Criminology and Psychology

Fifty-nine-year-old citizen of the United States of America is presently in police custody after a quantity of cocaine was discovered in her hand luggage.The incident occurred at around 08:45 hrs yesterday, at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, as the woman was about to board a flight back to her homeland.According to a police press release, a check by ranks revealed that a total of 1kg. 235 grams of suspected cocaine was concealed in the checked luggage and hand piece of the woman’s luggage. The woman’s daughter, Petal Caesar, told Kaieteur News that her mother received a call from a friend in the US on Saturday night, asking her to carry up her (the caller) son’s photo album.The son and daughter-in-law of the woman who made the request both came to the home and dropped off the album.She explained that, “My mother just took the album and placed it in her granddaughter’s suitcase, since her own was filled.” The daughter said that she did not accompany her mother to the airport, bu...

Arrest of three Guyanese on Saturday, including a brother and sister, in Trinidad with various amounts of cocaine. Officials in Trinidad have confirmed that they have held a Guyanese taxi driver after cocaine was found in the walls of his suitcase. They have also held a Florida-based real estate broker and his sister who had the illegal drug strapped to their bodies.The suspects arrived in Trinidad on Saturday, and were in-transit to other destinations when they were apprehended.According to a source in the twin-island republic, at about 07:50 hours, the 34-year-old Guyanese taxi driver was about to board BW 416 en route to St. Maarten when officers from the Organized Crime, Narcotics and Firearms Bureau of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Force, who were on patrol at the airport, carried out a search of his luggage. During the search, 2.6 kilograms of cocaine, with a street value of TT$1M, were discovered.He was charged for possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. And, seve...

Troopers say they stopped Jose Antonio Avianeda Bahena, 23, of Brevard, N.C., on Sunday after watching him follow another car too closely and seeing his brake light was out. Troopers say a police dog sniffing around the car jumped through an open window to reach the car's center console. Underneath the console were 12 bundles of cocaine, weighing more than 26 pounds, police said. Bahena is being held in the St. Francis County Jail on charges of defective equipment, felony possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver and felony possession of drug paraphernalia.

15-member crew of a South African Airways jetliner was arrested today at London's Heathrow Airport after border agents found 110 pounds of marijuana and about 10 pounds of cocaine in three suitcases, AFP reports. The crew — 10 women and five men, including the pilot — was detained while passing through a customs checkpoint, shortly after landing on the flight from Johannesburg. The pot was valued at $210,000 and the coke roughly $320,000."Interviews will be taking place and will probably go into tomorrow, and then we will decide whether we are going to charge anyone," a Revenue and Customs spokesman said.

Moorhead authorities seized $2,000 worth of white heroin, a semiautomatic handgun and $2,600 in an investigation that also led to the arrest of four people. A traffic stop in the 1800 block of 20th Street South in Moorhead late Thursday led to the seizure of 41 bindles of white heroin, which is similar in appearance to a powder cocaine and very rare in the region, Moorhead Lt. Brad Penas said. Black tar heroin is more common in the area, he said. During the traffic stop, police arrested Alfredo Portales, 32, believed to be from Wisconsin, and Reva Martinez, 30, of an unknown address, according to a news release. Portales is being held on suspicion of first-degree possession of a controlled substance and felon in possession of a firearm. Martinez is being held on suspicion of first-degree possession of a controlled substance.A search warrant was then executed, resulting in the seizure of three-quarters of a pound of marijuana and a small amount of white heroin. That led to the arrest of...

27-foot boat and two men with suspicious answers. A dog sniffed, the men rolled and authorities soon had a cocaine conspiracy. Palm Beach police learned of a Wellcraft boat arriving from the Bahamas through the Palm Beach Inlet, according to an arrest affidavit released Thursday by the U.S. Attorney's Office.Palm Beach officers stopped the boat shortly after 8 p.m. Boat operator Calvin Roberts, 34, from the Bahamas, told them the vessel belonged to a friend and they were taking it to Riviera Beach to have work done. But he didn't know his friend's last name. Phillip Curry, 30, also from the Bahamas, said he was just along to shop, but he had no money or credit cards, the report said.A drug-sniffing dog led officers to a hidden cabinet holding 37 kilogram-sized bags of cocaine. Another 51 bags were found elsewhere on the boat. Roberts told U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that he was to get $2,000 and was given a phone numbe...

Leroy Carr first came to the attention of federal agents at the Washington-Canadian border after being spotted with equipment commonly used by smugglers, including night-vision goggles and a Global Positioning System device.According to the U.S. Attorney's office, in August of 2007 Carr called federal agents and told them he had stashed two backpacks containing nearly 70 pounds of cocaine near the border. Agents say Carr wanted them to send a press release saying the cocaine had been seized, so that the smuggling ring he worked for would not retaliate against him for stealing the cocaine. Those backpacks were later found by a Boy Scout.The 47-year-old was sentenced by Judge Ricardo Martinez in U.S District Court in Seattle on Friday.

Philadelphia police say they've arrested three people who were trafficking 68 kilograms of cocaine.Deputy Commissioner Bill Blackburn says the cocaine was hidden inside furniture that was filled a rental truck. Police stopped the truck Friday afternoon in the Juniata Park neighborhood of Philadelphia and got a search warrant. In addition to the cocaine, Blackburn says police seized three handguns and "an undetermined amount of U.S. currency."Blackburn says investigators are still trying to determine the real names of the three people arrested. He says city police will ask federal authorities to take over the investigation.

Customs say they have disrupted a tobacco smuggling ring after they executed search and seizure warrants in Perth.Investigations began on December 19 when Customs officers at the Fremantle Container Examination Facility selected a container from the United Arab Emirates for inspection.When officers unpacked the container they detected 24kg of undeclared molasses-flavoured tobacco.The tobacco was found in six boxes labelled as tomato paste and randomly distributed throughout the cargo container. Each box contained eight 500g satchels of the tobacco.Customs investigators then carried out search and seizure warrants in Malaga, Marangaroo and Mirrabooka where they found another 16kg of flavoured tobacco.Customs National Manager of Investigations Richard Janeczko said he believed this was a "brazen attempt" to avoid paying more than $20,000 in legitimate Commonwealth revenue. "In addition to the evasion of duty, tobacco that has been illegally imported is unlikely to meet the...

A man has been arrested in Dublin following the seizure of heroin with an estimated street value of €100,000.A garda spokesman said the heroin was seized following the search of a building in the Benburb St area of Dublin late last night.The man in his early 40s is currently being detained at Store Street Garda station.

Edmonton-based Lebanese gang set up a staffing system similar to that used by oil rigs and diamond mines, where teams of two dealers would rotate into Iqaluit every six weeks, typically importing a half million dollars in product each time and exporting a similar quantity of cash on the way out.RCMP Constable James Morrison, one of the lead investigators, said there was no crack in Iqaluit before the gang hit town. Soon, local residents were burning through their life's savings to pay the steep price of $200 per 0.8-gram hit, and some turned to crime to feed their habit, he said. Customers ran the gamut from well-paid professionals to the poor and vulnerable living on social assistance."The North is relatively untouched when it comes to gang turf in the drug trade, unlike the South, which tends to be carved up between established organized crime groups," Constable Morrison explained. With high profit margins and no costly violence associated with competition, Nunavut was ...