The police arrested two Brabanders at a drug lab in South Holland on Monday. It is already the fifth example of Brabant input into drug labs outside the province in a short time. And that doesn’t seem like a coincidence. The police often track them down by following them or simply by using their nose.
It started on Monday afternoon with an alarm from a highway camera along the A16 near Dordrecht. That camera turned on a suspicious license plate. Officers drove after it and ended up in Kwintsheul, a town in the Westland, close to The Hague.
Anise scent
The car stopped in Van der Dussenlaan near horticultural greenhouses. There the officers smelled the typical aniseed odor associated with drug production.
Indeed, it turned out that there was a drug lab hidden. The four men from the car were handcuffed. It involved a 23-year-old Tilburger, a 40-year-old man from Waalwijk, a Rotterdam resident and a resident of Kwintsheul.
It is not the first place where a drug lab with people from Brabant has been discovered in the past five months. There were also notable catches in Zeeland, South Holland, Overijssel and Belgium. A brief overview of the most striking of the past few months.
Oud-Beijerland, South Holland, end of December. The police arrest six men. They made synthetic drugs in a warehouse. One of the suspects is 25 years old and comes from Veldhoven.
Burgh-Haamstede, Zeeland, early March. The police find a large speed lab on the Meeldijk near Burgsluis. Officers arrest a 30-year-old man from Tilburg, someone from Urk and a man without a fixed address. Two of the three are known to the police. The police had already tracked them down in West Brabant.
Kuinre, Overijssel, end of March. Agents raid a farm on Wagenweg. MDMA, the raw material for ecstasy, is made there. In the building are two residents of North Brabant aged 41 and 49, reportedly at least a Tilburger. Hundreds of snakes lived in the lab. Those animals turned out to be legal, but officers were still surprised.
Poederlee, Belgium, early April. The police find three dead men in a drug lab. They may have died from toxic fumes. The victims come from Den Bosch and Eindhoven. A West Brabander survives the drug drama.
‘From home’
Brabant laboratory technicians cooking drugs further from home happens more often. They turned up near the Wadden Sea, in Germany and on the Flemish coast. But now it seems to be the rule rather than the exception that the labs are staffed by Brabanders.
It’s not that drug manufacturers are moving. On the contrary. Many labs are still found in Brabant, more and more lately. It is unclear why some laboratory technicians are active further away from home. They may feel ‘watched’ in Brabant. These often involve well-known drug manufacturers. They prefer to choose remote places where local residents and authorities have less experience in recognizing drug labs.
The police recently published this video about the lab in Kuinre, Overijssel:
Tags: Brabant drug chefs encountered Westland
