HPD highway interdiction unit details major seizures; residents and advocates raise concerns about traffic stops and surveillance

Sergeant Matthew Ham of the Houston Police Department’s Highway Interdiction Unit told a Houston City Council committee that the unit uses freeway traffic stops to disrupt narcotics, weapons and stolen-cargo networks that move through the Houston area.

“Our main focus at Highway Interdiction is to disrupt and dismantle criminal activity that occurs on the highways throughout the Houston area,” Sergeant Ham said, citing Houston’s highway connections to the border, other large cities and the Port of Houston as reasons the city is a transit hub for contraband.

Ham described several seizures that his unit attributed to traffic stops and canine alerts: 60 kilograms of cocaine and 10 kilograms of fentanyl hidden inside aftermarket commercial motor-vehicle batteries recovered from a refrigerated trailer; 16 kilograms of cocaine concealed in a…