drug bust examples

February 1, 2011 8:19 AM

I am looking for an example of a drug bust for which the police uncovered a pattern of drug shipments not just uncovered one shipment. I am interested in looking at a pattern of drug transportation in which I can know approximately when drugs where delivered over a period of time.

For example, the coast guard suspected that the same ship was suspected of making drug deliveries over a period of time so they tracked the ship and eventually stopped it an found drugs on it (but not until after it delivered drugs for a while). Or a gang was arrested for transporting drugs the same way for a period of time and the police eventually caught on.

posted by bucksox to Law & Government (2 answers total)

Check PACER. You can search pretty much every document related to every court case. Poke around for larger drug busts and you're likely to turn up something.

Note that PACER isn't technically free, just practically so. The charge is $0.08 a page, up to $2.40 per document. But if you use less than $10 a quarter, they'll waive it.
posted by valkyryn at 12:12 PM on February 1, 2011

Pacer's not that great for finding the right case though, and you can run up a big bill indulging your curiosity. Not that this ever happens to me of course. I'd suggest starting with the news releases on the DHS and DEA websites to identify cases that involved a good deal of surveillance over a period of time - they should stand out somewhat since the whole point of allowing the criminal activity to continue is to nab a 'big fish.'

Then Pacer will have all the public evidence, but to avoid running up big charges for even single documents I'd first look at Justia.com or RECAP.
posted by anigbrowl at 12:23 AM on February 3, 2011