice for people to make.
ReplyDeleteThose that regularly use cannabis are adamant it is not addiction but they will do just about anything for a joint or a fix.
It is a money maker for governments and investors and that is the only reason the destructive effects are brushed over or ignored.
Users will be the losers in the long run.
Mostly black folks and Mexicans smoked it back in the day.
Now we are normalizing drug use. First, we normalized same sex marriage, we normalize transgenderism, now this. On sports tv we see an ESPN anchor revel over two women elbowing each other inside a cage and a man beating a downed opponent into "submission" We are becoming Sodom and Gomorrah.
Truth.
DeletePeople choose to believe a lie, and they are given over to their error.
N95JN. Lear 35A.
ReplyDelete“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” ― Theodore Dalrymple
ReplyDeleteInteresting scenario to think about if the pilots were truly uninvolved.
ReplyDeleteYou go to pick up a passenger, he has a huge number of cases and duffels. Do you ask what he is hauling or hope for the best?
TSA training for Commercial pilots as well as the commercial syllabus encourage PICs to be very wary of accepting luggage with no passengers. If this guy was not involved and still chose to conduct the (expensive) flight of this many bags, he is, IMHO, too incompetent to continue to hold his certificate.
DeleteThen again, it's a free country. I just hope he and his ilk keep out of my personal airspace.
The man who was arrested was the passenger, not one of the pilots. Maybe the two pilots made the tipoff call based on the excessive luggage and that is why they were released after questioning.
DeleteThe cartels have modified marijuana to create higher highs which is manipulating that female plant. There's karma kickback for abusing mother nature. How it CONTROLS MANIPULATES YOUR MIND TO DO STUPID TO GET IT! Marijuana, drugs, alcohol and porn biggest weapons of the devil. They steal your freedom, liberty because that's what the devil is all about STEALING FREEDOM, killing destroying others lives AND YOUR LIFE. And after the devil influences you to spill blood then devil ready to FINISH YOU OFF because the devil will never share its podium! It's God or Nothing! PICK! AND . . CHOOSE WISELY!!
ReplyDelete