Pottery covered in meth paste sold to undercover detectives

DAVENPORT (FOX 13) - An undercover operation uncovered a meth trafficking operation using pottery as a cover. The Polk County Sheriff's Office said undercover detectives found pottery covered in "meth paste" which would later be cooked off and sold. 

The suspect, 30-year-old Omar Palencia, of Davenport, is accused of selling three pieces of meth-covered pottery to PCSO undercover detectives on Monday. When they arrested him, detectives said he had two pieces of broken pottery in his pocket, containing 101 grams of meth. He told detectives was for personal use. 

Palencia told detectives the meth would have had a street value of $600,000.

PCSO said Palencia is in the country illegally. The meth paste pottery was shipped to Florida from Mexico.

Palencia was booked into the Polk County Jail, where he is being held on no bond for charges of trafficking meth; over 400 grams, trafficking meth; 28-200 grams, two counts of possession of a vehicle used to traffic drugs, and two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia.

"You can see the lengths drug dealers go to, to get their illegal product out on the street. Omar Palencia will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and thanks to minimum mandatory sentencing laws, he should be out of the drug dealing business for quite some time. Our detectives' work hard every day to keep illegal drugs off our streets," Sheriff Grady Judd said of the arrest.