The Department of Public Safety needs at least $200,000 to sustain its ongoing war against methamphetamine or \u201cice,\u201d according to DPS Commissioner James C. Deleon Guerrero yesterday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have a war against \u2018ice\u2019 that we need to be able to robustly prosecute,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Deleon Guerrero disclosed that he communicated with the Legislature early this week, requesting at least $200,000 in order to purchase equipment for gathering evidence and performing anti-drug operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the \u2018ice\u2019 problem and then you look at what\u2019s happening with respect to the possibility of more weapons to be legalized here in the Commonwealth, and you have a rapidly developing casino industry, a rising tourism [industry] along with the possibility of legalizing marijuana, you tell me what all of these we\u2019re at,\u201d Deleon Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
He said the department is hoping that the Legislature will also pay attention to DPS\u2019 2016 budget submission because that will help them with what they need to do to prepare themselves for all these challenges going forward.<\/p>\n
In January 2014, Deleon Guerrero warned all law enforcers in the CNMI to prepare for a \u201clong, expensive, and dangerous war\u201d against \u201cice\u201d traffickers.<\/p>\n
A few days after the commissioner\u2019s warning, joint federal and local law enforcers arrested then-Police Officer 1 Victor Val B. Hocog for allegedly selling \u201cice\u201d on Saipan.<\/p>\n
A month later, joint federal and local law enforcers also arrested several \u201cice\u201d traffickers, most of them Chinese nationals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Public Safety needs at least $200,000 to sustain its ongoing war against…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,256,152,215],"class_list":["post-193815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-casino","tag-deleon-guerrero","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}