Agents from the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Task Force and the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics intercepted a UPS package Wednesday with about eight pounds of methamphetamine, according to Sheriff Eddie Hawkins.
The drugs, individually wrapped in large crystals, were put in sealed bags that were then wrapped in electrical tape, Hawkins said. They were in a box that was being shipped to a fictitious address in Monroe County.
“We got (intelligence) that the package was coming,” Hawkins said. “We went out there and found it. A K-9 alerted on it, and we got a search warrant and this is what we found.”
The drugs have a “wholesale value” of about $2,000 per kilo, he said. Eight pounds comes to about 3.6 kilos.
“Once they bag it up and break it down they’ll probably get double that on the streets,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins said he anticipated “some arrests” at a future date.
Shipping drugs through a parcel service or the U.S. Postal Service is not unusual, he said.
“It’s got to get here somehow,” he said. “They’re either driving it or shipping it or mailing it somehow. (Parcel companies) are all legitimate businesses. They’re just moving boxes and they don’t know what’s in them.”
Hawkins wouldn’t comment on how he thought this package specifically was intended to be handled, but did outline some possible scenarios.
“Bad guys are sitting and watching for the truck, and they’ll flag it down and sign for it right there,” Hawkins said. “Sometimes after an attempted delivery they call the driver to meet them somewhere else and receive it there.
“The thing about this is that it’s just one package we’ve intercepted,” he added. “How many are coming through that we’re not getting, and this kind of dope is getting on the street?”
Meth is “the drug of choice right now” for the state, Hawkins said.
“It typically comes from Mexico,” he said. “Ten years ago the predominant type of meth we saw was homemade.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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