BUSTED: Prison Pigeons in Peru
If there wasn’t a file on me in Washington yesterday, there’s one now. That’s because I Googled “How to Smuggle Drugs into Prison” as background research for my article on the State of Cannabis News Hour today. And that’s sure to raise a flag in a sub-basement somewhere.
Don’t worry, Dear Readers, I won’t rat you out as accomplices in this dastardly scheme to make a news story interesting. I ain't no stool pigeon.
THE SCOOP
In 2019, a Cincinnati couple were arrested for trying to smuggle heroin into a prison. “Deputies became suspicious after noticing a stain on a square of their Bible, which later proved to be heroin – enough to be broken up into 30 or 40 hits and distributed among the inmate population.”
This is just one way that people have gotten busted trying to smuggle drugs into prisons in recent years, a subject on which I’m now a Google expert. Others include:
20 grams of pot inside a baby’s balloon
Drugs blended into paint and applied to a coloring book marked “To Daddy”
Drugs put inside dead birds and thrown over prison walls. Tennis balls are also used, though there’s not so many tennis courts on prison grounds. Maybe that works in white collar prisons like Trumpers are going to
Underneath stamps on letters
Methadone-soaked underwear
... and the usual smuggling cavities you can imagine. This category is called “Hidden internally.”
THE DEEPER DIVE
But… in Peru, the national police have announced that a pigeon has been captured trying to smuggle cannabis into Huancayo Penitentiary.
Of course, the only way to announce such bird shenanigans is using Twitter so you can TWEET about it (I’ll be here all week...) In said tweet, the Peruvian National Police reported officers found the bird, which had a “circular package containing marijuana tied around its neck,” near the prison’s main door. “… Perhaps parched, the cannabis-carrying bird was spotted this week when it touched down … near the administrative building to drink some water from a puddle...”
Clearly an amateur pigeon was used.
“Upon catching the bird, agents saw that the delivery package was made of a light blue fabric that had been wrapped in duct tape... To the surprise of all involved, the package held “dry green seeds, stems and leaves with a characteristic marijuana smell”.
Media reports indicate the package contained 30 to 40 grams of cannabis, the recreational form of which remains illegal in Peru. As for medicinal marijuana, growing, importing and commercialization the plant is exclusively reserved for the Peruvian state.
(So the Gov controls the weed industry in Peru? That’s not shady...)
Citing the national police, The Global Frontier reports that agents with the National Penitentiary Institute of Peru believe the pigeon has been trained to transport drugs from outside to inside the prison. That’s some crackerjack investigating right there.
It is further suspected the bird was brought to the area by a relative of an inmate. It appears the drugs were destined for the prison’s Pavilion D, where security officials report someone was earlier seen feeding a pigeon.
So if you’re listening in Pavillion D of Huancayo Penitentiary, the National Police are onto your pigeon scheme.
Should have used a tennis ball.
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image source: Photo by Sneha Cecil on Unsplash
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