Some 81 pounds of neatly
wrapped cocaine packages – most of which washed ashore earlier this week in East
End – was burned at the George Town landfill early Friday morning.
The estimated street
value of the cocaine was $2.75 million, according to Royal Cayman Islands Police
Inspector Bennard Ebanks of the Marine Unit.
Also burned at the
landfill was 167 pounds of ganja, along with some small amounts of ecstasy and
methamphetamine (speed). Those drugs were seized in separate operations
Inspector Ebanks said.
RCIPS officers had no
idea where the cocaine packages had come from. Mr. Ebanks said it was likely
that they had been tossed over the side of a watercraft or even from an
airplane.
Police could also not
determine where the wrapped packages might have been intended to be dispersed;
it may not have been intended for Cayman.
The lion’s share of the
cocaine, about 78 pounds, washed ashore in the Eastern Districts Monday night
around 9pm, police said. However, that wasn’t all of it.
“Two weeks ago, we also
had another incident where someone found a package similar to what we found on
Monday,” Mr. Ebanks said. The earlier amount only total three pounds of cocaine,
but police said it was wrapped in similar packaging as the drugs found Monday.
Although it was a small
amount, Mr. Ebanks said it the methamphetamine and ecstasy burned on Friday were
rare finds for the RCIPS.
“It’s still fairly rare
to get ecstasy or meth,” he said. “It’s the first time in a long while that
we’ve had a seizure of it.”
The methamphetamine and
ecstasy destroyed on Friday were used as evidence in court cases. The large
amount of cocaine was destroyed quickly for security reasons, police said.
“We got the drugs off the
street, they’re not going to cause a breakdown among our people and families,”
Mr. Ebanks said.
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