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Copter aids in big pot seizure

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Hi-tech met low tech Thursday in one of the Border Patrol's biggest drug busts of the year. With a buzzing black hawk helicopter above and agents on horseback and on foot on the ground, U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested 15 drug runners and seized more than 2,000 pounds of marijuana in the Baboquivari Mountains 22 miles north of the border Thursday, according to Border Patrol spokesman Sean King. It started at 11:30 a.m. Thursday when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine black hawk helicopter spotted the drug runners making their way north on a trail in the Boboquivari Mountains, King said. Agents on horses moved in on the group with instructions of their whereabouts coming from the helicopter. Agents seized 106 bundles of marijuana and captured 15 drug runners. The more than one ton of marijuana has an estimated street value of slightly more than $1 million, using figures from the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, the federal anti-drug analysis and intelligence center. The drugs and smugglers were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration for prosecution, King said. The helicopter played a key role in the arrests of the smugglers, King said. Usually, they leave their loads and head south to escape apprehension. Agents focus on seizing the drugs and aren't usually able to find the smugglers, King said. Agents arrest drug smugglers about one out of every five times they seize drugs, King estimated. "That's a huge load for us," King said. "We're not used to a group that large bringing it in. This is a large amount of dopers to get." The Border Patrol's Tucson Sector has seized 51,723 pounds of marijuana through the first nearly six weeks of fiscal year 2007, which began Oct. 1, King said. That marks a 9 percent increase over the amount it had seized at the same time in fiscal year 2006, he said.