OKANOGAN – With few residents or roads, numerous lakes and a sprawling, loosely patrolled border with Canada, Okanogan County has become prime territory for pot smuggling using floatplanes, law enforcement officials say.
Reports of low-flying floatplanes and helicopters have become increasingly frequent in the county, and there’s more to be concerned about than marijuana, say Sheriff Frank Rogers and James McDevitt, the U.S. attorney in Spokane.
McDevitt, a member of an international panel that sets policy for 15 border enforcement teams nationwide, said he had no indication of terrorist or bomb shipments by air through the county – so far.
“A person that will smuggle drugs, guns, meth, Ecstasy and cash will also be the kind of person who would smuggle a special-interest alien or a terrorist,” McDevitt told The Wenatchee World.Some pot has been recovered, arrests have been made and a floatplane was seized after Colville tribal police officers prevented it from taking off by hurling rocks at the propeller. But it’s usually almost impossible to catch aircraft used in suspected smuggling runs before they take off again and fly north, authorities said.
Drug running also has been accomplished or attempted using canoes on Lake Osoyoos, rubber rafts on the Kettle River and boats on Lake Roosevelt, as well as by snowshoe, cross-country skiing, backpacking and with campers, tractor-trailers and snowmobiles.
“It seems now that the latest fad is airborne smuggling,” McDevitt said.
He said technology should provide a solution, aided by local citizens who learn what to look for and report suspicious activity.
Along the Mexican border, authorities have tethered blimp-like devices that use radar to detect low-flying aircraft, but that gear is ill-suited to the northern border because steep canyons and soaring mountains block line-of-sight monitoring.
Lonnie Moore, a Border Patrol spokesman, would not say how many aircraft and pilots are available to monitor the agency’s Spokane sector, which covers a 350-mile stretch of border between the crest of the Cascade Range and the Continental Divide in Montana. Okanogan County accounts for about 90 miles of that.
Since December authorities have intercepted four airborne smuggling operations that used aircraft, including three in which people were caught with marijuana at or near remote lakes.
On another occasion, after tribal police disabled and seized a float plane March 14 on the Columbia River, the pilot made it to the other side and eluded sheriff’s deputies. A man believed to be the pilot was later spotted and arrested on the Colville reservation.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
