#1187037 - 12/22/0805:53 AMMexico Under Siege, 8330+ murders since 01/2007
smokeonit
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Registered: 12/09/05
Posts: 528
Loc: BW, Germany
Topic: 'MEXICO UNDER SIEGE', 8330+ murdered since January 2007 The Los Angeles Times & other sources covering the killing spree since its' numbers exploded around Jan. 2007. In 2008 the murders more than doubled to end at a staggering 5600+ murders, in contrast to 2500+ murders for 2007. It seems that 2009 will be no different since Tijuana (BC) & Ciudad Juarez (CHIH), as well as other parts of Mexico, have already seen many executions and murders since the beginning of 2008. Many of those are police officers and soldiers trying to stay honest... I'm trying to add relevant events @ the border and other places in an attempt to be as informative as possible. Los Angeles Time (latimes.com) & otras fuentes que cubren la matanza que se inici alrededor Enero del 2007. Estoy tratando de agregar los eventos que ocurren cerca de la frontera y otros lugares de relevancia en un intento de ser lo ms informativo posible. Tambin trato de mantener todo bilingual, por favor sean indulgente conmigo y por favor tengan paciencia si me ocurren errores. Si vean errores por favor mandan me un PM corrigiendo me;-)
Personal Note: It seems to be so bad that the situation can be compared to Iraq. In Ciudad Juarez it's even worse than in Iraq, since half of those killings take place there! Recently i watched a documentary about the "Cocaine Cowboys" of Miami, it looks like those years in the 70s & 80s pale in comparison to what's going on in TJ, CJ and the other murder hotspots in Mexico...!!!
Content of KMZ below: Placemarks for major killings since July 2008 until December 2008.
Grahpic images, please do not scroll down if you have a problem with death and blood!
Only the first 3 articles are in this posts description, if you open the placemark in google earth/maps, you will see that every location has the full description .
Locations in thread so far (alphabetical order): Calexico, CA State of Chihuahua (CHIH) Ciudad Juarez (CHIH) Cotija (MIC) Culiacn (SIN) Ensenada (BC) Guadalajara (JAL) State of Guerrero (GRO) Manzanillo (COL) Meoqui (CHIH) Mexicali (BC) Mexico City (DF) Nuevo Laredo (TIM) Rio Bravo (TIM) Rosarito (BC) San Diego, CA State of Sonora (SON) Tecate (BC) Tijuana (BC) Tucson, AZ Valle Redondo (BC) Yuma, AZ
Twelve men were decapitated and dumped at separate sites in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, authorities said Sunday. Mexican news outlets quoted Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo as saying that eight of the men were identified as Mexican soldiers and another as a former state police commander. Earlier, Mexican media had said that the victims' close-cropped hair indicated they were soldiers.Nine of the heads and bodies were discovered Sunday in the city of Chilpancingo, the state capital. The heads were bundled in a plastic bag and dumped at a shopping center, and the bodies turned up in two other locations at opposite ends of the city, authorities said.Local prosecutors said three more decapitated bodies were found in a village on the outskirts of the city, the Associated Press reported. The find came two days after three gunmen were killed in a shootout with soldiers in Guerrero. Mexican media said the beheadings may have been intended as retribution. The website of the daily El Universal newspaper, citing unnamed state law enforcement officials, reported that a message that accompanied the bag of heads warned: 'For every one of mine you kill, I'm going to kill 10 of yours.'Beheadings have become increasingly common around Mexico amid rising drug-related violence that has killed more than 5,300 people this year.President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against drug traffickers upon taking office two years ago, triggering clashes between security forces and gunmen and vicious feuding among rival drug gangs. The coastal state of Guerrero, home to the Acapulco resort, has been one of the drug war's more violent corners. Nearly 500 people have been killed there since January 2007, a month after Calderon announced his anti-crime offensive, according to a tally by the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute. As part of his crackdown, Calderon has sent 45,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police into the streets across the country. The offensive has produced thousands of arrests and some major seizures of drugs, cash and weapons, though there is no sign that any of the main drug gangs have been dislodged. Most of the killings have resulted from turf wars among drug-trafficking organizations, which battle for the most coveted routes for smuggling into the United States.
Photos of the streets of Ciudad Juarez in recent months:
Investigators inspect the body of one of two men killed in Tierra Nueva, a graffiti-stained neighborhood of dirt streets and concrete shacks in south Ciudad Juarez:
Father and daughter(12) killed in a drive-by in the streets of Ciudad Juarez:
Schoolboys, in foreground, look at the body of a shooting victim in a playground in Satelite, a working-class section of east Ciudad Juarez. The area is notorious for drug dealing:
Ciudad Juarez city morgue (recently built because of the mass murder of women a few years back):
Ciudad Juarez city cemetery, unmarked graves section:
The two victims rest at the same 45-degree angle (2nd photo. Green Chevy Blazer), embraced by seat belts that at this moment seem an odd precaution, given the manner of death. Gunmen had pulled alongside the forest-green Chevy Tahoe on a gritty downtown street and, in broad daylight, pumped 52 shots into where the bodies now lean. Full coverage of Mexico's drug warMapOnlookers, at least 125 of them, press wordlessly against yellow police tape. About 50 olive-clad Mexican soldiers and blue-uniformed federal police take up positions around the perimeter, though it is unclear against what.Ghostly quiet gives way to the beating blades of a police helicopter. 'That's 12 today?' a young man standing nearby asks, in the matter-of-fact tone of a baseball fan confirming the number of strikeouts. 'Ten,' I answer, meaning that 10 people have been slain in Ciudad Juarez so far on this chilly Tuesday. It is barely 3 in the afternoon. Seven more people will die later, bringing the day's total to 17 in the city of 1.3 million residents. The young man nods. Around us, amid cut-rate dentist offices and bars with names like Club Safari, the looky-loos keep their rapt silence as workers from the coroner's office wrestle the newest victims from their car.It is a time of extraordinary violence all over Mexico. Feuding drug-trafficking groups and the federal government's military crackdown against organized crime have left 5,376 dead this year. Nowhere has the bloodletting been worse than in Ciudad Juarez, a sprawling border city that has registered more than 1,350 slayings in 2008, about a fourth of the country's total. The city's main drug-smuggling group, known as the Juarez cartel, is battling with rival traffickers from the northwestern state of Sinaloa for a piece of the lucrative drug trade into the U.S.The gangland-style violence has left almost no corner of Ciudad Juarez untouched. Drug-related slayings take place in houses, restaurants and bars, at playgrounds and children's parties, and in car-to-car ambushes. The dead, mostly little-known foot soldiers but also innocents caught in the crossfire, make up a ceaseless procession of clients for harried coroner's workers and daily fodder for the so-called red pages of local newspapers. The killings here are carried out in a style best described as baroque, with bodies hung headless from bridges, stuffed upside down in giant stew pots, lined up next to a school's playing field. Often, they are accompanied by taunting, handwritten messages, the hit man's equivalent of an end-zone dance.In a country that each month finds new ways to scare itself with violence, Ciudad Juarez has become emblematic of how nasty things can get. A three-day visit by a pair of Times journalists to the rough-and-tumble factory town, across the border from El Paso, Texas, reveals a fear-struck place where most residents assume -- often correctly -- that the police are crooked and where the government's control of the streets appears tenuous at best. In the Ciudad Juarez of 2008, you don't have to wait long for the next casualty.Beyond a dreary, low-rise landscape of AutoZone outlets, Bip Bip convenience stores and the boxy assembly factories known as maquiladoras, lie the 'laboratories.' Here, in an antiseptic complex of buildings in southeastern Juarez, the results of the city's daily carnage come home. Bodies and bullets are examined, measured, tallied, matched, bagged and, occasionally, employed to solve crimes. It is Monday. The man in charge of the state of Chihuahua's crime analysis and forensics unit here is Hector Hawley Morelos, an affable 39-year-old investigator with close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair and a black goatee. Hawley, a native juarense, ran a hamburger-and-burrito restaurant for 10 years before spotting a newspaper advertisement offering classes for crime investigation. His training led to a night-shift gig, then to the homicide squad and the forensics post here.Hawley investigated some of the hundreds of slayings of women that last put Ciudad Juarez on the map as an emblem of brutal violence. More than 300 women were killed and dumped in dusty lots around the city from 1993 to 2006, murders that remain largely a mystery. The $6-million, high-tech laboratory complex that Hawley oversees is a legacy of those killings. After an outcry over what was widely viewed as a slipshod investigation, international donors chipped in to help Chihuahua build an unusually well-equipped forensics operation. It boasts a ballistics lab, chemical and genetic testing, DNA analysis and a morgue capable of storing nearly 100 bodies. The lab facilities opened a year and a half ago, in time for the unexpected wave of drug killings that has swamped Hawley and the 110 doctors, technicians and investigative specialists, or peritos, who cover Ciudad Juarez and northern Chihuahua state.
He is said to love the ladies, fast horses and dissolving enemies in lye.Teodoro Garcia Simental is among the best known but least identifiable villains in Mexico's drug war, blamed for a trail of terror across Baja California. His heavily armed hit men, authorities say, have been leaving the gruesome displays of charred and decapitated bodies across the city, signed with the moniker 'Tres Letras,' for the three letters in 'Teo.' And authorities believe he runs a network of hide-outs where kidnap victims are held in cages.Yet thousands of police officers, soldiers, state and federal agents can't seem to find him. Billboards showing Tijuana's most wanted kidnappers don't include Garcia's image, even though he is believed to be behind most of the gang war that has claimed more than 400 lives here since late September. 'That tells you that you don't want to be the one responsible for putting Teo's picture in public,' said one U.S. law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'There's no future in it. 'The alleged crime boss appears chubby-cheeked and sporting an ill-fitting tie and coat in his only published photograph, labeled as No. 27 on the FBI's narctip.com website. His photo bears no name, and he is listed as one of several dozen people sought for allegedly using false Mexican police identification in connection with slayings, kidnappings and other crimes. Many police officers, prosecutors and ordinary citizens go silent when Teo's name is mentioned. What is known about him comes from the secret testimony of captured gunmen, narco-messages left with victims and anonymously written narcocorrido ballads sold at swap meets. 'Pay attention, President [Felipe Calderon]. . . . In Tijuana, I rule,' one song boasts. 'We'll show you what a real war is like.'Mexican court documents and interviews with U.S. and Mexican authorities paint a portrait of Garcia as a vengeful crime boss who vows not to go down without a fight. Garcia is said to be in his mid-30s -- even his date of birth is not known. He reportedly bets big on clandestine horse races at isolated ranches outside Ensenada. He hires people at $400 per week to guard kidnapping victims and to weld together the barrels of caustic chemicals used to dispose of some of his victims, according to documents and interviews. One Mexican law enforcement official said Garcia has killed people at parties, laughing at their stunned reactions. 'Criminals earn respect and credibility with creative killing methods,' said the official,
smokeonit
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Registered: 12/09/05
Posts: 528
Loc: BW, Germany
Location: Guadalajara, Jalisco (JAL)
24/12/2008
Miss Sinaloa 2008 (Sinaloa is the infamous State of the "Sinaloa Cartel", home of most drug cartels of mexico), Laura Ziga, was arrested at a mexican Army checkpoint entering the city Guadalajara (600km north-west of Mexico City). She and her 8 "body guards" were searched after an anonymous tip came in. The search brought to light 2 high powered automatic rifles with silencers (M-16 or the smaller SWAT type M-16), 3 handguns, 600 shots of ammunition, 16 cell phones and close to US$100,000 in cash.
Looking at the pictures the ammunition clips used by the men arrested look like the typical hardware used by the drug cartels... especially the round mega clips, that hold up to 200 shots...! And the fact that the M-16's had silencers is a clear indicator that those were not for self-defense purposes! Unless Miss Sinaloa and her gang is part of an army unit or a SWAT team (which is highly doubt...!!!)
In the middle of the photo is Laura Ziga, the only person with her head down and handcuffs in front of her, not behind her back like her "body guards":
Personal note : And it amazes me that someone with a bright future would get involved with such a business... Just looking at the morgue & street massacre photos say more than a thousand words about what the mexican public has to endure... To see a reigning beauty queen in sharp contrast shows what is involved in all this... the money from drugs corrupts a lot of people, not just in mexico, also in the U.S. and Europe. It would be stupid to think that "we" are immune to what is happening in mexico...!
If i recall correctly a former Puerto Rican beauty queen and then TV anchor was caught smuggling drugs into Puerto Rico a few years back, i think she's still in prison in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic... and i know that i don't want to be caught dead in a dominican or mexican prison...!
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smokeonit
Explorer
Registered: 12/09/05
Posts: 528
Loc: BW, Germany
yeah, this is such a tragedy... most people don't care or might care, but the press mostly doesn't care...
close to 7000 dead since jan. 2007... that's baghdad style... maybe even worse... the LAtimes is showing some guts in reporting and sending reporters to the "battlefield"... and those cartels are known for retaliation...
i hope that decency and courage wins over the state of corruption and cowardliness that is ruling parts of mexico and even the US...
mexico needs help... they need better funding for schools so that the next generation is not easy prey for the cartels... and the local police needs funding for better salaries and bullet proof vests, armored cars and stuff like that... unless the situation gets drastically better no one is safe, especially the honest officials... the best would be that officers and families are housed on campuses that are more easy to protect against ambushes that have killed so many honest cops in mexico... and the psychological damage of one killed cop is tremendous... the next time the cartel approaches cops that are susceptible to bribery it will be more easy than before the killings...
this story (part of the placemarks in the kmz) shows that honest cops live very dangerous lives:latimes: link to article
Location: Tecate, Baja California (BC)
Page 1 of 2:
In Mexico, a police victory against smuggling brings deadly revenge
Juan Jose Soriano (RIP), deputy commander of the Tecate Police Department, helped U.S. authorities find a drug-smuggling tunnel. The next morning, gunmen shot him 45 times in his bedroom.
Juan Jose Soriano (RIP), making an arrest (middle of photo):
By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 7, 2008 Tecate, Mexico
Adrug-sniffing dog pulled the U.S. Border Patrol agent to a rusty cargo container in the storage yard just north of the Mexican border. Peeking inside, he saw stacks of bundled marijuana and a man with a gun tucked in his waistband.
The officer and the man locked eyes for a moment before the smuggler scrambled down a hole and disappeared. By the time backup agents cast their flashlights into the opening, he was long gone, through a winding tunnel to Mexico.
U.S. authorities called a trusted friend on the other side, Juan Jose Soriano.
The deputy commander of the Tecate Police Department gathered the entire shift of 30 officers at the decrepit police headquarters on Avenida Benito Juarez. Soriano knew any of them might leak information to the tunnel's gangster operators. So he took their cellphones and sent them away on a ruse about a car chase near the border.
The veteran officer told only a few trusted aides about the tunnel. Later that day, the officers went into the U.S. and traversed the length of the passageway to an empty building, where they found computers, ledgers and other key evidence.
For U.S. authorities, it was an encouraging example of cross-border cooperation in the drug war. For Mexico's crime bosses, it was a police victory that could not go unpunished.
That night last December, while Soriano slept with his wife and baby daughter, two heavily armed men broke into his house and shot him 45 times. The 35-year-old father of three young daughters died in his bedroom. He had lasted two days as the second-in-command of the department.
The death of a police officer is generally greeted in Mexico with a knowing smirk. All too often, it is assumed the cop in question was playing for both sides in the raging drug war that has claimed at least 2,000 lives in Mexico this year.
But all indications, from U.S. and Mexican sources, suggestthat Soriano was among the good ones, poorly paid but somehow immune to the lure of big money and the threat of deadly firepower from Mexico's violent drug gangs.
Cooperation with U.S. law enforcement ranges from secretive intelligence sharing to high-profile raids and arrests. It is aggressive police work that runs the risk of death for honest cops.
An intense, soft-spoken man, Soriano struggled for years to clean up the troubled department. But his corruption-busting ways earned him only contempt from many cops. At the small shrine to fallen officers in the courtyard at police headquarters, Soriano's image is conspicuously absent.
"It's a shame," said Donald McDermott, a former Border Patrol assistant chief who worked with Soriano. "He was one of the good guys. . . . His untimely demise was a blow to border enforcement on both sides of the border."
A city of 120,000 tucked in the rugged mountains 40 miles east of Tijuana, Tecate is best known for its tree-lined plaza and beer brewery. But its tranquil veneer masks its reputation as a hub of organized crime groups that use the surrounding area of boulder-strewn peaks and remote valleys as a launching pad for smuggling drugs and humans.
The 200-member police department has long been suspected of functioning as an arm of the drug cartels, providing protection and ensuring that smuggling routes remain open along the 75 miles of border for which the department is responsible.
Soriano stood apart: an aggressive, disciplined lawman who aspired to become police chief, according to law enforcement sources on both sides of the border. Unlike most Mexican cops, he had a degree in police science. And he spent three years working for Grupo Beta, a federal immigrant-safety force with whom he once saved 65 immigrants in a snowstorm.
In 2003, Soriano took charge of Tecate's SWAT-like special response team. In a break from past practices, he reached out to U.S. agencies for training opportunities and cross-border crime fighting.
Soriano's officers arrested border bandits, disrupted smuggling operations and went where cops hadn't gone in years, say U.S. and Mexican sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation.
Soriano was a go-to source for the U.S. Border Patrol and other agencies and was a regular at binational meetings, where he shared information with his U.S. counterparts. "He wanted to do things the right way," said one Mexican law enforcement source. "But that was a problem for many people."
Police brass reassigned Soriano to a desk job in 2005. "They took away his wings. They weren't ready for where he was going," said one U.S. law enforcement source.
_________________________
VISTA = Virus Inside Switch to Apple
Weapons lie in the bed of a truck alongside the bodies of two plainclothes police officers in Culiacan slain in November violence. Shootings, even of cops, are hardly investigated :
Relatives of the five officers gunned down in Culiacan run around the ambush scene screaming and crying while federal police officers guard the shooting site in the background:
The body of a policeman is taken from the scene of the shootout in Culiacan. The assailants got away:
In central Culiacan, a Mexican federal police officer surveys the scene after the Nov. 19 shootout that killed five federal and Sinaloa state police agents. More than 100 police officers have been killed in Sinaloa this year, most of them gunned down:
Mexican federal police officers guard the scene of the ambush in Culiacan that left five police officers dead. Drug-related violence has killed more than 5,000 people in Mexico this year:
Members of a unit of the Mexican federal police load their gear onto a jet at the Culiacan airport. They are being being replaced by a fresh unit flown in earlier on the same plane, two days after the five officers were gunned down:
With a hand on his sidearm, a Culiacan police officer looks for victims in a bullet-pocked pickup truck. Neighbors had already taken the wounded or dead from the scene, the aftermath of an attack by a rival drug faction:
Neighbors gather in a Culiacan neighborhood to look at two vehicles shattered by automatic gunfire a half block away:
Anti-drug crusader Yudit del Rincon, a Sinaloa state legislator, once received a funeral wreath with her name on it. She is more careful these days about attacking individuals, but she is more determined than ever to challenge a doped-up status quo. "All society is contaminated," she says. "We are being held hostage.... If we remain silent, where will we end up?:
A man pays homage to a statue of folk hero Jesus Malverde, the "narco-saint" to Sinaloa's drug traffickers. The shrine in Culiacan celebrates the bandit who was said to have given to the poor before being killed by authorities in 1909. On this night another man hoped that a prayer and donation would insure that his shipment of illegal drugs would make it to the United States:
Relatives embrace and the band plays during a burial at a Culiacan cemetery. Many of those buried here were involved in the drug trade and died young. Families spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to erect mausoleums built with imported Italian marble, Corinthian columns and French doors. Lupito, Beta, Payan and dozens more take their journey to the afterlife accompanied by bottles of tequila or cans of Tecate: [img]http://img.skitch.com/20081228-s8uwiijgwyrcrfk69qy8ciqf6.jpg[/img]
Artist Jose Espinosa Moraila, 50, paints the ceiling of a mausoleum. In the background is a blown-up snapshot of the 32-year-old man interred in the crypt in the Culiacan "narco-cemetery," where families spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to erect structures that adulate the life that put their relatives in their graves: [img]http://img.skitch.com/20081228-mbgtpb4igtnq4j67jbq2bedgae.jpg[/img]
'Narcos' have made their way into government, business and culture in this Pacific state, where kids want to grow up to be traffickers.
By Tracy Wilkinson (latimes.com) December 28, 2008
In Sinaloa, the drug trade has infiltrated 'every corner of life'
Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico -- Yudit del Rincon, a 44-year-old lawmaker, went before the state legislature this year with a proposition: Let's require lawmakers to take drug tests to prove they are clean.
Her colleagues greeted the idea with applause. Then she sprang a surprise on them: Two lab technicians waited in the audience to administer drug tests to every state lawmaker. We should set the example, she said.
They nearly trampled one another in the stampede to the door, Del Rincon recalled.
Del Rincon wasn't all that shocked. She was born and bred here in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, home of the drug racket's top leaders, its most talented impresarios and some of its dirtiest government and police officials.
Swaths of Sinaloa periodically become no-go zones for outsiders; the central government abdicated control long ago. By one estimate, 32 towns are run by gangsters.
In Culiacan, the capital, casinos outnumber libraries, and dealerships for yachts and Hummers cater to the inexplicably wealthy.
This is where narco folklore started, with songs and icons that pay homage to gangsters, and where children want to grow up to be traffickers. How Sinaloa confronts its own divided soul offers insight on where the drug war may be going for Mexico, where more than 5,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence this year.
"The monster has lost all proportion," said Del Rincon, who is a member of the conservative National Action Party.
A spunky woman with large eyes and hands that seem to be in constant motion, Del Rincon scans other tables at cafes where she meets people, making sure she knows who is within earshot; she lowers her voice when she names names. Her husband and closest confidant keeps tabs on her whereabouts throughout each day.
Such are the risks of speaking out.
"The narcos have networks meshed into the fabric of business, culture, politics -- every corner of life."
Drug crops
Poppies and marijuana have been cultivated in the mountains of Sinaloa since the late 19th century. For decades, Mexican farmers harvested the crops, and entire dynasties of families dedicated themselves to the trade.
Except for one brutal crackdown in the 1970s, successive governments accommodated the drug trade, even as Mexico became a staging ground for Colombian cocaine headed to its biggest market, the United States.
Back then, one party ruled Mexico. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, controlled everything from the smallest of peasant groups to the presidency.
"The state was the referee, and it imposed the rules of the game on the traffickers," Sinaloa-born historian Luis Astorga said. "The world of the politicians and the world of the traffickers contained and protected each other simultaneously."
Slowly, the monopoly started to crack. Parties other than the PRI began to win elections, here and across the nation. Different faces joined regional legislatures, while the PRI struggled to hold on. Del Rincon's PAN won the mayoralty of Culiacan and other posts across Sinaloa.
Finally, the PRI lost the presidency in 2000.
Political pluralism in Mexico may have made room for more firebrands like Del Rincon, but it also fed a free-for-all among trafficking gangs, which began to splinter and compete.
"The state was no longer the referee, and so the traffickers had to referee among themselves," Astorga said. And that was not going to be a well-mannered process.
Gradually, law-abiding people learned a new code of conduct: Keep your head down, don't ask too many questions, keep away from the restaurants and luxury boutiques where gangsters hang out. Family gatherings end early; everyone wants to get home soon after sunset.
"Mexico was a time bomb for a long time, and now it is finally out of control -- more guns, more money, more internal fights," said Marco Antonio Castrejon, a dentist whose grandparents came down from the hills and settled in Culiacan about 60 years ago. Castrejon and his seven siblings worked hard, earned degrees and established legitimate professions, even as the men with guns and menacing swaggers took the streets.
About eight years ago, Castrejon kept his oldest boy from leaving Culiacan. Generations of the family had stuck together here. It was important to stay, he advised.
But this year, when his youngest turned 17 and wanted to leave, the door was open.
"I used to be afraid to have my children away from us," said Castrejon, 48. "Now the greater fear is that they stay."
Police at risk
Pedro Rodriguez, 41, has been a police officer for half his life in one of the deadliest places on the planet for cops. He got into law enforcement straight out of the army. He thought the discipline he admired in the military would continue in the Sinaloa police force. And he liked the authority that a policeman's uniform gave him.
It all changed several years ago, he said.
"It used to be, as a uniformed police officer, I could raise my hand in the road and stop an 18-wheeler," Rodriguez said. "Today the truck would run right over me."
More than 100 police officers have been killed in Sinaloa this year, most of them gunned down. Countless others have fled, or taken bribes and changed sides. As much as 70% of the local police force has come under the sway of traffickers, by some estimates.
It is widely believed here that many legislators and other politicians are elected with the help of narcotics money. The exchange: veto power over the naming of top police commanders.
Rodriguez knows he can be betrayed by a corrupt fellow officer. So, he says a prayer every day before he leaves the modest home where he lives with his wife and four children. He works in a city that can seem normal on the surface, its streets clogged with traffic, office workers going to lunch.
Then those same streets turn into a shooting gallery. Gunmen in dark-windowed SUVs open fire on rivals or cops, day or night. Five federal and state policemen were killed in a hail of bullets on Culiacan's prominent Emiliano Zapata Boulevard one recent night. The truck with their bloodied corpses came to rest outside a busy casino under blue and purple neon lights and fake palm trees. It was the third time in recent weeks that an entire squad of agents was wiped out in an ambush. No one is ever arrested; shootings, even of cops, are hardly investigated .
"Twenty years ago we knew of the handful of big mafia dons, but they were discreet," Rodriguez said. "Today we are dealing with the apprentices, who want to get rich very fast, who commit enormous excesses, who want to be noticed."
That chaos might make some nostalgic for the old days, when a few Sinaloa dynasties dominated the drug trade, as they had for generations. Amado Carrillo Fuentes branched out from Sinaloa into Chihuahua in the 1980s and '90s and ran the Juarez drug network that made him one of the richest men on the planet, owner of a fleet of jets and vast real estate holdings the world over.
As the centralized system broke down, the Sinaloans met a new challenge: the Gulf cartel.
Based in the state of Tamaulipas, the Gulf gang was reputed to have ties with, and the protection of, Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. After the arrest of its leader, Osiel Cardenas, the Gulf cartel became the first of the drug mafias to introduce a paramilitary army.
The narcotics ring recruited from Mexican and Guatemalan army special forces and formed the Zetas, ruthless hit men. The Zetas left one of their earliest calling cards in the town of Uruapan in Michoacan state in September 2006, when they tossed five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall.
The Sinaloans in turn beefed up their security, and the Zetas on the other side trained additional recruits. Now several hundred, most between 17 and 35 years old, operate as mercenaries, investigators say.
"Each cartel needs its enforcement, its protection, its muscle, and that dynamic has been increasing exponentially in the last two years," a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. "And now one side has to outdo the other."
Crackdown
When Felipe Calderon took office two years ago, violence had already begun to surge. Calderon deployed the army days after his inauguration. The president, according to aides, was genuinely alarmed by the waves if killings sweeping the nation and the ability of traffickers to infiltrate politics and possibly even seek elected posts.
Even among Calderon's supporters, however, there are complaints that the president underestimated the scope of the problem, dispatched an inadequately prepared army and is not fighting on the political and economic fronts. Consequently, the backlash has been bloodier than anticipated.
With plenty of money, the traffickers continue to protect themselves and buy their way into governments, says Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime who advises Mexico's Congress.
In the latest and potentially most explosive scandal, Sinaloan traffickers allegedly bought off senior antidrug officials in far-off Mexico City, acquiring inside information on Calderon's ground war against smugglers.
Buscaglia warns against the "Afghanistan-ization" of Mexico, in which rival kingpins gradually take over different states.
"If one criminal organization takes over one state, and another criminal organization takes another, then you have the ingredients of civil war," Buscaglia said. Mexico is not there yet, Buscaglia said, but that breakdown looms as a real danger.
Buscaglia believes traffickers already control 8% of Mexico's municipalities, or about 200 cities and towns, based on his analysis of data such as arrest warrants issued for police, army detentions of elected officials, and the presence of sanctioned criminal activity such as drug sales and prostitution.
Leading the pack was the state of Sinaloa, with 32.
Jesus Vizcarra Calderon, the mayor of Culiacan, felt compelled late last year to deny rumors that his considerable fortune came from Sinaloan traffickers. Vizcarra has been tapped by the governor of Sinaloa to be the PRI's candidate in next year's gubernatorial elections.
Sinaloa state legislator Oscar Felix Ochoa also denied criminal activity after his three brothers were arrested in June, allegedly holding nearly 40 pounds of cocaine, weapons and cash. At the same time, the army discovered a safe house harboring gunmen implicated in the slaying of federal police, with more than $5 million stashed in a strongbox. The house had belonged to Felix Ochoa, the army said.
Del Rincon, the crusading legislator, used to lead the charge against Felix Ochoa. One day, someone sent a funeral wreath to her home with her name on it.
She is more careful these days about attacking individuals, but she is more determined than ever to challenge a doped-up status quo.
"All society is contaminated," she said. "We are being held hostage. . . . If we remain silent, where will we end up?"
After a lifetime struggling to keep her family safe from traffickers, Del Rincon was dismayed when her son started dressing like the buchones -- the young wannabes who emulate traffickers.
"If we don't dress like this, the girls won't even look at us," she recalled her son saying.
"It is fashionable to be a narco," Del Rincon said, shaking her head. "It's status."
In the cemeteries of Sinaloa, many members of the new generation rest, having met premature death. Families spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to erect mausoleums that adulate the life that put their kin in their graves. The crypts are built with imported Italian marble, mosaics, crystal chandeliers, Corinthian columns and French doors.
In one, "Lupito" rests in peace with his AK-47; "Beta," "Payan" and dozens more take their journey to the afterlife amid statues of the Virgin Mary, and accompanied by bottles of tequila, cans of Tecate beer and packs of Marlboros.
The average age of these men, all buried in the last few months, is less than 25 years.
Experts and public figures in the U.S. and Latin America offer a range of views, from stepped-up policing to legalization.
December 30, 2008
At times, the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico seems hopeless. The body count grows steadily, each massacre seemingly more gruesome than the one before. The flow of drugs to America and Europe continues virtually unabated. The Times asked experts and public figures in the U.S., Mexico and other parts of Latin America for their views on the problem and what should be done about it. The comments, compiled by Mexico City Bureau Chief Tracy Wilkinson, have been edited for space or clarity.
Fernando Rospigliosi
Former interior minister of Peru
The U.S. approach to fighting drugs is, I think, the only program that works. The problem, however, is that the United States is pulling back.
How can we have success in this fight? Within the National Police of Peru, I know there are specialized people. They could begin capturing entire bands of traffickers. You must attack on all fronts. It is police work, judicial work; you have to be well equipped and, unfortunately, we aren't.
The narco-trafficking problem in Peru has gotten worse in all aspects: the production of cocaine, violence and the corruption that comes from that. One of the aggravating factors was the launching of the [U.S.-financed] Plan Colombia, which started to work in the last decade and that has unleashed greater demand for Peruvian coca and cocaine. In addition, you have the increasingly strong entrance of Mexican cartels into Peru, and they have brought a kind of violence never before seen here.
The state attaches very little importance to this fight. There was no political will in the previous government nor in the current one, for various reasons, including fear and the scourge of corruption that reaches the highest levels. What does the state do? Small arrests, small seizures, but there is no defined, broad policy for confronting the problem.
From an interview with special correspondent Adriana Leon
Former mayor of Medellin, Colombia, a onetime drug- trafficking hub where violence has been reduced significantly
Colombia's experience is that you get rid of some narcos and others come in and take their place. Their weapons are destruction, death and the ability to corrupt many facets of the state. You can't leave the slightest space in our cities or legitimate society for them to occupy. That's very important.
The doors into the drug world are very wide for the unemployed and the youth living in the poor barrios. You have to close or reduce the size of that doorway. How do you do that? With opportunities, creating jobs in those barrios with education and by establishing the state's presence in each community. We learned that many who entered criminality because they had no opportunity will return to society if they can go to work.
From a distance, it seems to me that Mexico will pass through a painful stage. There is much ground left for them to cover. My advice is that the government should not wait until they win the war to look at what they can do in the communities that produce these people. They should be thinking about the poor boy standing on a street corner, looking at that narco doorway and thinking about entering.
From an interview with Times staff writer Chris Kraul
President of Mexico United Against Crime. Her husband survived a kidnapping, but his captors severed three of his fingers to pressure the family for ransom.
We have been stripped of our freedom to live without fear, stripped by the criminal action of lawbreakers and by the omissions of the authorities. The moment has arrived to cry out: Enough already! Our demands can be summed up in one phrase: to have good laws and make those laws obeyed by reconstructing our institutions:
1. A true national crime prevention policy that contains programs, city by city, that diagnose the problems and set forth remedies with time limits and budgets.
2. A unified national criminal database that uses top technology to collect, analyze and exploit information on crimes and criminals throughout the country.
3. Reconstruct federal, municipal and state police forces.
4. Reform the penal justice system. We want to unify the penal code so that all crimes are punished and pursued in the same way in all the country.
5. We want a national strategy against kidnapping, which should include the following points: fortifying kidnap investigation units at the federal level, and the state prosecutors at all levels; swifter prosecution, because slow justice is no justice; monitoring of convicted or accused kidnappers in prison; better tracking of cellphone use to pinpoint locations of users and their identities; empower authorities to confiscate assets of alleged criminals and break their financial structures; establish a national registry based on fingerprints of all people residing in Mexico; creation of a citizen watchdog, who has authority to denounce corrupt and inefficient officials.
To be a witness, like John the Baptist, is not easy. It can cost you your life, as it did him. "But we must obey God before obeying men." With this freedom, the first Christians spoke to their society and to the judges who imposed silence on them. In our circumstances today, the difficulties are truly enormous in attempting to fight narcotics trafficking, violence, injustice, the attacks on human life, and then to build peace.
The powers that have been implicated in these grave problems, as well as the feelings of rancor, confrontation and vengeance that the problems provoke, make finding a solution an arduous, urgent task. To remove people and human groups from confrontation and from violence requires dialogue that is respectful, loyal and free. It is the most dignified and recommendable form to overcome these difficulties of human coexistence. Those who are taking other paths are headed down the wrong road, and are mortgaging the future of our nation.
There are other routes to take to diminish violence in our country. It precisely does not involve making deals with criminals so that they can continue with their criminal conduct. For not one second would I allow that pacts be made with organized crime. You cannot make deals with evil. You cannot make deals with those who will use violence. Mexico will get out of this reality, but at the present moment we only see criminality growing. These moneys [from traffickers and other illicit sources] must not be allowed to enter the dynamic of power, because then we would have a state within a state.
Mexican film director ("Babel," "21 Grams" and "Amores Perros")
I have always thought that the only possible way to eradicate this plague is to legalize drugs. While the United States keeps consuming these amounts of drugs and selling guns the way it does, there's no way our country will win this war.
Once the tons of drugs cross the border into the U.S., there has to be a huge web of people involved in distributing and selling all these drugs. Where are these people? Who are they? Where are these "American cartels" and their leaders?
The economic and gun power of the cartels has corrupted the entire Mexican country. Like humidity, it has permeated every level, and the economic benefits of it are so strong that it has become a national income. The war is lost. To legalize drugs would bring another set of problems, but at least those will be more transparent.
From an interview with Times staff writer Reed Johnson
Federal agent for 30 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, the Customs Service and the Department of Homeland Security
Busting top traffickers doesn't work, since others just do battle to replace them. Despite the obvious failure of our drug control strategy, the public discourse surrounding this issue has focused primarily on continuing to wage the "drug war."
Mandatory prison sentences and interdiction efforts have very little effect on drug use. This year the World Health Organization found that the U.S. has the highest marijuana and cocaine use rates on the planet, despite having some of the harshest sentences.
We won't be able to expand treatment and prevention efforts until we stop spending so much money enforcing ineffective penalties, building new prisons and buying fancy cars and helicopters for law enforcement agencies. As we begin to treat problematic drug use as a public health issue, it will become much easier to prevent the death, disease and addiction that have expanded under the criminal justice mentality of prohibition.
But even with the best public health efforts, there will always be some who want to use drugs, and, as long as drugs are illegal, many willing to risk imprisonment or death to make huge profits supplying them. My years of experience as a federal agent tell me that legalizing and effectively regulating drugs will stop drug market crime and violence by putting major cartels and gangs out of business.
The Department of Justice reported [this month] that Mexican cartels are America's "greatest organized crime threat" because they "control drug distribution in most U.S. cities." If what we've been doing worked at all, we wouldn't be battling Mexican drug dealers in our own cities or anywhere else. There's one surefire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?
Written comments submitted to The Times
Personal Note: I find it amazing and hoepful that someone that worked @ the "US Department of Homeland Security" (one of the most reactionist departments anywhere on the planet) for some time agrees with the "legalize it" theory... for my part i tend to agree! it's the only way to battle the cartels and once and for all rid out crime that surrounds drugs, like prostitution, robbery, burglary... all those things would be greatly reduced if drugs would be legalized and regulated... but as long as we keep our double standards this won't happen';-(
San Diego channel 10 News report:
Not the best piece of journalism, but it was the only english spoken report i could find that was halfway decent, especially the part with the mayor of the city of Rosarito (BC) is important, even though it's heavily edited and much too short. I even had to upload it to youtube since the topic is not widely covered...
_________________________
VISTA = Virus Inside Switch to Apple
Mexico says suspected drug gang hit men adopt uniforms with modified 'Jackass' logo By Associated Press 6:23 PM PST, January 16, 2009 TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Soldiers in Tijuana have detained three suspected drug assassins with uniforms featuring a skull above crossed crutches, apparently patterned after the logo of the "Jackass" television show and movies.
The men are suspected of working for a Mexican cartel operator nicknamed "Muletas," or "Crutches."
The 15 black uniforms found in the men's Ford Explorer in Tijuana, BC, Mexico, had patches with the logo and the slogan "FEM, Fuerzas Especiales Muletas", or translated, "Muletas Special Forces".
An army statement issued Friday said the men were pulled over because their Pickup had bullet holes on the right side.
Soldiers found 20 guns (19 automatic rifles, AK-47 & M-16, one handgun) in a Ford Pickup and another vehicle and suspect were involved in kidnappings and killings. No charges have yet been filed. (Note: i edited some errors)
The three suspects are also believed to be the kidnappers of Gregorio Barreto Luna, a PRI politician. The names of the suspects are: -Carlos Antonio Pérez Mondragón -Fermín Mondragón (Municipal police officer assigned to the precinct where the arrest happened) -Cristopher Pérez Palacios Fermín Mondragón was a class "B" police officer with a monthly salary of MX$14949.43, or approx. US$1055/€823.
TIJUANA BC 16 de enero de 2009 (AFN).- Elementos del Ejército Mexicano detuvieron la noche de este jueves, a tres individuos que presumiblemente son sicarios de las células de Raydel López Uriarte (a) “El Muletas” y Filiberto Parra Ramos (a) “La Perra”, con un fuerte arsenal que les fue decomisado.Los detenidos habrían participado, según se dijo, en el secuestro del ex funcionario priísta y empresario transportista, Gregorio Barreto Luna. Los detenidos son: Carlos Antonio Pérez Mondragón, su hermano Fermín, actual policía municipal y otro hombre identificado como Cristopher Pérez Palacios. La detención se registró en el fraccionamiento Terrazas del Valle en la delegación de La Presa y se les decomisaron uniformes de la Policía Municipal de Tijuana y prendas de vestir con las insignias de las autollamadas Fuerzas Especiales del Muletas (FEM), que incluyen la figura de una calavera con un par de muletas cruzadas, así como 20 armas largas, 1,700 cartuchos, equipo táctico especial y dos vehículos. Personal de la Segunda Zona Militar presentó a los detenidos, las armas, los vehículos y el equipo táctico decomisados, la mañana de este viernes en las instalaciones del Cuartel Morelos. Hasta el día de su detención, Fermín Pérez Mondragón laboraba como policía en la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública y estaba adscrito a la Delegación La Presa, el mismo distrito en que fue aprehendido. Oficialía Mayor en la página de internet del Ayuntamiento, en el apartado de transparencia, indica que Pérez Mondragón se desempeñaba como Agente “B” y devengaba un sueldo de 14 mil 949. 43 pesos mensuales. Según información proporcionada por la SSPM el día de su captura permanecía franco.
Daniel LaPorte went to Mexico and never came back. His parents didn't know of his drug involvement.
By Evelyn Larrubia, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 27, 2008
Daniel not come home.
Linda LaPorte stood in the kitchen of her home in Pascoag, R.I., holding her cellphone. Her son's Thai girlfriend was calling from San Diego, speaking a mile a minute in fractured English.
He said call mom if he not come home.
Linda and her husband, Joseph, had called their son just days earlier to wish him a happy 27th birthday. He'd said nothing about traveling anywhere.
Yet here was his girlfriend saying he'd gone to Mexico on business with a guy named Big Daddy. And he hadn't come back.
"What she was trying to convey to me didn't make sense," Linda recalled.
Dozens of American citizens have been kidnapped and killed in Mexico in the last year. They are a small fraction of the 2,500 people, the vast majority of them Mexicans, who have been slain gangland-style. Countless others have been kidnapped for ransom.
Officials on both sides of the border say the American victims are rarely unlucky tourists. Some lived in Mexico and may have known their attackers. Others were businesspeople who crossed the border regularly and were seen as an easy source of cash. Still others were thought to be involved in drugs.
Linda didn't know any of that. All she knew was that Dan was missing.
He was the youngest of the LaPortes' three sons. The other two had married and started families. Dan still hadn't settled down. He was affectionate and fiercely loyal, but had a troublesome temper. He had few ambitions; after graduating from Burrillville High School in 2000, he got a job in a deli.
In the spring of 2005, he followed his boss to San Diego, "looking for something better," Linda recalled.
Dan was working at a restaurant and as a bouncer at clubs -- just to pay the rent, he told his family. His plan, he said, was to open a surfboard factory in Mexico. A 6-foot, 1-inch former high school football player who weighed 290 pounds, he began to take better care of himself. He developed a taste for stir fry and Thai cuisine, started working out vigorously and dropped 100 pounds.
He was finding his way in the world, or so it seemed from 3,000 miles away.
Slow down, Linda told Dan's girlfriend, T.K. Dangalongkon. What's this about Mexico?
Dan had left for the border Feb. 22, a Friday, T.K. said. He'd looked worried and told her that if he wasn't back by 10 p.m., she should call his mother. She'd know what to do.
It was Sunday morning now, and Linda had no idea what to do.
She dialed Dan's Rhode Island cellphone and left a message. She called his California cellphone but couldn't connect.
She drove to the house of one of Dan's closest friends. When was the last time he'd talked to Dan? she asked. Did he have the names or phone numbers of any of Dan's contacts in Mexico? Who's Big Daddy?
Linda went to all his friends, but got no answers. They seemed evasive.
She called T.K. back and sent her to a neighbor, who helped her file a missing-person report with the San Diego Police Department.
A tearful day blurred to night. Sleep never came.
Linda and Joe got up Monday and went to work: she as a customer service representative for the Pascoag Utility District, he for the Burrillville Public Works Department. It was hard to focus on anything but finding their son.
Linda spoke to the State Department. One of Dan's friends contacted the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. Mexican and U.S. authorities promised to scour prisons, jails, morgues, hospitals.
Days passed. Nothing turned up.
Three of Dan's friends flew to San Diego. They shipped back nearly a dozen boxes of his belongings.
Linda scoured them for clues. She turned out every pocket and pored over the files in his computer, piles of papers. She puzzled over a bill for a shrink-wrap machine, bought in the name of the surfboard manufacturing company Dan said he was trying to start.
In his camera were photos of a trip to Mexico in 2005, riding four-wheelers and swimming in the azure ocean. That was the Mexico she knew. Some photos showed men his mother didn't recognize; two of them looked as if they might be Mexican. She e-mailed the pictures to a Mexican consular official.
After a week of searching, Linda was right where she'd started. She had no answers, just suspicions.
John Eppick had worked in Mexico for nearly a decade, finding stolen airplanes for American companies, among other assignments. Now, he was intent on retiring after more than 40 years as a private investigator. He and his wife had bought a wooded property in Missouri with a fish pond.
His wife was still in California in March when she ran into a male acquaintance. The man had a friend in Rhode Island who needed a private investigator to work across the border. Was Eppick still taking cases?
Some, his wife replied.
Linda took a shot.
"Most of the other telephone calls I refer to other investigators," Eppick said. "This particular one concerned me because I was well aware of the problems in Tijuana and Rosarito."
Eppick told the LaPortes that the investigation was likely to take a month and cost $25,000, maybe more.
It was nearly 10 p.m. on March 5, two weeks after Dan had disappeared. Linda hung up the phone and faxed Eppick a copy of Dan's passport and car registration, financial records, every piece of paper that looked even remotely significant: 75 pages of what she knew about her son's last days.
"You have to allow for three scenarios," Eppick recalls thinking. "One, they just flat-out shoot you. Two, they kidnap you and torture you. And three, they kidnap you for ransom."
Eppick was well-informed about the lawlessness sweeping Mexico: the running gun battles between drug gangs, the daylight ambushes of police and justice officials, the innocent victims of automatic-weapons fire -- wedding guests, a baby, a teenage girl.
Eppick hired two investigators in San Diego. They reached out to police there and in Mexico, took out newspaper ads and posted fliers with Dan's driver's license photo and a description of his 1999 green Cadillac STS.
Eppick called his contacts in Mexico, interviewed Dan's friends in Rhode Island and flew to San Diego to talk to anyone he could find who knew the missing man. A picture of Dan's life emerged. It was not the life he had told his parents about.
According to the information Eppick gathered, Dan did not work in a restaurant. He was not a bouncer. Dan trafficked in marijuana.
Eppick estimates that Dan purchased 2 to 4 tons of the drug each year during trips to Mexico. Dan would repackage the marijuana in 2- to 3-pound bundles and mail them to Rhode Island, where associates would sell it, Eppick said.
"I was just numb," Linda said. "It's not true. It's true. It's not true. How can it be true? We never saw signs of it. Then you think back to little instances here at home."
She knew Dan and his friends smoked marijuana. She had argued with Dan about it when he lived at home. Once, she'd followed a humming sound to the closet of the guest bedroom and found a dozen pot plants swaying under a fan. But that was just adolescent foolishness, she remember thinking.
"There were no bales in the cellar, no fake floorboards, no exorbitant amounts of money," Linda said. "He's a TJ Maxx and a Marshall's shopper."
There was the Cadillac. But he'd bought it used. And the surround-sound system in his living room.
Dan came home twice a year -- once for several months -- and was able to hang around with her when she visited him in San Diego in 2006. But he explained away his free time: He said he'd switched shifts. That didn't seem unreasonable.
"I'm still trying to wrap my mind around some of the things John told us," Linda said.
Eppick sent Linda to the Internet to read about Tijuana's Arellano Felix cartel. She soaked up page after page of information about the drug violence gripping Mexico.
"Talk about being a babe in the woods," she said. "I had no idea."
After weeks passed without a demand for ransom, Eppick ruled out kidnapping. He figured there were two possibilities: Either Dan was dead or he was being tortured.
Eppick developed a theory of why Dan had gone to Mexico. His confederates in Rhode Island owed him at least $140,000, he said. Dan could have been called to answer for the missing money. Maybe he was killed for it.
A parking receipt showed that Dan's Cadillac had been parked Feb. 22 in a well-lighted lot in San Ysidro, where thousands of Americans leave their cars to walk across the border into Mexico. The car was claimed the next day by a person or persons unknown.
"It kinda gave you a little bit of hope," Linda said. "Maybe he was still alive."
In May, three men hunting small game came upon a grisly site near Rosarito Beach, Mexico, a resort town popular with U.S. college students and retirees that has been lightly touched by the drug violence.
The hunters stumbled upon a green car pocked by automatic-weapons fire, with two bloated corpses in the back seat. Two more lay crumpled in the dirt on opposite sides of the car, apparently cut down as they ran for their lives.
The dusty car was a 1999 Cadillac STS with California plates.
A San Diego TV reporter called the LaPorte family about the discovery. Linda tried to still her heart.
On the Web, she saw news photos of the car with blood splashed on the seats, the body of a woman face-down on the ground. Linda made out a few of the numbers on the license plate. It was Dan's car.
But he was not among the dead.
Three of the victims were Mexican nationals with criminal records who had been deported from the United States: Juan Jose "El Lumpy" Olivares, Antonio "El Kilo" Virgen and Franciso "Pancho" Javier Garcia. The fourth was Libe Craig, a San Diego native of Mexican descent with a history of drug and weapons offenses.
Lead detective Ricardo Groves of the state police said the four were known to hang out at a clubhouse in Rosarito Beach where deported gang members and other convicts made drug deals and got high.
None of the dead were known to be friends or associates of Dan's. But Virgen, Libe Craig's boyfriend, had been driving the Cadillac for weeks and had tried to sell it, Groves said. He had Dan's keys.
As a deportee, Virgen might have had a hard time getting into the U.S. to pick up the car. Craig wouldn't have.
Craig, 28, had spent a year in a Tijuana jail for weapons possession, Groves said, and records show she had two convictions in San Diego for possession of crystal methamphetamine. A relative said the addiction stole Craig's dreams of becoming a pediatrician, ruined her marriage and cost her custody of her daughter.
Craig, Virgen and the others had recently graduated from trafficking in drugs to ripping off other traffickers and selling the stolen drugs, Groves said. Confidential informants have reported that they were planning to pull off their second such theft on the night they died.
Dan's missing-person flier was hanging in the cramped Rosarito Beach office of the Mexican attorney general when Eppick arrived June 2. As he spoke with Groves and Comandante Rafael Gonzalez, a new puzzle piece emerged.
Unidentified remains had been dumped in an industrial barrel of acid in a ditch between two housing developments in Rosarito. The blue plastic container had apparently been hit by a car and tipped over, spilling a mess of partly dissolved bones. The discovery was reported by an anonymous caller Feb. 24, two days after Dan disappeared.
Groves had sent the bones for DNA analysis by Mexican authorities, but there was nothing to compare them to -- yet.
Eppick returned to San Diego and dashed off an e-mail to Linda.
"NOW HOLD ON, LINDA," he wrote. He went back to Rosarito the next day to determine whether DNA from the bones could be compared to samples from Dan's parents.
Linda and Joe swabbed the insides of their cheeks and sent the samples to the San Diego Police Department, which forwarded them to a California state crime lab.
Once technicians developed genetic profiles from the samples, they could be compared with the DNA profile from the bones.
Then bureaucratic complications arose. To send a DNA analysis of the LaPortes' samples to Mexico, U.S. authorities would have to go through Interpol, a potentially lengthy process.
San Diego police devised a faster way. They asked for fresh swabs from the couple and, on Monday, handed the samples to a Mexican official at the border. A crime lab in Tijuana will compare the genetic profiles. Results are not expected for weeks or months.
"There are two parts of me. My heart says to hold on," Linda said, sobs breaking through her attempt at calm. "My brain is telling me that the DNA will be a match."
The search for their son has cost the couple more than $100,000. Once debt-free, the LaPortes have gone through their savings and taken out a line of equity on their home.
Linda can barely talk about her son without crying. Thoughts of him intrude at work.
"At this point, I've lost plenty of sleep already. I just want him home," she said. "I don't think I'll ever have an answer as to what exactly happened to him -- if that is him."
evelyn.larrubia@latimes.com
Anyone with information about the disappearance of Daniel LaPorte is asked to call the San Diego Police Department at +1 (619) 531-2000
Story #2:
Locations: Pascoag, Rhode Island. Tijuana, BC Rosarito, BC Mexico City, DF
The LaPortes' search for their son ends when Mexican officials confirm the remains found in Rosarito are of their son Daniel. They also learn that he was apparently smuggling marijuana.
By Evelyn Larrubia January 17, 2009
Mexican officials have confirmed that human remains found in a barrel of chemicals in Rosarito are of a San Diego man, an alleged marijuana smuggler who disappeared after traveling to Mexico in February.
Daniel LaPorte's parents, who live in Rhode Island, said they will arrange for remains kept by Mexican authorities for DNA testing to be cremated and sent to them. They expect to hold a memorial service next month.
"It will be something that we'll have here, so we can have some kind of closure," said his mother, Linda LaPorte.
The LaPortes spent more than $100,000 on private investigators in an effort to find their son after his sudden disappearance. They said that's when they learned that he was trafficking in tons of marijuana.
LaPorte is among several dozen U.S. citizens slain in Mexico in the last two years, a time when drug-related killings of Mexicans surged past 8,000. State Department officials say deaths of U.S. citizens are probably underestimated, because foreign law enforcement officials are not required to report them to the U.S.
Dozens more U.S. citizens and residents have been kidnapped during that time, including a few who were abducted in the U.S. and held in Mexico, officials said.
Authorities say few of the American victims were tourists. Some, like LaPorte, apparently were involved in drug trafficking. Others lived in Mexico and may have known their attackers, or were businesspeople who crossed the border regularly and were seen as an easy source of cash.
The State Department has issued safety warnings for those traveling to Tijuana and other border towns, noting a spate of killings, robberies, kidnappings and carjackings.
"Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, and Nogales are among the cities which have recently experienced public shootouts during daylight hours in shopping centers and other public venues," an October travel advisory noted.
Mexico is in the midst of a violent drug war involving competing cartels, police, federal authorities and the army. Slayings have become increasingly bold, gruesome and public.
LaPorte's case seemed as though it might go unsolved until his Cadillac was found in Rosarito in May, sprayed with automatic gunfire, with the bodies of four other trafficking suspects left in and around the car. Months into the family's inquiries, Mexican authorities mentioned to the LaPortes' private detective that they had found remains mostly dissolved in an industrial barrel two days after Daniel LaPorte disappeared.
Mexican officials compared DNA from bone fragments, which had spilled from the industrial barrel after it was hit by a car, with swabs taken from Linda and Joseph LaPorte. The results confirmed that the victim was related to them.
After her son moved to San Diego in 2005, Linda LaPorte said she flirted with the idea of retiring there. Not anymore.
"It's too close to the border," she said. "I'm going to keep my snow. You keep your palm trees."
La Mesa Woman one of four killed In Rosarito, BC. 19/05/2008
TIJUANA, Mexico -- An American woman from La Mesa was among four people found dead on the outskirts of the Mexican beach town of Playas de Rosarito, near border with California, officials said Monday. Libey Gianna Craig (RIP) (edited, was spelled wrong!), 28, from La Mesa, Calif., and three men were all shot in the head, assistant Baja California state prosecutor Rafael Gonzalez said. Authorities were still working to identify the men, but they were believed to be Mexican. Officials were investigating a possible drug link after finding a hypodermic needle at the scene. Two of the dead also had police records, Gonzalez said. The bodies were found Sunday in the village of Primo Tapia outside Rosarito, 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of the California border, and had already begun to decompose, suggesting they had been dead for days, officials said. Two of the bodies were found in the back of a car with California license plates, and two others were found on the ground near the vehicle, Gonzalez said. The 1999 dark-green Cadillac STS (remark: now known to belong to the murdered Daniel Laporte) sedan had been reported stolen in the U.S. in February, Gonzalez said. The U.S. Consulate in Tijuana declined to release information on the woman because her family had not yet been notified. A wave of drug violence has swept Mexico, killing more than 2,500 people last year. Many of the killings have taken place along the U.S.-Mexico border, where cartels waging a bloody turf war with rivals have lashed back against President Felipe Calderon's military crackdown on organized crime. A retired military major took over the police department in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, on Monday, after the chief resigned following the killings of several of his top officers. Outgoing Chief Guillermo Prieto had seen drug cartels grow increasingly bold, taking out job ads for drug couriers, shooting rivals in the streets and issuing a hit list that threatened 22 top city police officials. Of those 22, seven have been killed, three more were wounded and all but one of the others have quit their posts. Gunmen in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located, on Monday shot and killed the top crime scene investigator for the state prosecutor's office as he left his home in the town of Hidalgo de Parral.
smokeonit
Explorer
Registered: 12/09/05
Posts: 528
Loc: BW, Germany
Location: Tijuana (BC)
6 Murdered in Jan. 2009. 5 of the murdered were police officers
Note: It looks like the Cartels are striking back with a vengeance as the efforts of the mexican government to combat the lawlessness are kicking in... Just as the Mayor of Rosarito was saying in the youtube clip i uploaded ( a ittle up in this thread) The first sign that the cartels feel the pressure is to kill as many police officers they can get their hands on, in order to maintain their grip on the bribed officers... very sad start for the new year! Let's see when the first reports of murdered police officers in the tcities of Rosarito/Tectate/Ciudad Juarez come pouring in... the mexican government, on a the national, state and municipal level need to hold the course, they need more money and they need to combat corruption at any cost. Without ending the tradition of corruption this will NOT change, it will just go somewhere else nearby...!
Edit: I added a placemark file with each location! (see end of post)
January 18th, 2009: Police officer Jorge David Guevara Castruita was shot while on patrol. He died in the hospital on the 19th, a day later. He was part of Tijuanas "Quick reaction force", part of the municipal police. He was shot at from a grey BMW while driving a red Ford Expediton with no license plates (unclear if it was an offical patrol vehicle). Shortly after and close by a similar looking BMW was found by state authorities. Apparently it was abandoned... January 6th, 2009: Police officers Alberto Oliver Vargas and Jonathan Alavez Rodrguez were shot and killed while on patrol. January 6th, 2009: 2 human remains were recovered, apparently executed. One of them was Ivn Alejandro Fonseca Vaal, a police officer. January 2nd, 2009: Police officer Juan Carlos Aguilar Flores was shot and killed while on patrol. (translated by smokeonit since some U.S. media outlets don't do a good job... the AP article has many errors, translation and context...!)
El polica municipal atacado a balazos la noche de ayer, cuando circulaba por el bulevar Fundadores, dej de existir esta tarde, alrededor de las 15:00 horas, en el hospital Issstecali donde era atendido de sus lesiones. Con el homicidio de Jorge Guevara Castruita, agente municipal del Grupo de Reaccin Inmediata, ya suman 5 los policas municipales asesinados en lo que va del mes de enero, los cuales han ocurrido en 18 das. El 2 de enero, el Da Internacional del Polica fue ejecutado el polica municipal Juan Carlos Aguilar Flores, agente de la Zona Centro, fue emboscado abordo de su patrulla en la glorieta Cuauhtmoc en la Zona Ro alrededor de las 23:50 horas. El 6 de enero Alberto Oliver Vargas y Jonathan Alavez Rodrguez, tambin policas municipales de la Zona Centro, murieron despus de ser atacados a las 00:05 horas sobre la avenida Paseo de los Hroes. Ese mismo da, a espaldas del panten municipal nmero Dos ubicado sobre calle Milton Castellanos de la colonia Castillo se encontraron dos hombres ejecutados, uno de ellos era Ivn Alejandro Fonseca Vaal, de 27 aos, polica municipal de la delegacin San Antonio de los Buenos.
afntijuana.info (spanish/blue) TIJUANA BC 19 de enero del 2009 (AFN).-Jorge David Guevara Castruita, el agente municipal, quien fue baleado la noche del domingo, falleci finalmente este lunes, en el ISSSTECALI de El Mirador, donde fue internado tras el ataque.
El elemento, quien formaba parte del Grupo de Reaccin Inmediata, de la polica municipal, fue atacado desde un vehiculo BMW color gris, cuando circulaba por el bulevar Fundadores, a la altura de El Rub, en una camioneta Ford Expedition, modelo 2000, color rojo, sin placas. Autoridades estatales, dieron a conocer que posterior a este evento, fue encontrado un auto con las mismas caractersticas en el can Santa Mara y calle Adolfo Lpez Mateos, de la colonia Santa Julia, en la delegacin de San Antonio de los Buenos, que se presume que fue utilizado por los agresores del polica baleado. Con el deceso de este agente van cinco policas municipales asesinados en lo que va del mes de enero.
Note: The recent murders took place just 1km, less than a mile, from the San Ysidro border crossing... and it looks like midnight is the hour to avoid at any cost, 2 of the murders took place around midnight...
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