French drug dealers have developed a novel way of alerting their accomplices to police surveillance by printing T-shirts with the registration numbers of undercover cop cars, police in Marseille said.
Crime squad officers in the southern port city found a bag full of such T-shirts Saturday when they inspected a car whose driver had abandoned his vehicle after being pursued by police, a police source said.
Officers also found half a kilogram (one pound) of cannabis in the car where the T-shirts were found, emblazoned with the numbers of cars used by crime squad police, the source said.
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By distributing the shirts with numbers printed on them, drug dealers apparently aimed to help one another identify and avoid undercover police.
A police trade union representative said: "Until now dealers would graffiti our (car) numbers on walls or print insulting slogans on sweatshirts, but this is a bizarre variation."
