Long Beach Police Seize 1 1/4 Ton of Marijuana

Long Beach police narcotics investigators late Wednesday arrested six suspects and seized 1 1/4 ton of marijuana, the largest such capture in the city’s history.

The detectives were monitoring truck traffic at Pacific Coast Highway and Alameda Street, a common practice in an era when narcotics are frequently shipped into the United States in truck-mounted cargo containers. They spotted one tractor pulling its load onto a side street and watched as the suspects unloaded large bales of marijuana, wrapped in cellophane and stuffed in potato sacks, from the back of the truck’s trailer and placed them in two vans and a pickup truck.

Uniformed patrol officers attempted to stop the vehicles. After a short pursuit, the pickup truck crashed and officers recovered 1,673 pounds of marijuana. One van contained 906 pounds of marijuana. The other vehicle, a Chevy Astro van, evaded police.