Drone carrying meth crashes in Mexican supermarket parking lot

A drone with six pounds of with illicit methamphetamine crashed Tuesday night near the San Ysidro crossing at Mexico's border with California.

|
(AP Photo/Secretaria de Seguridad Pública Municipal de Tijuana)
A drone loaded with packages containing methamphetamine lies on the ground after it crashed into a supermarket parking lot in the city of Tijuana on Tuesday Jan. 20, 2015. According to police, six packets of the drug, weighing more than six pounds, were taped to the six-propeller remote-controlled aircraft. Authorities are investigating where the flight originated and who was controlling it.

Police in a Mexican border city said Wednesday that a drone overloaded with illicit methamphetamine crashed into a supermarket parking lot.

Tijuana police spokesman Jorge Morrua said authorities were alerted after the drone fell Tuesday night near the San Ysidro crossing at Mexico's border with California.

Six packets of the drug, weighing more than six pounds, were taped to the six-propeller remote-controlled aircraft. Morrua said authorities are investigating where the flight originated and who was controlling it. He said it was not the first time they had seen drones used for smuggling drugs across the border.

Other innovative efforts have included catapults, ultralight aircraft and tunnels.

In April 2014, authorities in South Carolina found a drone outside the fence of a prison that had been carrying cellphones, marijuana and tobacco.

In July 2014, the Latin Times reported that drug trafficking organizations in Mexico are increasingly using drones to transport drugs.

 According to information from an anonymous source within the DEA,the criminal groups have been using this technology since 2011, but recently have developed more intensively to recruit skilled workers.  Drones represent a less expensive way to smuggle drugs compared to tunnels or underwater, plus they can evade detection by radar. 

 The DEA reported that  in 2012 an average of 150 trips were made with drones that crossed the border from Mexico to the United States, in which packets of cocaine and other drugs were transported. Drones have been called the ideal 'drug mules' for the speed and efficiency with which they can transport drugs. The machines have allowed cartels to transport shipments more quickly, with less risk of being caught, allowing them to fund development programs to create their own drones.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Drone carrying meth crashes in Mexican supermarket parking lot
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2015/0122/Drone-carrying-meth-crashes-in-Mexican-supermarket-parking-lot
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe