Only in Florida does cocaine drop from the sky

It's a quiet Wednesday evening, and in a nice home in a nice residential area of northwest Homestead, Fla., a neighborhood Crime Watch group is holding its first meeting.

Addressing the citizens are the Homestead chief of police, Curt Ivy, and the police department's Crime Prevention Officer, Charlie Crumpler. They're standing on a nice patio next to a nice pool. They're talking about the kinds of things the citizens should be on the lookout for, the clues that might indicate possible criminal activity.Chief Ivy is saying that this is a pretty quiet area, where not much illegal activity goes on. But the chief is having a little trouble making his point, because of the engine noise from a low-flying plane.

"So I look up," Ivy recalled later, "and this plane is coming, and it's low. It's VERY low. Then I see a package come sailing down."

Except in south Florida, where EVERYTHING seems to happen; where a twin-engine plane fleeing from U.S. Customs aircraft dropped half a ton of cocaine bales before landing at the Homestead General Aviation Airport, where the two men in the plane were arrested.

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