Over $4 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na was dis­cov­ered and de­stroyed when Task Force of­fi­cers foiled a ma­jor drug op­er­a­tion in Erin on Sat­ur­day. Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the South West­ern Di­vi­sion said the plan­ta­tion was one of sev­er­al be­ing used to sup­ply the drug trade around South Trinidad for the past sev­er­al months.

As of­fi­cers con­duct­ed road blocks and en­gaged in high speed chas­es for the ar­rest of pos­si­ble sus­pects, they be­lieve there are sev­er­al oth­er ma­jor plan­ta­tions.Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, heav­i­ly armed of­fi­cers led by In­sp Harold Seedarie along with Sgts Ablacks­ingh, Gookool and Ram­s­ingh were­on a mar­i­jua­na erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cise around 11 am when the plan­ta­tion was spot­ted by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre's Viper I he­li­copter.

The of­fi­cers went to Lorenset­to North Trace, an old oil­field road, where they came up­on three fields con­tain­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000 ful­ly grown mar­i­jua­na trees plant­ed sev­er­al hun­dred me­tres in the for­est.They al­so found a small nurs­ery con­tain­ing seedlings, fer­tilis­ers and oth­er gar­den­ing tools next to a shack.How­ev­er, when the of­fi­cer checked no one was in the shack.

They be­lieve the sus­pects ran away af­ter see­ing the he­li­copter cir­cling the area.The of­fi­cers then de­stroyed the en­tire plan­ta­tion by fire.Min­utes lat­er, San­ta Flo­ra po­lice re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that three men were seen trav­el­ling on mo­tor­cy­cles with guns and nar­cotics.How­ev­er, fol­low­ing a high speed chase and the ap­pre­hen­sion of three rid­ers, no il­le­gal arms, am­mu­ni­tion or drugs were found.Sat­ur­day's ex­er­cise was co-or­di­nat­ed bySnr Supt Ram­sey, Supt Sam­path, and ASP Par­dasie.