New drug trafficking taken down by the Saint-Martin gendarmes

On Monday, December 5, "a large-scale operation was carried out by the Saint-Martin gendarmerie," noted the office of the Saint-Martin Prosecutor in a press release. "A detailed preliminary investigation, as well as physical surveillance" helped to identify and arrest four individuals who have been "dealing on the street" since September 2016 in the vicinity of Paloures and Ecoles Streets.

"They are between twenty and thirty years old. There is a Haitian, a French person of Dominican origin, and two individuals from Saint-Martin, unemployed and with prior convictions; just one has been convicted for possession and use of narcotics," specifies the prosecutor. They were placed in custody; the proceedings were extended and the four individuals appeared this Wednesday before the Saint-Martin court in a summary trial. They partially recognized the facts, minimizing the number of transactions.

Sixteen baggies of cocaine and 17 packets of cannabis, or 13 grams of cocaine and 29 grams of cannabis, were discovered in a vehicle belonging to one of them. Several tubes of cocaine baggies and bags of grass, or around thirty grams of marijuana and around ten grams of cocaine, were also discovered in other hiding spots.

"Street dealing was very organized and the sellers carried nothing on their person or at their homes, instead visiting their caches when they had a customer. Around thirty transactions were observed by investigators since September," the gendarmerie’s investigation revealed.

Around twenty individuals identified as consumers confirmed their purchases and named their sellers, also recognizable on video surveillance cameras although one camera was damaged. "The consumers will be pursued separately," the prosecutor specified.