FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — More than 26 tons of cocaine was moved ashore Thursday in Florida from multiple recent seizures by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Navy in the eastern Pacific.
Coast Guard officers said at a news conference Thursday that the drugs taken to Fort Lauderdale came from 27 separate vessel interdictions and five bale-recovery operations off Central and South America over the past three months.
Pallets containing the drugs, many wrapped in brightly colored plastic and some bearing labels such as “white sugar” or “pork,” covered the entire flight deck of the 418-foot Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton.
Vice Adm. Karl Schultz, Coast Guard commander in the Atlantic, said the seizures are part of an effort to target vessels carrying cocaine north by sea from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia before the loads reach land and are divided up into much smaller amounts for smuggling into the U.S. and Canada.
Cocaine seizures at sea result in three times more drugs intercepted than all U.S. landbased law enforcement efforts combined, Schultz added.
“When we interdict drugs at sea, they are large quantities,” he said. “That’s kind of the impact of doing this at sea.”
Authorities say about 100 suspected smugglers were detained in the various interdictions. Some are being prosecuted in South Florida, one reason the Hamilton carried the cocaine to Port Everglades. The Hamilton, a national security cutter, is based in Charleston, S.C.
Commodore Craig Baines, commander of the Royal Canadian Naval Atlantic Fleet, said two British Columbia-based vessels were responsible for seizing more than 3,000 pounds of the cocaine offloaded Thursday as part of the joint operations.
In the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Schultz said, similar operations at sea resulted in the seizure of more than 221 tons of cocaine and numerous arrests. The cocaine brought ashore Thursday represents 75 percent of the drugs seized so far this fiscal year, he said.
Hamilton Capt. Scott Clendenin said the smugglers are constantly changing tactics, such as using submarinelike vessels that operate just beneath the waves.