A policeman and two other people have been admitted to hospital suffering from bullet wounds after a shoot out on the Via do Infante motorway at 02:00 on Thursday morning, 28th July.
A gang of suspected drug traffickers travelling from Spain refused to stop at a police road-block and attenpted to drive through it. The incident took place near the Olhão-Moncarapacho exit of the Algarve's motorway.
The road-block operation involved 14 police vehicles with Bombeiros and ambulance staff on stand-by.
The driver already was wanted in connection with the street murder of an 18-year-old Romanian in Almancil in March this year after which three people were arrested and are on remand.
The driver refused to slow down so the car was fired on by Portuguese PSP police and two of the occupants were hit, ending up in Faro hospital along with one of the policemen who suffered a bullet wound to his leg.
The car contained 600 doses of cocaine, 30 of heroin, 150 of hashish, a large caliber revolver, a compressed air gun and two illegal gas sprays and some additional ammunition.
They were also seized two thousand and two hundred euros, 2 cars, 1 recreational craft and 15 mobile phones.
The police seemed to be on a well coordinated mission as later, eight properties were raided in Olhão and six arrests were made.
Over in Cabanas, Tavira, GNR costal command officers seized more than two tonnes of hashish from a boat in the Ria Formosa.
During a wednesday night surveillance operation, the authorities tracked a suspicious boat that had entered the Ria Formosa at Tavira.
Officers were dispatched to see where the boat landed which turned out to be a small beach 200 meters from Forte de S. João da Barra where the drugs already were being unloaded.
When the police pounced, some bales of hashish were on the shore with others already loaded onto a vehicle for onward transport.
Altogether, 2,170 kilos of hashish packed in 70 bales, a car and a boat were seized and the 46-year-old skipper was arrested.
Comments
After every Police drug stops we always get the comment reminding us that we are in Portugal. That, as any local will confirm, so many of the Police are historically either, for a fee, turning their backs on crime or the more adventurous actually doing it. So we never get any follow up news ?
There is also an odd extension of this. Several times lately we have heard of shoot outs with Portuguese Police that injure or kill civilians that involve automatic weapons. Terrorists fund raise through crimes like drug dealing. Will anyone in authority ever make the link that these may not actually be 'local chancers'?