TRAPPED DRUG SUSPECT HITS CRACK PIPE ANYWAY

Trapped on a Miami Beach overpass after a chase, a man caught buying
crack in an Overtown stakeout decided not to let his purchase go to
waste: He pulled out his crack pipe and had "one for the road."

"This is a new one on me," said Miami Police Department spokesman Lt.
Bill Schwartz. "I guess he figures if he's going to go to jail he's
going to go happy."

And he will go to jail. After driving away from police and almost
running over a traffic officer, police say, Manuel J. Cancino faces
charges of aggravated assault with a motor vehicle, felony fleeing,
possession of crack cocaine and resisting arrest with violence.

Plainclothes detectives saw Cancino, of Miami Beach, buying crack at 2
p.m. Tuesday in a high-volume drug-trafficking area in Overtown. They
flipped on the emergency lights and started chasing him in an unmarked
cruiser.

"It goes without saying he's a fool," Schwartz said. "If he'd just
stopped immediately when the cops saw him, he'd have gotten off with
only a crack possession arrest."

Cancino allegedly tried to run the officers off the road in his white
Ford Explorer, eventually leading three police cars east over the
MacArthur Causeway.

Police say he went north at the Alton Road overpass. When he reached
20th Street, where a Miami Beach motorcycle officer was directing
traffic, Cancino refused to stop. The Beach officer had to dive to
avoid being struck, Schwartz said.

Cancino kept driving.

Police called ahead, however, and the traffic light at the end of the
63rd Street northbound overpass was locked on red. Cancino tried to
overcome the resulting bottleneck by veering into the shoulder to get
around a Miami-Dade Transit bus in front of him.

Cancino couldn't squeeze through. He rammed the back of the bus and a
car.

That's when Cancino pulled out the crack. Officers dragged him,
flailing, out of the car and threw him to the pavement.

"Here's a guy who is recognizing that he is about to go to jail and
the foremost thing on his mind is getting high," Schwartz said. "It's
obviously a pretty desperate situation."

Cancino was taken to the prison ward of Jackson Memorial Hospital for
treatment of his "bumps and bruises." Three officers also went to
Jackson for treatment for exposure to the suspect's blood.

e-mail: ligarcia@herald.com