POLICE MAKE RECORD COCAINE BUST

CHICAGO - A massive hoard of pure cocaine worth $143 million on the
streets of Midwestern cities was confiscated in the Chicago Police
Department's largest drug seizure ever, authorities said Wednesday.
Four men, two described as high-ranking members of a Mexican cartel
that specializes in smuggling cocaine over the U.S. border, were
arrested Tuesday night when police swooped down on an auto detail shop.

"This is a tremendous seizure, and it should have an impact on the
crack cocaine dealing on the streets of Chicago," said Cmdr. Philip J.
Cline, whose investigators found the drugs in the South suburban
Crestwood shop.

Authorities called reporters to a West Side police garage where
brick-shaped kilos of cocaine with blue and yellow, balloon-like
rubber wrappings were stacked across the floor. The hoard weighed
2,500 pounds and resembled a waist-high brick wall. Bags of marijuana
also were seized.

Some of the kilos were marked with designs that police described as
the trademarks of the Colombian cartels that produced the cocaine.
They said that after it was produced by Colombians, the cocaine was
turned over to Mexicans who make a specialty of spiriting it across
the U.S. border.

Police said the bricks of cocaine, which with their wrappings peeled
away appeared hard and chalk-like, were discovered in cardboard
shipping cartons stacked in a red truck that was parked inside the
detail shop.

Cline said police had been searching for the truck for two months
after receiving word that it had arrived in Chicago loaded with cocaine.

Cline said that Chicago has become a distribution point for cocaine
that is sent on to Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan but that most of the
hoard was destined for sale in Chicago.

He said that it could have been processed into 4,000 bags of
crack.

Arrested in the raid were Ruben Contreras, 24, of El Paso, Texas, and
Ira McDaniel, 22, of Albuquerque, N.M. They were charged with
possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.

Cline described them as "heavy players, high up in the organization"
but added that jail might be the safest place for them now.

"I wouldn't want to have to be the one who answers to the cartel for
losing this much cocaine," he said.

The owner of the shop, Arthur Bell, 43, and his nephew, Wautese Bell,
24, also were charged in the raid. Cline said that the Bells had
agreed to provide the cartel with an overnight place to store its truck.