You ordered the seeds from a seed bank overseas. They made it through the customs and were delivered with no problems. You germinated those seeds and nurtured them and they grew to become beautiful mothers giving you many many clones. You planted them clones and babied them for months on end until harvest time. When harvest time came you cut, trimmed, dried, cured, weighed, and packaged it. For months you have stayed under the radar of law enforcement and in just a few days all that work and risk will pay off; for all that's left is getting your product to market. For some this just means having your buddy stopping by to pick it up, but for others this means having your product driven hundreds, or even thousands of miles for those California to east coast runs. All that stands between you and your payday for the year is the open highway.
I looked around on RIU and I didn't come across any thread dealing with this topic. So please post anything dealing with interstate interdiction hotspots. If the info on this thread saves just one person from getting busted then we did our job. So enough with the intro. and onto the topic.
AVOID I-80 IN LASALLE COUNTY FROM PERU, ILLINOIS THROUGH MARSEILLES, ILLINOIS.
This stretch of I-80 has always been risky but since November last year it has gotten much worse with the creation of a new task force named SAFE(State's Attorney's Felony Enforcement). SAFE was created by Lasalle county State's Attorney(States attorney=District attorney) Brian Towne. Besides SAFE you also have to deal with Illinois state police. But that's not it. On that stretch of I80 you pass through a few towns and all those towns police departments patrol 80 as well. Those towns are Peru, Lasalle, Utica, and Ottawa. The town police dont patrol as much as SAFE and state but they are out there. Peru police sit right off of 80 and have busted a few people who have gotten off the highway to get gas or stop at the fast food places on Route 251. All the different police units on I80 are looking for the same thing... out of state plates. The plates that will get the most attention are California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Really any out of state will get attention but the ones I just listed will get the most. As far as reasons to pull you over. The most common are of course following to closely, improper lane usage(not using your turn signal), and speeding. Speeding can be as little as 2 mph over the limit, which is 65mph in Illinois. I was in Lasalle county jail last fall for a couple weeks. I was in a small cell block with only 14 people or so. Out of those 14 people 2 were in there for weed. They were separate cases but both coming from Cali. One of them was pulled over for 2 mph over and the other was part of a 3 person operation were one car with 2 people were driving a few miles ahead of the car carrying the weed. The car carrying the weed was pulled over and the cops found the 50+ lbs of weed. The cops then had the driver call the blocking car that was a few miles ahead and tell them that his car broke down. So the people in the blocking car came back and of course the cops were there waiting for them. Anyways I kinda got off topic. If you are driving through with out of state plates and get pulled over with drugs then its basically already over for you. The cops are going to ask to search the car. If you say no they are going to bring the dog around the car. A few years ago a guy was pulled over by police and he refused to give consent to search his car. So the cops,with no probable cause, took a dog around his car. The dog hit on the car and the cops then had probable cause and searched his car which contained a few hundred pounds of weed. He was found guilty. He took his case all the way to the US supreme court. The supreme court ruled that cops didn't need consent or probable cause to bring the dog around his car cause it didn't violate his constitutional rights cause the search wasn't invasive. That case all began in Lasalle county and the guy was pulled over on I-80.
Well I didn't intend to type all that I did, I kind of got carried away. So my best advise is DO NOT TAKE I-80 east bound(east bound they are looking for drugs) or west bound(west bound they are looking for cash). If heading to Chicago you can bypass this stretch of highway by getting off I-80 as soon as you cross into Illinois from Iowa and get onto I-88. Or you can take I-74 to I-55 North or I-57 north and it will take you right into the city. If you decide to say fuck it and try to make it through this section of I-80 save $15,000 for bond money if you want to bail out immediately. Or you can ask for a bond reduction and they should lower it to $100,000 which means you pay $10,000. Illinois does not use bail bondsmen. If you want to bail out you pay 10% of the bond. So if bond is set at $150,000 you need to have $15,000 cash brought to the jail to bond ya out. Also if caught in Lasalle county money talks. Meaning you pay enough in fines you may not even see the inside of a prison cell or if so it could be a few months instead of years. For example you get caught they may offer you 6 years in prison, or if you pay a $10,000 fine before your next court date you can get 60 days county time instead, and off 60 days county time you only have to do 30 days cause they cut your time in half. Ok once again I'm getting carried away on typing. Below are a few links about I80 and Lasalle county. Take care everyone and be safe. Later
http://newstrib.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=78&SectionID=2&SubSectionID=28&S=1
http://wkplaw.com/archives/844
http://mywebtimes.com/archives/ottawa/display.php?id=453540
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local/illinois&id=8624762