About a month ago, the Ministry of Public Safety in Costa Rica issued a press release that indicated no more cocaine would be sent to Miami, at least for the time being. That statement, however, did not apparently extend to other major cities in the State of Florida, such as Jacksonville.
Nearly a ton of cocaine seized by the United States Navy and Coast Guard from a fishing vessel (FV) registered in Costa Rica has reached the Sunshine State, and is now safely in the hands of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The initial incident was closely reported by the Costa Rica Star, and it prompted the U.S. Embassy in San Jose to issue a couple of clarifications via Twitter updates and a telephone call.
In early August 2013, the FV Capitan Erson was taken in tow by the missile frigate USS Rentz (FFG-46) and ultimately sunk, but not before a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment Team (LEDET) boarded the fishing boat. The LEDET found numerous bundles of cocaine hydrochloride in powder form below deck, stowed in the fish hold of the Erson. The reported amount was 963 kilos of flake. Two men from Costa Rica and one from Nicaragua were taken into custody. The incident took place near the Galapagos Archipelago.
Aside from the sinking of the Erson, the U.S. Navy ran into a couple of mishaps; the most significant being not being able to dock in Puntarenas due to a lack of a permit from the legislature in Costa Rica to do so. That SNAFU was eventually cleared, and on September 8th, the USS Rentz finally delivered the suspects and left a small sample of the confiscated drugs for the prosecutors in Costa Rica to use as evidence against the crew of the sunk Erson.
What happened next comes from news releases published on the U.S. Navy website of the USS Rentz:
The USS Rentz continued her duties as part of Operation Martillo, a multinational maritime drug interdiction effort in the Pacific Coast off Central America and the Caribbean.
By September 10th, the crew of the USS Rentz had probably grown trigger-anxious. According to the U.S. Navy:
The crew of Rentz fired both their 76mm MK 75 main cannon battery and .50 caliber machine guns against a remote controlled unmanned surface target simulating a small, fast boat approaching the ship in a hostile manner.
A day later, the USS Rentz conducted replenishment at sea Sept. 11 with the Canadian supply ship HMCS Preserver (AOR 510). The Supply Officer of the U.S. Navy frigate stated that:
“The Canadians made everything simple by breaking down the entire process from how to request the fuel replenishment all the way down to making payment and documentation,”
Days later, the U.S. Navy provided the photograph in this article with the following caption:
The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Rentz (FFG-46) and its embarked Coast Guard law enforcement detachment transferred $78 Million in confiscated cocaine to the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Forward (WMEC 911) in the Western Caribbean Sea while assigned to the U.S. 4th Fleet.
The following report comes from the online edition of Jacksonville’s very own Florida Times-Union, a major newspaper in the Sunshine State:
About a ton of cocaine seized by the U.S. Coast Guard in the Pacific Ocean made it to shore Friday, but not where its smuggler owners wanted.
Instead, hundreds of seized burlap-wrapped packages with an estimated street value of $78 million ended up on a Mayport Naval Station dock.
As to why 2,123 pounds of cocaine was transported to Mayport instead of a Pacific U.S. port, Forward Capt. Greg Wisener said that is “where the DEA wanted the drugs to go.” The Forward, based in Portsmouth, Va., was involved in its own counter-drug patrol and war games in the Caribbean when the Navy asked for help bringing the drugs to Mayport.
“We traded them off in the Caribbean and brought them back here for the DEA,” Wisener said.
A few weeks ago, the Costa Rica Star published Snow Job: U.S. Air Force Flies Cocaine from Costa Rica to Miami. On that article, we reported on the story broken by online news daily CRHoy.com about a C-17 Globemaster that landed at the Daniel Oduber International Airport (LIR) in Liberia to airlift nearly 40 tons of cocaine. The destination of the aircraft was Miami, and the drugs were flown for destruction.
Days after Snow Job, the Costa Rica Star expanded on the story and quoted a statement by the Ministry of Public Safety that such an operation would not be conducted again, at least not involving the U.S. Air Force flying cocaine to Miami. Just like the USS Rentz, the C-17 Globemaster lacked legislative approval to enter Costa Rica, although the missile frigate eventually obtained the docking permit through a majority vote at the National Assembly.
Article by Costa Rica Star
