The smell of cannabis during a routine traffic stop has led police to the discovery of firearms, ammunition and drugs in Taranaki early this morning. <\/p>\n
Senior Sergeant Malcolm Collins said police stopped a vehicle near the intersection of Cordelia St and Fenton St in Stratford at around 1.40am on Monday. <\/p>\n
During the stop, officers noticed drug paraphernalia and could smell cannabis coming from the vehicle. <\/p>\n
The driver and passenger were detained while the vehicle was searched by police. <\/p>\n
“As a result of the search a .22 3D printed firearm, a shotgun, ammunition, numerous other offensive weapons, an amount of methamphetamine, and an amount of cannabis, were located and seized,” Collins said. <\/p>\n
One of the firearms was reportedly found tucked in the driver’s footwell. <\/p>\n
Collins said there was “no good reason” for a firearm to be so easily accessible to a driver. <\/p>\n
“This was a great catch, and I want to commend staff for their vigilance and excellent work to get these firearms out of the community,” he added. <\/p>\n
A 37-year-old man was arrested and was due to appear in New Plymouth District Court today. <\/p>\n
He was charged with possession of methamphetamine, possession of cannabis, two counts of unlawfully possessing ammunition, and five counts of possessing an offensive weapon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The smell of cannabis during a routine traffic stop has led police to the discovery of firearms, ammunition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,16715,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-571462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-taranaki","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}