? Cat and mouse game?
October 2011. On Interstate 94, a black Lincoln pickup truck with an Iowa license plate was speeding. There was a mess in the back seat of the truck-food wrappers, cheese puff bags, half-eaten sandwiches, crumpled newspapers, a water bottle, and a bag of old golf clubs piled up randomly. The old man driving is called Leo Sharp, and his destination is Detroit.
Behind this car, followed by five or six inconspicuous unmarked cars, filled with DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) personnel. They have spent months investigating a branch of the Sinaloa drug cartel in Detroit (The Sinaloa drug cartel, also known as the Pacific drug cartel, was established in the late 1980s and is the most notorious in the world Zhaozhan and the most powerful drug cartel). The group sent thousands of kilograms of cocaine from the Mexican border through Arizona to Detroit.
This hunt was the largest cocaine operation by the Detroit authorities at the time. DEA personnel believe that the driver of the black Lincoln they are following is the best transporter of the drug cartel in the Detroit area, Tata. According to drug account books obtained from the informant, Tata delivered 246 kilograms of heroin in February 2010 and an additional 250 kilograms in May. He always drives by himself and has managed to avoid being spotted for nearly ten years. Whether it is his transportation volume or his lonely driving style, Tata has become the "urban legend" in the ears of DEA anti-drug agents. This hunt is Tata's first return to Detroit in months, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to recapture the net.
State police officer Craig Ziecina, who worked with DEA, put a siren on the car. In order to avoid affecting the investigation, they plan to stop Tata in the same way as daily traffic violations. The pickup slowed to a halt, and the driver opened the door and climbed out carefully without waiting for the mounted police to get out of the car.
Leo Sharp was wearing a plaid shirt, khaki pants, white socks and brown shoes that day. He has gray hair, disheveled, and unsteady gait. He has a thick white goatee. He held his glasses in both hands and cupped his ears as instructed by the Mounted Police.
He is 87 years old and he wants to know why he was stopped.
The police asked him for a driver's license and registration certificate. But Sharp did not cooperate in providing information. He seemed to have forgotten today's date and his exact age. In the car, the police found his wallet and driver's license. His name is Leo Sharp, born in 1924, a veteran of World War II, and a great-grandfather. He has no criminal record.
Sharp refused to search the pickup, falsely claiming that he was going to visit a friend whose name and address he could not remember before dark. In the end, the police completed the operation with the drug detection dog. They found five duffel bags in a pile of old clothes and food wrappers, containing 104 pieces of cocaine, weighing about 229 pounds .
Leo Sharp is the Tata they have been looking for.
? Before?
Sharp was born in Michigan City, Indiana and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Sharp participated in World War II and belonged to the 88th Infantry Regiment. In 344 days, more than 15,000 members of this regiment were killed or wounded while crossing the Dolomite Mountains, including the famous Battle of Batalha. They drove the Germans into Rome in 1944. Sharp won a bronze star for his outstanding performance.
After the war, he, like many conservative American whites in Central China, was eager to continue his heroic image on the battlefield. He settled in Michigan City, Indiana and entered the flower industry. He has a flower shop called Brookwood Gardens in Detroit and his own flower farm in Indiana.
He focused his attention on water lilies and day lilies, and gained international recognition for their unique hybrid flower varieties, known as "Siloam Leo Sharp" in the gardening community. The neighbors recalled that there were carts of customers waiting outside his gate to buy this unique flower from him.
However, in the late 1990s, due to the influence of the rise of the Internet, Sharp’s traditional sales catalogue marketing affected his flower business and began to decline. In order to make money and pay off debts, he participated in the drug trade. For some chance, Sharp got in touch with the drug cartel through Mexican migrant workers working for his garden, and started trafficking in drugs for Sinaloa. In total, Sharp transported more than 670 kilograms of cocaine for this drug cartel, becoming the organization's best transporter in the United States and China. If you were from 2009 to 2011, Leo Sharp was also a courier for Chicago Coca-Cola while transporting drugs privately.
After being arrested, the judge sentenced Sharp to three years in prison. But she released Sharp two years early on the grounds that his health was deteriorating.
In December 2016, Sharp died at the age of 92 and was buried in the National Veterans Cemetery in Hawaii after his death.
? About the movie?
Father Clint Eastwood directed and acted in the film adaptation of this story, The Mule (the man who transports bags of cocaine). The actor Earl Stone, like Leo Sharp, is a veteran in the conservative state of central Illinois, and a beloved grand prize winner at the former Flower Fair.
However, Leo Sharp’s legendary drug trafficking and dealing with the police are just scraps of the plot. This movie is still very " Eastwood " —family affection (the familiar climax of being abandoned by the family and returning to the family) and the sense of generation (obviously divided The term "you guys" of the generations is repeated in the movie, the old and the strong and the warning for young people) throughout, become the basic element of the male host:
Earl started looking for new sources of funds because he was busy with his career in his early years and deviated from his family, and because his career was destroyed by new things belonging to the younger generation. The huge profits brought by the drug transport gave him money to pay for his granddaughter’s college tuition and wedding drink bar expenses, as well as money to donate money to the community to build an activity center and repair a swimming pool. This became a way for him to return to his family and regain the recognition of the community (the real Leo also donated the illegal proceeds to the children's hospital and repaired the local veteran's residence). And while he was transporting drugs, he continued to influence young people with his older generation's methods of doing things.
In addition to being familiar with the theme of his "Perfect World" in 1993, it is exactly the same as his own Republican image. " An elderly white man who lives in the central region of the United States, likes to listen to country music, and is eager to put everything on the Internet. The argument that there was a simpler era before everything is complicated is also very prominent in the movie. However, compared to the section of "Green Book" where KFC eats fried chicken, I still prefer the Eastwood style "the best pork sandwich in the middle of the country" segment of racial issues.
"Most white Americans have a relative like Earl. Born in the war years, although Earl has grown up, he still remembers the era when the country was governed by outstanding good people, and other people were inferior to him. You are in front of them. I'm a little nervous, I don't know what kind of politically incorrect words will cause them to be unhappy." The newly emerged young people and other ethnic groups are indistinguishable "the same existence" (They all look the same) for them.
Earl is a person who lives in the past. Eastwood too.
To tell the truth, I watched too much Aunt May, and occasionally see Eastwood, which is as old as a pickup, is still very interesting.
Regardless of politics, at least, the 88-year-old Eastwood still knows how to make and act in movies.
Part1 Reference:
NYT-There's a True Story Behind'The Mule': The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year-Old Drug Mule
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/magazine/the-sinaloa-cartels-90-year-old-drug-mule.html
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Originally posted on the personal public account: a mountain monster (or search for "herringcat" on the WeChat public account)
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