The Ohio Highway Patrol beams out press releases throughout the week. Usually these hot-off-the-presses missives tout the patrol's recent seizure of drugs, guns, or money. Almost always, they being with some variation on, "Officers stopped the vehicle for a marked lanes violation." Sometimes it's speeding instead. Sometimes it's a busted light. But it's always, always for some run-of-the-mill traffic violation.
And then the release moves on to what the cops found. "After noticing criminal indicators," is how it usually transitions. Then the payoff. Something like, "Officers seized $30,000 of heroin, two guns, and arrested the driver."
We see these so often in our inbox that they all tend to run together. Good on the Ohio Highway Patrol for getting drugs off our streets. Bad on the drug dealers for not hiring a driver that can stay in his own lane.
But this morning the number you see in the headline above flashed in our email and made us stop. $14.8 million worth of cocaine? That's a shitload of cocaine. The rest of the press release went just like the above template: An RV with California license plates made a marked lanes violation near Maumee. Cops pulled the RV over. Criminal indicators noticed. Dogs smelled something. Compartment found with, as we already said, a shitload of cocaine.
So if your dealer is out this weekend, you know why now. And if you ever wondered what $14.8 million of cocaine looks like, the Highway Patrol helpfully posted a pic of their score.
