US cop on Chadee trail killed in Kabul

A 43-year-old Florida policeman, who worked in Trinidad in 1992 trying to bring down the Dole Chadee cocaine empire, was killed during an explosion at a weapons cache near Ghanzi — 60 miles southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. Curtis Mancini, a 17-year veteran of the Davie Police Department, was one of eight persons who was killed on Monday in Afghanistan.

He was the first South Florida police officer to die in combat and the fourth South Florida soldier to die in Iraq or Afghanistan since the September 11 attacks. Mancini graduated from the Broward County Police Academy in 1987 with academic honours, then joined the Davie department. He was promoted to detective in 1989 and assigned to the narcotics division. He later was loaned to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Fort Lauderdale District Office, where he served on a drug task force for nine years. That stint ended in 1999.