One Dead, Two Injured in High-Speed Smuggling Boat Chase off Portugal
A cocaine-smuggling suspect was killed and two others were injured during a high-speed boat chase off the coast of Portugal on Sunday, according to the country's Judicial Police.
Portugal and Spain are top transit countries for the wave of cheap, abundant Colombian cocaine flooding onto European shores. The trade starts in South America with cargoes loaded onto boats and ships for transatlantic transport to waters off the Canary Islands and the Strait of Gibraltar. The carrying vessel will drop off the drugs at a rendezvous point, and smugglers in powerful high-speed boats will pick up the goods for the final-mile delivery to the littorals west of Gibraltar. Their boats are too fast for most police interceptors, and they are often carrying arms.
In the latest interaction, a suspicious high speed vessel - previously known to the authorities - was spotted on the high seas at a position about 80 nautical miles to the south of Faro. The boat's three-person crew attempted to resist arrest, using their four-outboard, 1,400-horsepower speedboat to attempt to flee. They suffered a serious collision with a pursuit boat during the chase.
One suspect sustained severe injuries and was medically evacuated by helicopter; despite attempts at on-site first aid, he was declared dead on board the aircraft.
The law enforcement team recovered 3.7 tonnes of cocaine at the scene. The two survivors were arrested and brought to shore in Portugal for trial.
Cocaine flows adapt to enforcement pressure rapidly, shifting to routes where enforcement is lower and profits are higher. A combination of American pressure off Central America and strengthening pierside enforcement in European ports have pushed more volume onto the smuggling networks of Spain's southwestern shores. Availability, price and purity of cocaine have all reportedly improved at the street level in Europe - and at least some parts of the United States, despite U.S. Southern Command's lethal-force campaign targeting smuggling craft.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, cocaine traffickers have adapted to American pressure by pushing product north up the coastline on fishing boats close to shore; braving the risk of an airstrike by continuing to use open ocean routes; and sending more cocaine downriver through the Amazon Rainforest to the Atlantic coast. The metrics that matter to consumers - convenience and price - are unchanged in the U.S. over the past year, a DEA internal assessment found, according to the Washington Post.
"The assessment has found that price and availability of cocaine in the U.S. remains unchanged compared to before the strikes, so it's had pretty much no effect on it," said Washington Post national security reporter Alex Horton in a July interview.
