I met with a friend at a nearby mall yesterday morning. When he had to leave, we approached the place his bike was parked when two police officers came to us, asked for ID and a few questions, then told us they needed us to act at witnesses for an operation they were about to engage on. This is a legitimate procedure and had already happened to me, although for a smaller crime.
Anyway, we agreed. They put us on an unmarked cop car with another policeman and circled around a few times until we parked in front of a hotel. Two of them got off the car and rushed in (gun in hand and equipped with a battering ram, just like in the movies) while we were guarded in the car. Some minutes later, after the scene was secured, one of them came out and asked us to get in.
The hotel room was on the first floor. The door had been breached open and everything within had been searched and turned upside down. A Peruvian man was sitting on one of the beds, handcuffed. We had to be present to watch one of the cops read his rights (to an attorney, to remain silent, guarantee of not being coerced into confessing, and so on). The man received a phone call from "a friend", but wasn't allowed to answer. Police asked him a few questions and kept him in place until an extra car arrived, he was then driven to a police station.
My friend and me stuck around and helped with minor tasks like counting money (under supervision, of course), dictating serial numbers and sorting evidence bags after they'd been sealed. The following items were seized:
- One and a half "bricks" of cocaine, chemically tested on-site and worth $15000 on the black market. The biggest one was stamped and embossed with the image of a black horse, which apparently means it is high-quality.
- The equivalent of some $2100 in local currency.
- Three cell phones.
- Two Ford sedans, including insurance paperwork for one of them.
- The ID of the man's friend, who would allegedly be visiting the hotel soon but never showed up.
No firearms, thankfully. The officer who was in charge of the operation kept getting radio'ed about progress on the nine other locations they were raiding, including a especially successful one on a slum where several arrests were made and twenty kilos of cocaine were seized. They'd been tracking this ring for almost a year, tapping phones and all, and this was the day they'd strike everywhere.
The drug dealer's wife/girlfriend/female partner, who was also involved in selling, showed up at the hotel at some point and was promptly arrested. We had to be there when her rights were read too.
The bust took almost four hours, from when we parked in front of the hotel to when we were allowed to leave. It has yet to show up on the news, I don't know if police are keeping it a secret or simply haven't announced it yet.
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