SPEEDBOAT DRUG TRADE ON CHESAPEAKE FEARED

Attack On Officer Sparks Federal Action

Startled by last week's attack on a Baltimore County marine officer, U.S.
Coast Guard and Customs officials are trying to determine whether drug
dealers are using high-speed boats to smuggle their product through the
Chesapeake Bay.

The practice is called a "mother ship operation," in which a freighter
drops anchor offshore and transfers large quantities of drugs onto
speedboats that take the contraband ashore.

Law enforcement officials have been battling similar operations in the
Caribbean and off the Florida coast for more than a decade. Last year,
Coast Guard sharpshooters patrolling the waters around Miami began firing
from helicopters to knock out the engines of speedboats, which can hit 80
mph and outrun traditional Coast Guard cutters.

Coast Guard officials in Miami are deploying faster inflatable boats
carrying nets that can entangle a speedboat's propeller.

After two years of stepped-up enforcement in Florida, authorities in the
Baltimore region worry that drug smugglers might be moving operations north
along the East Coast.

"It is not the same threat you would see in South Florida or other southern
ports yet, but it is something we are concerned about and have put
resources into here in Baltimore," said Allan Doody, special agent in
charge for the U.S. Customs office in Baltimore.

Baltimore County marine officer Teresa M. Algatt was beaten last week when
she boarded an unregistered 20- to 30-foot speedboat near Hart-Miller
Island. Algatt fell into the water and briefly lost consciousness. She was
kept afloat by her life vest and eventually was able to climb into her boat.

Algatt reported seeing duffel bags in the boat, said Cpl. Vickie Warehime,
a county police department spokesman.

Doody has assigned six Customs investigators, who are part of the High
Intensity Drug Traffic Initiative, to assist county police and the U.S.
Coast Guard in the investigation. He said his agents are trying to
determine what cargo vessels were in the area at the time and are searching
for anyone who might have seen the speedboat.

Doody cautions that it is too early to assume the suspects were part of
drug smuggling operation, but he said: "It is consistent with a mother ship
operation."

If so, it would be the first known operation of its kind in the Chesapeake
Bay, said Doody and Lt. Rich Frattarelli, law enforcement officer for the
Coast Guard's Baltimore station.

"I can't say it is or it isn't [part of a drug smuggling operation], but
this is the first case in the area that involved that profile of a boat or
this type of incident," Frattarelli said. "Obviously this raises a concern,
and we are keeping an eye out for any sort of activity on the bay."

Frattarelli said he has no intelligence that drug smuggling is increasing
on the bay.

Officials at the U.S. Customs office in Norfolk, Va., declined to comment
on whether they have noticed any similar incidents at the Port of Norfolk
or off the Virginia coast.

Officials say drug smuggling would not be a new phenomenon for ports along
the Chesapeake Bay, but the introduction of high-speed boats would be.

In March 1997, police seized a ton of cocaine, worth $25 million, that
cargo vessels had brought from South America to the Dundalk Marine Terminal.

While similar large-scale cargo ship smuggling operations have been
discovered in ports across the country, officials say smugglers use the
more mobile speedboats to avoid detection and get ashore easier.

Zach Mann, spokesman for the U.S. Customs office in Miami, said the
practice dates to the 1920s, when smugglers used speedboats to transport
rum from the Bahamas to the U.S. mainland during Prohibition.

The practice grew in popularity during the late 1980s and 1990s as a method
of smuggling cocaine into the United States, Mann said. The boats, powered
by two to four 250-horsepower motors, can travel 100 to 300 miles without
refueling and can carry a ton of cocaine.

It is estimated that speedboats transport more than 60 percent of the drugs
that come into the United States from the Caribbean, officials say.

Mann said that in June a speedboat led Miami Customs officials on an
hourlong chase along the Miami River at speeds approaching 80 mph until it
crashed into a row of mango trees. Officials recovered 3,400 pounds of
cocaine and marijuana from the boat.

It was the first of three high-speed chases during a four-week period last
summer in Miami.

"It is certainly a possibility that there is so much activity here they
feel like we have put too much pressure on them and they are moving north,"
Mann said, noting that the Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Administration and
U.S. military have all been targeting the speedboats used to transport
drugs into Florida.

"They could offload their cargo anywhere off the coast into a go-fast boat
and send it up the [Chesapeake] Bay," he said. Officials note that the
boats also have been used to be smuggle contraband such as cigarettes,
exotic animals and alcohol.

Doody suspects, however, that smugglers still prefer to come ashore in
Florida and transport their product up the East Coast using Interstate 95.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Paula Wilhelm, the search and rescue mission
coordinator for the Baltimore area, said she would be surprised if there
was significant drug trafficking on the bay. Wilhelm said she has
encountered only "very, very small amounts of personal use-type" drugs
during her 20 years patrolling the bay.

"I have not run across it," Wilhelm said. "But then again, maybe they have
been getting it by me."