In early morning Friday, team of various law enforcements raided Palau’s jail and confiscated illegal contraband from the prisoners. The raid used newly established Palau National K-9 program consisting of NEA, Palau Customs, and Palau Airport K-9 officers in the shakedown.
Items obtained included marijuana and paraphernalia, active cellphones, spear guns, shank, knives and other contrabands according to press release from the Narcotics Enforcement Agency.
No methamphetamine or “Ice” was found in the raid but NEA Director Ishmael Aguon did confirm in a call with Island Times that they received a tip earlier this year of meth in jail which partly contributed to the raid.
Department of Corrections Director Ricky Ngiraked confirmed the raid saying that further investigations of how the illegal and prohibited items such as cellphones got into jail will take place. “We will destroy confiscated items as they are illegal or prohibited.”
Asked how large spear guns got into jail, Director Ngiraked said that sometimes, the prisoners make these things in jail for relatives but they are prohibited items as they can also be used as weapons.
Unannounced shake downs are not unusual events at the Koror jail and occur every so often in order to catch smuggled drugs or contrabands in jail. This is the first time that the newly developed K9 team is deployed in the jail shake down.
Prison shake-down yield smuggled items
