Drug bust in Bocas

A sport fisher boat, maybe 40 ft, came into the marina the other day. This was strange as there are really no fish on the Atlantic side of Panama. A few days later there was a policeman, then Jennie and I met a friendly national policeman, carry an assault riffle as we walked to the showers at night. It takes some seriously bad stuff to get a policeman out of Bocastown. It took 8 hrs for them to respond to a rape and burglary 2 minutes by boat away.

We sent an email asking if there was something up. Not being notified (send an email) that there would be police walking the dock with assault riffles, we were a bit concerned. The new manager came up and said nothing was going on, the police were investigating a boat, but they knew no more. OK, we may be young, but we are not stupid.

I would suggest for next time an email sent out from the highest level of management at the resort (to empasize the severity), going something like this.

Dear Marina Tenants,

The DIJ iscurrently undergoing an investigation at Red Frog Marina. To our knowledge it is of the utmost importance to the DIJ. We will be sectioning off a portion of the marina for your safety. Please be aware that there will be armed DIJ officers patroling the marina. If you have any concerns please feel free to contact the marina office.

We thank you for your patience and understanding,

Marina Management

The police were camped out all night, and in the afternoon almost 20 showed up. They started to unload little brown paper bricks with red tape around them. So apparently there was 633 kilos of cocaine on the boat. They had run into transmission issues and had to come in for repairs. Oops, next time use a sailboat I guess. So the National Police took the drugs. As sourced from the Economist magazine, at $120 per gram in the US (and remember this is pure cocaine vs the stuff that is probably cut with other stuff in the US), that makes just over $75 000 000 in cocaine. Maybe next time hire a better mechanic.

If the managers weren't such dicks to us lately I would feel really bad about the unfortunate events they have had recently. Not much you can do in this situation, but man for $75 million dollars a shoot out could have easily happened. Yikes. I think it is best to just tell people what is going on and air on the side of caution. Can you imagine if bullets started flying and people were not warned, we could have at least gone on anchor, or they could have removed the boat sooner. Or even maybe section off an area as a crime scene. Scary stuff.

Sources:

Decomisan 633 kilos de presunta cocaína en velero en Bocas del Toro - TVN Panamá Movil http://shar.es/cqiDJ

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