A Nigerian living in Florida, Durojaiye Monsuru Obafemi Lawal has been arrested alongside some police officers in a sting operation carried out by agents of US Drug Enforcement Agency against the Sinaloa cartel.
The two Miami-Dade police officers who were arrested by the DEA have been identified as Roderick Flowers and Keith Edwards.
Miami Herald reported that the two friends who took a liking to “Bad Boys” (the police action-movie franchise set in Miami), preened with their badges, donned thick gold jewelry and smoked cigars on social media.
Flowers and Edwards are scheduled to appear in federal court on Friday October 30, a day after they were arrested on allegations of agreeing to act as muscle for a cocaine-trafficking operation set up by undercover agents. Also charged: a Miami money laundering suspect named Manuel Carlos Hernandez, who according to court documents boasted that Flowers was on his payroll.
The criminal complaint revealed that the case was made with help from a confidential source posing as a Mexican cartel member who arranged international money-laundering deals with Hernandez and brought in the two cops to help transport a shipment of “white girls” (code word for packages of cocaine) from Homestead to Aventura.
While Flowers and Edwards are charged with conspiracy to distribute and possess cocaine, Hernandez is charged with conspiracy and money laundering alongside Trevanti McLeod and Durojaiye Obafemi Monsuru Lawal who described himself as being “involved in money laundering and having political ties in Nigeria”.
Flowers and Edwards had both been members of Miami-Dade’s “Priority Response Team,” a unit created after the 2018 Parkland school massacre to respond to major incidents.
Flowers comes from a law-enforcement family. His sister is a police officer in Georgia. His father is Raleigh Flowers, the police chief in Bal Harbor and a former high-ranking Hialeah officer.
Edwards is a former soldier and father of three, according to his social media accounts.
