Santo Domingo.- The assistant antinarcotics Police chief in the central city San Francisco de Macorís was caught Wednesday afternoon with 400 kilos of cocaine as he was about to take to the Capital together with three other Dominicans and two Colombians, the head of the Antinarcotics Agency DNCD said last night.

Rolando Rosado said major Miguel Rodriguez is part of a network which received narcotics from Colombia to then take it to Puerto Rico and the U.S., in coordination with the Dominican Aníbal Castillo, Antonio Zapata and Pablo Roberto Polanco, and the Colombians Jose Luis Garcia Salazar and Andres Martinez Villegas.

The official said the group was intercepted on the Duarte highway around 25 kilometers north of the capital, next to the toll plaza, in three SUVs, in an operation using several DNCD units, including a helicopter. “That intelligence operation lasted several days, in coordination with several international agencies, resulting from the exchange of information which we carried out amid this fight without quarter.”

The drug, shown to reporters in a press conference last night, was distributed in 375 packages.

Rosado said the senior officer’s involvement in that type of case is regretful, “betraying the confidence placed in his hands by the Dominican State to fight crime” adding that “he doesn’t deserve to wear the National Police uniform.”

One of the colonels heading the operation reportedly stripped Rodriguez’s major insignia from his cap on the spot.

Members of the Tactical Sensitive Investigations Section (DITIS) and the Tactical Fast Reaction Unit conducted the joint operation, together with two DNCD elite units which handled the information on the network received from the United States, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

FEWER DRUG FLIGHTS

Rosado also revealed an substantial fall in the number of drug laden flights detected on radar screens of the U.S. Southern Command, which he said reported as many as 197 in the last six months of 2007; close to 400 in 2008; 62 in 2009, and 8 2010.

He also credited the Super Tucano intercept planes for the reduction of those flights this year.