A 1997 Ford Taurus seized by the Providence police in 2000 has been torn apart, first as a source for parts, and then as the unexpected resting place of a half-pound of cocaine.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

PROVIDENCE — For 6½ years, detectives unwittingly drove around in a Ford Taurus confiscated from a drug dealer that contained about a half-pound of cocaine, the police have acknowledged.

The drugs were stashed deep inside the dashboard, behind the radio, only to be found by an auto repairman about 3½ weeks ago when he went to cannibalize parts from the worn-out car.

“These things happen from time to time. We miss stuff,” Deputy Police Chief Paul J. Kennedy said of the belated discovery. “I would venture to say that this has happened in police departments all over the country at one time or another.”

In 2000, the Taurus was seized from a drug dealer who agreed to forfeit it to the Police Department in order to help resolve the criminal case against him. Initially, it was driven by detectives in the police Bureau of Narcotics and Organized Crime, and then from 2003 to September 2007 by an unnamed city detective assigned to a city/state/federal group called the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Kennedy said he does not know if the car was merely used for transportation or for surveillance and investigations.

Word of the discovery, which was not announced by the Police Department, apparently leaked out when members of the department began telling outsiders. Former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., a radio talk-show host and TV commentator who has been criticizing the police and city administration, then had fun with it on the air.

The contents of the three packages of crack cocaine, wrapped in aluminum foil and plastic bags, weighed about 232 grams, or about one-half pound. With an estimated street value of $30 per gram, Kennedy said Friday, it is worth almost $7,000.

The repairman was surprised by his find when he pulled out the dashboard. The car had been in such disrepair that it was retired in September and left parked at a city garage, where the repairman went to get salvage parts.

“He wasn’t sure exactly what it was. It was a package. It was wrapped up,” Kennedy related. “He unfurled it, thought it was drugs, and called us.”

At this point, the deputy chief said, it is impossible to tell whether the drug dealer left the cocaine behind or whether someone hid it there later. He said the former scenario is the likelier.

“It’s not something that we could put on anyone” with a criminal charge, Kennedy said, so the police will dispose of the drugs the same way they dispose of other drugs, by having them burned in an incinerator in Massachusetts.

The vehicle was searched at the time it was confiscated, but there is nobody to blame for not having found the cocaine, Kennedy said.

In a strikingly similar incident, a Burrillville Town Council member bought a used police cruiser from the City of Hartford in which he found drugs last week. A suspect apparently had managed to tuck a bag of drugs into a crack in the molded plastic rear seat before he was thoroughly searched.

The Providence police are accustomed to drug dealers using sophisticated concealments in cars and sport-utility vehicles. They have found electrically and hydraulically operated compartments that pop out of the trunk, the seats, the door — anywhere — that are operated remotely or by manipulating an object inside. In this case the crack was merely stuffed into the dashboard.

The police gained control of the green 1997 Taurus on Dec. 20, 2000, in connection with the conviction in U.S. District Court of Eduard Ruiz, who was then 26, on possession of more than one ounce of cocaine and possession of cocaine with intent to deliver.

With the help of a confidential informant, detectives had obtained a search warrant and gone to Ruiz’s apartment at 84 Borinquen St. on April 18, 2000. They found 780 grams of cocaine and $12,000, which they seized, as well as his Taurus.

On Nov. 8, 2000, he was sentenced to serve three years and one month in prison followed by five years’ probation.

The case reminded some local officers of The French Connection, a 1971 Academy Award-winning movie that was loosely based on one of the largest hauls of illegal drugs at the time. In the movie, narcotics investigators have a luxury car virtually disassembled in a hunt for smuggled heroin. Frustrated that they cannot find the contraband, the mechanics doing the work are prepared to give up.

But the investigators insist the car is “hot,” and the lead mechanic concedes that there is just one more place to look: the rocker panels beneath the doors. As it turns out, that’s where the heroin is hidden.

Kennedy said the Providence police don’t take apart an entire vehicle when it is seized from a drug dealer. Criminalists and narcotics detectives examine it, as do mechanics.

“But we don’t rip out the dashboard and rocker panels,” he said.

“To be 100-percent certain … we would have to totally dismantle the vehicle. And that’s not practical.”

gsmith@projo.com