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More shredders against the avalanche of marijuana

2020-10-24T00:50:57.004Z


Interior makes a new purchase of biomass destroying machines after the seizure of cannabis plants increased by 57%


Marijuana plantation discovered last September in a wooded area near the Montes de Oca, in the province of Burgos.

/ Europa Press

Drug trafficking is fought with police, weapons, informants and lengthy investigations, but also with gardening machinery.

Especially in the case of marijuana, in which the custody of the increasingly voluminous caches of seized cannabis plants has become a real logistical problem for justice.

For this reason, the Ministry of the Interior began last Monday the tender for a public tender to acquire at least 20 new biomass destroying machines to crush the increasing amount of marijuana intervened in anti-drug operations and, thus, double the capacity that had until now.

All this, after last year the State Security Forces, including the regional police, intervened a record number: 1,538,995 cannabis plants, 57% more than in 2018, when there were 981,148.

These shredders will be added in the coming months to the seven purchased in 2017 and the 15 acquired in 2019, which have proven insufficient given the exponential increase in stash.

The Prosecutor's Office warned in its last report, made public recently, about the “important health problems” that the accumulation of these plants is causing in the warehouses where they are kept until their final destruction is carried out.

The public prosecutor's document also pointed out that the problem will increase by warning about "the proliferation of cannabis plantations, especially

indoor

[under roof] with very sophisticated facilities", as well as "its progressive development and implementation throughout the territory national".

Interior has budgeted 50,699 euros, VAT included, for the purchase of these 20 new shredders, just over 2,500 euros for each one.

It is looking, in particular, for machines that are commonly used in gardening with two very specific characteristics: that they are capable of crushing branches up to seven centimeters in diameter and that are "small" and with wheels to facilitate their transfer, according to the bidding document to which EL PAÍS has had access.

“It is necessary that the Territorial Units of the National Police and the Civil Guard are equipped with this machinery to reduce the volume by crushing seized marijuana plantations for subsequent destruction, in order to contribute to operations related to crime organized, as well as with drug trafficking ”, adds the document.

The ministry acquired the first of these machines in 2017, a year in which marijuana apprehensions soared to 1,124,674 plants, 538% more than the previous year, when only 176,165 units had been intervened.

That shredder was put to the test in Granada, as this was the province in which, at that time, the most volume of this drug was seized.

The result was so positive that the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO), the Interior agency in charge of managing the destruction of drugs, acquired another six machines that same year and distributed them throughout as many provinces.

Two years later, he bought 15 more.

To all of them, 20 will now be added —there will be, therefore, 42 in total—, which will be divided two by two (one for the Civil Guard and one for the National Police) in provinces that until now do not have them.

Police sources indicate that the objective is to continue with the acquisitions in the coming years until the entire territory is covered.

Despite the new machinery, Interior will continue to hire external companies on time to crush marijuana, especially when the clandestine plantations dismantled have 1,500 plants or more, where the capacity of the acquired crushers is insufficient.

However, these machines are not the end point of the intervened marijuana.

Shredding makes it possible to considerably reduce its volume and, in this way, mitigate the serious storage problems suffered by police and judicial warehouses.

“Plants are living beings that have insects and that end up rotting, with the consequent release of odors and humidity.

This process ends up affecting the alarm systems of the deposits themselves ”, detail police sources.

A situation that attempts to mitigate by accelerating the processes of destruction.

In fact, between 20% and 50% of the seized drug is sent by the Interior “for urgent reasons” and with judicial authorization, directly from the police offices to the destruction points, without going through the so-called Regional Custody Units and Depósito (URCD) in the face of the situation close to the collapse that the latter have suffered, according to police sources.

After being crushed, the marijuana is destroyed. To do this, CITCO has sought alternatives to its incineration in traditional furnaces and reached agreements to dispose of it in garbage dumps, where it is mixed with solid waste. The Prosecutor's Office points out that, at present, the time that elapses between the seizure of a cache of any type of drug and its final destruction ranges between a month and a half and three months. Police sources insist on the need to shorten these terms with marijuana "due to the great problems that its storage causes." Biomass destroying machines can be the solution.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-10-24

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