Another sad commentary on the continuing story of drugs in the DR. sounds to me it may hve been a trap!!

When I read this type of news I always wonder if the victim was in somehow involved/benefiting from his position. Anyway, It's sad anyway.

im problably related to this man how can i find out?

this is very sad that its going on maybe they need to get more organized

Tougher punishment for drug trafficked is need and a better equipped and trained police force to minimize the deaths of the GOOD GUYS - 22 agents or so have perished recently in the fight against drugs in the Dominican Republic... This tells me something about our system [there are still decent people]

to DanDr... what are you stating when you say the words benefiting from his position???... because this man was my uncle and my role model one of the few ppl in the WORLD who i can say took this job because it made him proud to know that he can do something to help out... to us it runs in the blood of the family and it really bothers me to see somebody misjudge him like that... only God can judge, and it was meant to stay that way...

Legalize Drugs and this stuff would not happen.

Melim, although you are probably the most saddened and I am sorry for your loss, DanDr was not saying something out of the ordinary. He did not know this man and neither did we, it was just a possibility he pointed out, that's all. But thank you for clearing things up for us since you knew him personally. Again, sorry for your loss.

Ladronel...that's an extremely stupid thing to say. Do you have any idea what drugs do to people physically? if you were joking...this was not the place to say something as stupid as that.

So you want to tell me which drugs I can use. Mind your own business. Next you will tell me my wife can not have an Abortion.

Punishment should fit the crime, death penalty should be granted for those criminals who murded Police Officers.

When I read this type of news I always come to the same question: Who leads this country and who is responsible for all?

This sure looks like a setup assassination. God bless him and his family.

@melimnr414: I was not pointing directly to this man, I didn't know him so I can't judge. I was referring to a lot of people that are tied to the govnmt and are linked to drugs or criminal activities. Sorry if I was misunderstood, no harm intended.

@LADRONELyPENA: I bet that you would be happy if your kids came home and sniffed some cocaine right? Cause if people abuse drugs when they're illegal, just wait till they are perfectly ok to use anytime anywhere.

@danidr: so you think if drug is legalize more ppl would use it. would you?i have never used illigal drug, ppl who dont use drug wont use it regarless if the`re illigal or not. and by the way alchohol, there are some legal drugs that have worst side effect than marijuana. let ppl do what they want to do with their life. if they want to use it let them. when it comes to young kids parents have all the responsability on them, send them to good school!!! my parents influence help me to not fall in the path of drugs, and i live in ny there is drug everywhere in the heights. peple shold be responsible for their own actions.

Well, my opinion is that if drugs are legalized, the presence of it would be more. People tend to fall on what they think is cool or they see all the time. That's one of the reasons cigars are so widespread. You know, one day you're with friends and they offer you, "cmon, try it, it's just this time, nothing will happen"... I'm like you jeff, I wouldn't fall for it, i'm clear on that. But there are many people that are not so clear and end up falling.

actually DaniDr, i defy you to show me any study which shows that if drugs are more available, the use will be more widespread. as to using cigarettes as an example, it is beyond laughable. you can buy cigarettes legally in the dominican republic in any colmado, and very cheaply. yet my experience definitively indicates that dominicans use cigarettes on a very limited basis. i have a lot of dominican friends, and i can count on the fingers of one hand the number of my friends who smoke. i feel like a priah when i am among them, because, as a smoker, i am constantly having to isolate myself when i smoke so as not to discomfort them. the fact is that legal or illegal, we have a drug problem, which is not being solved by the current resolution regimen. when an infection does not respond to an antibiotic, the answer is not to keep prescribing it, hoping for different results; that is a fools errand! the major social problems of drug usage are visited upon us in the form of externalities

not the least of which is crime caused by the street value of the commodity, which is occasioned by its illegal nature. nobody can show me ONE study to prove that a person who smokes a joint is a greater danger to society than the guy who imbibes a case of beer and gets behind the wheel of a car. the fact of the matter is that all the people who are predisposed to doing drugs can get their drug of choice, illegal though they may be. and NO, there is no such thing as a subpopulation who waits with bated breath for the legalisation of drugs, so that they can run out to buy some heroin and a syringe. to assert that idea is infantile. and lets not forget, there are just as many legal hallucinogenic drugs as there are street drugs; just ask Rush Limbaugh where you can get some. the basic reason why marijuana is illegal is because the major drug companies have no patent on it, and cannot reap all the profits from its sale. they dont mind if you want to get high, they just want their share

of the deal! they dont want guys planting marijuana in flower pots in the backyard when they have spent billions of research dollars developing oxycontin. people in the usa are getting high on just about everything that can be ingested; they sniff glue, paint, and all manner of aerosols. matbe we should devise a way of making those substances illegal,too!

Dreadlocks, I agree with your comments, but I still wouldn't just legalize drugs. More has to be done to inform people, and specially to motivate the parents. Nowadays it seems parents don't care at all about what their kids do.

while we are on the topic of illegal drugs, the Mitchell Report, listing the names of major league baseball players accused of using performance enhancing steroids, came out today. i am proud to see that very few dominicans have been implicated in the scandal. it appears that the dominican stars have all excelled because of talent and application, not by looking for unfair advantages. POLITICIANS, PLEASE TAKE NOTE!!!

thanks for your reply, DaniDr, but there are parents all over the world who are trying to dissuade their children from involvement in the drug issue, with little results. you see, there are parents who have to dissuade their children from USING drugs, but there are also those who have to persuade their children not to SELL drugs. in an environment wherein drugs are illegal, there is tons of money involved in its purveyance, even at the street level.in our extremely materialistic and unequal society, it is pretty difficult for the mother of an adolescent son, who has no education, no job and no visible source of support, to ask him not to sell drugs. he sees his peers driving by in the Lexus, and he is going home to a bowl of chicken noodle soup,if mother still has some in the cupboard. either he has to get a pistol and rob people, or he is going to sell drugs. i do not postulate that those are the only options, but in his mind they are!

Try Holland. Crime because of drugs nada. And if is illegal- I want it!

melimnr414 im very sorry for what happened but im interested to find out if we are related im also a montero please write me at kdceazpromotions@aol.com

i started this thing and boy the strings sure went off in a tangent,legal, illegal, holland and baseball. this is not the story.. the story is what has happened to the dominican people, their everyday life is consumed by the corruption that benefits from this illegal trade. people dying in the streets, shoot -outs, barrio murders, government oficials assissinated. i'd like to know how Quirno, now in N.Y could fly his helicopter up and down the Duarte Highway with impunity and everyone in santiago knew who it was

well Blanco, next time you START A THREAD, maybe you can adumbrate for the rest of us the parameters within which you would like the discourse to be framed. to my limited way of thinking, illuminating the subject from a standpoint of legality, illegality, and modalities in other countries is not tangential! legality and illegality are the gravamen of any discussion on drugs; had it not been for the fact that drugs are contraband, they would not have such high street value. if they did not have such high street value, criminal types would have no interest in the enterprise. no criminal types means no crime. no crime means that a young 38 year old man with probably a significant other ( wife or girlfriend) and children, does not end up being cut down in the prime of his life by reptilians trying to expedite a delivery of merchandise. i remain bemused by the fact that you can read the threads to which you allude and find them to be irrelevant!

you see, Blanco, i am just as angry as you or the next guy. because of our geographic location, we are favorably placed in the transport routes for drugs originating in south america and headed to the principal market, the usa. secondly, because of the legendary propensity of people in high places to accept bribes to turn blind eyes, we have now become one of the eyes in this miserable hurricane. from a selfish standpoint, i dont like the fact that i can no longer stay out later than 10pm, because of a breakdown in security everywhere; but my inconvenience pales in comparison to the consequences suffered by the honest few who try to do their jobs with dignity; i can guarantee that a great number of them are dying because they are being set-up by co-workers. but we are all the victims of a failed set of policies inflicted upon the americas by the united states. this whole subject has to be revisited, as it will only get worse.

and lastly, whoever wrote this article needs to do a better job next time, because it leaves out some extremely crucial bits of information. we would like to know the identity of the deceased perpetrator, and whether he was a dominican or a foreign national. secondly, we need to know what happened to the drugs in question. it would be nice to know if the drugs were impounded,or if the survivors managed to flee with the cargo. lastly, the article states that SOME of the traffickers managed to escape. we know that one was killed, but we would like to know about the fate of the survivors who did not escape. with spotty information like we have from this article, people will be justified in speculating that this could have been something sinister, such as an inside job FRIENDLY FIRE situation, if you get my drift!!!

this is why i have my doubts; the dominican drug authotities were operating on information they received from a snitch( confidential informant) they knew WHERE the drug drop was going to go down. they knew WHEN the drop was happening. i find it hard to believe that somebody who knew that much about the drop beforehand( the snitch) did not tell them how much of a force they were going to be up against. if they did know this, i find it difficult to believe that DNCD did not arrive with an overwhelming array of force, to either wipe out the druggies or at least prevent escape, by blocking off all escape routes. lastly, i find it strange that even with prior information, DNCD walked into an ambush; i would think that they should have been the ones setting the ambush!!!

In my humble opinion, a legalization of the drug trade and its usage would only lead to an increase of drug related crimes, my reasoning being the following: on the part of the supply, if the trade is made legal, more people would try to enter this "business", something that the existing "merchants" would frown upon, which would lead to a significant rise in the number of gang wars for the control of existing "drug posts" on the part of these suppliers. On the part of the demand, a legalized consumption would lead to an increase in its appeal on the youth (some of which would try to use them just to be "en la moda" or "in"), the increase on the demand would lead to a scarcity of some of the drugs, which would lead to an increase in their price, making the likelihood of their entering the ranks of street gangs to acquire them a certainty. I agree with mr. dreadlocks that a reform of the armed forces is a desperate need on these times, (cont...)

(cont...) because the country can not hope to match the traffickers unsavory tactics and speedy mobility with armed forces operating on a Trujillo-like mindset of always seeing the common citizen as "the enemy", a thing that is always struck home by the skillful use that these traffickers do on the manipulation of the very flaw that have always plagued our armed forces since their foundation: their hopeless venality. A thing that can't be helped, since the economical structure of the country dictates that its countryside youth, in order to escape poverty by "legal" means, has either to enrole itself in the army or the church, in the hopes that the venality of these institutions may allow him to enrich himself quickly.

my concern, fellow posters, is the assertion that these drug enforcement agents walked into an ambush. if you have prior knowledge of WHERE AND WHEN something is going to happen, that does not constitute an ambush . they might have been SET UP, which is different. this man who lost his life just happens to have been a recent transfer from another district; maybe some people considered him an interloper. the report is far too sketchy for my liking. i would really appreciate other points of view on this, please.