Ventura County Sheriff – Incident Press Release
Since 2013, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office (VCSO) has been the recipient of federal grant funds from a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Border Protection) as part of a program called Operation Stonegarden (OPSG). The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office uses the grant funding to cover overtime and equipment for OPSG related operations that relate specifically to intercepting Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) from smuggling narcotics into the United States. OPSG operations are worked jointly with Local U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
Since January 2019, Ventura County Sheriff’s Office personnel, including the Sheriff’s K9 Unit, has participated in numerous OPSG operations taking place at the Port of Hueneme. The Port of Hueneme is the only deep water port between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. The Port routinely services shipping companies from across the world and handles more than $9 billion in cargo annually. Recently, OPSG operations have targeted large shipping vessels importing produce from South America. The produce is offloaded at the Port of Hueneme then distributed throughout the United States. Unfortunately, DTOs have recognized the Port of Hueneme as a viable narcotics smuggling route and now routinely secrete large quantities of narcotics into produce shipping containers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and their counterparts continue to diligently follow up on information related to narcotics smuggling at the Port of Hueneme and conduct extensive searches of shipping vessels. Because of their size, Vessel searches are extremely difficult and often involve large numbers of law enforcement officer searching over several days. OPSG funds allow collaborative efforts between federal and local agencies and have led to several recent large seizures of narcotics including:
January 22, 2019- 92.6 kilograms (204 pounds) of cocaine seized
January 28, 2019- 7.96 kilograms (17.41 pounds) of cocaine seized
April 22, 2019- 37.32 kilograms (82.27 pounds) of cocaine seized
July 1, 2019- 23.66 kilograms (52.16 pounds) of cocaine sized
The recent seizures of cocaine at the Port of Hueneme has an estimated street value between $9,000,000 and $16,000,000 million dollars. The estimated street value of the seized narcotics will fluctuate depending on its geographic destination within the United States.
On August 18, 2019, employees at three different Safeway stores in Washington State found a total of 150 pounds of cocaine concealed inside banana boxes. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agents have linked that produce and cocaine directly to the Port of Hueneme.
The grant money obtained from the Department of Homeland Security was approved by the Board of Supervisors and is managed by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Unit. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office is committed to continue to provide resources to our federal counterparts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection in order to aggressively combat narcotics trafficking affecting Ventura County.
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