Steven Man­swell, 27, of Con­nec­tor Road, Carlsen Field, was charged yes­ter­day with traf­fick­ing in cannabis.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 11:30 am, dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers con­duct­ed sur­veil­lance in an area in Freeport known for the sale of nar­cotics. While there, they ob­served a man stand­ing along a walk­way with a blue plas­tic bag next to him.

Sev­er­al per­sons ap­proached him and he was al­leged­ly seen tak­ing what ap­peared to be mar­i­jua­na from the bag, weigh­ing it on a small sil­ver pock­et scale, and hand­ing it over. He al­so al­leged­ly re­ceived mon­ey in re­turn. Of­fi­cers ap­proached the sus­pect, told him what they had ob­served, and took the blue bag.

It was ex­am­ined in his pres­ence and 584 grammes of cannabis along with a small sil­ver dig­i­tal pock­et scale were al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered. Of­fi­cers al­so searched the sus­pect and al­leged­ly found $5,206. He was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion and was sub­se­quent­ly charged for the of­fence.

The ex­er­cise which was con­duct­ed be­tween the hours of 10 am and 2 pm was co­or­di­nat­ed by Snr Supt Curt Si­mon, Supt Pierre, and ASPs Dipc­hand and Ra­goo. It was spear­head­ed by Sgt Per­sad and in­clud­ed PCs Pereira and Burke, WPC Mitchell-Samuel, and of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force (CDTF).