Cape Town’s elite border police unit operates with stealth. The job requires it. And without it, they concede, they would not have the upper hand.
The ingenuity and eternal inventiveness of drug mules and their handlers means that the men and women of this little-known unit at Cape Town International Airport need to keep their eyes peeled and their instincts sharp for the attempted daily deceptions they encounter.
Last year, 34 drug mules were arrested in Cape Town with drugs to the value of R7.5 million.
A visit to the unit revealed the challenge the squad faces and the creative ways people have of smuggling contraband. They pack drugs inside boxes of rusks and breakfast cereal and stuff drugs into luggage handles. Even condoms are filled with cocaine, tik and heroin.
One woman had a gift-wrapped box. Inside was a cereal box and inside that was a number of containers of baby power. Each was filled with plastic wrappers full of cocaine.
The unit’s successes have led drug syndicates to try other methods of getting their contraband into the province. Police are now investigating whether traffickers are using Beaufort West as an alternative route to the airport.
As travellers head through the domestic arrivals terminals, many are oblivious to the many pairs of eyes watching their movements, their clothing, their body language and their luggage. Designated profilers look out for telling details that could lead them to traffickers.
“When you leave here today, I will remember exactly what you are wearing, right down to your earrings,” a profiler told the Cape Argus. The profiler, whose identity has to remain a secret, tells how every detail is important.
Colonel Anton Olivier, who heads the airport’s unit, was instrumental in setting up searches at the domestic arrivals terminal at the airport.
He said the clampdown at domestic arrivals had been started in 2008 “as a coincidence”.
“We studied our legislation and saw that we had so much more power than we thought, so we rolled it out and within the first or second day, 1kg of tik was found,” Olivier said.
He said that in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the police station at Cape Town International had handled more drugs “than anywhere else in the province”.
“In our first quarter, we had 44kg of tik just at domestic arrivals.”
The airport’s police duties also extend to the areas within a 10km radius of the airport.
Olivier said they had found a significant increase in the amount of stolen property finding its way through the port to be flown to Central Africa.
“This week we didn’t find drugs but we did find the fraudulent passports… sometimes it happens, other times we find nothing,” he said.
On average the terminal sees about 11 000 people moving through arrivals, and of those about 25 to 50 could be searched “on a very good day”, Olivier said.
He said their biggest challenge was high-profile passengers who refused to be searched. “For every 500 people we search, about 499 are innocent – so we do get a lot of complaints,” he said.
People often said they were being discriminated against and said the police were racist, he added.
“We really do get a lot of hidings from the public – especially from VIPs– and it becomes a challenge for constables to stand up to them, but so far we’ve been standing our ground… Everyone is innocent until we open the suitcase,” Olivier. They also kept a list of the people they search, he revealed.
The number of baggage pilfering cases had also reduced dramatically: “It used to be about 60 to 80 cases a month and now we’re dealing with about 30, and of those maybe 10 cases are where people have forgotten they moved things in their baggage.”
The unit makes use of sniffer dogs when conducting certain operations such as searching for ivory, and also uses camera profiling – looking out for suspicious activity on CCTV footage.
“But 99.9 percent of the time we make use of the profiling,” said Warrant Officer Granville Meyers.
The unit has also made headway in clamping down on card skimmers. Since November, they have arrested 14 people and confiscated 12 card-skimming devices and over 100 cards.
“You’ll find things here everyday, but you must be curious (about people) because anybody is a suspect even if they wear suits,” he said.
Cape Argus