News (Noticias) Tagged ‘drug violence’

A recent increase in drug-related kidnappings in Gwinnett County has put a spotlight on drug violence in Georgia, federal agents say.

About nine drug-related kidnappings have occurred in Gwinnett this year. The latest involved a man bound and chained in a basement in Lilburn whom federal agents rescued earlier this month.”*

Mexican drug traffickers have built makeshift car bombs to attack police officers, troops and rival smugglers as the country’s drug war turns increasingly violent, the police said.”*

Alexia’s death in a city so accustomed to death struck a nerve because she was, in this city tortured by killings, broad-daylight gun battles and rampant kidnappings, an innocent victim.

That description isn’t redundant in a country in the grip of a raging drug war: The vast majority of the thousands of dead are thought to have some connection to the cartels. They have been hired hit men, drug runners, corrupt police officers.”*

María Guadalupe isn’t alone. In a sign that powerful drug cartels are extending their reach further into Mexican society, an increasing number of women are becoming involved in Mexico’s drug trade, even as violence grows, authorities say.

“The numbers continue to grow, in spite of the violence we’re witnessing,” said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso whose study on women in drug cartels was published in the winter edition of Anthropological Quarterly.”*

Mexican officials say they don’t track the number of child deaths from drug-gang violence. But newspaper tallies find nearly 50 kids have been killed this year — and a code of ethics in which hit men took care to avoid harming children appears to be evaporating.”*

Gunmen have killed the police administrative director in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, the latest high-profile killing in Mexico’s drug war, police said on Wednesday.

Silvia Molina was shot outside her house on Monday night by suspected drug hitmen, the first public official in Ciudad Juarez’s city police force to be targeted.”*

Until recently, the map showing control of key drug cartel hot spots in Mexico was something like the red states and the blue states in the U.S. Now, everything is up for grabs as three powerful wings of once rival trafficking groups fuse into a “megacartel,” unleashing an unprecedented blood bath, according to U.S. officials and analysts.

Hit men for the paramilitary Zetas based along the Mexico-Texas border appear to have cut a deal with both the Beltrán Leyva family in the northern state of Sinaloa and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes in Ciudad Juárez to work as paid mercenaries.

Underscoring the Zetas’ role is their trademark brutality in an ongoing war that’s claimed more than 1,600 lives so far this year, including more than 450 in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso. Overall, the killings are up nearly 30 percent over a year ago.”*

El Paso County Judge Anthony Cobos, right, addressed the media during a press conference in the judge’s meeting room Tuesday at the El Paso County Courthouse. El Paso County Sheriff Jimmy Apodaca center along with County Commissioner Luis Sarinana listened in. County officials met with various members of the El Paso community to discuss security at Thomason Hospital following an incident where two Mexican police officials apparently shot by drug traffickers were taken to the hospital. The hospital was locked down by sheriff’s deputies as a security measure to protect the injured officers and the hospital community at large. (Victor Calzada / El Paso Times)”*

Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are doubling up on security efforts to ensure violence in Juárez doesn’t spill over into El Paso, said one of the top ICE officials in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

Julie L. Myers, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary for ICE, was in El Paso Wednesday to speak to local ICE officials about operations and accomplishments nationally and in the El Paso area. During a media roundtable, Myers discussed the ongoing violence in Juárez and other parts of Mexico between warring drug cartels.”*

El Paso County officials want the federal government to take over transporting and caring for wounded Mexican police officers seeking treatment in a local public hospital.

County Judge Anthony Cobos pleaded for help Tuesday, four days after two police officers wounded in an ongoing turf war among powerful Mexican drug cartels were brought to the county hospital in El Paso.

The officers’ arrival prompted the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to provide tight security to prevent Mexico’s violence from spilling into the United States. It is the second time this year deputies have guarded the county hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center for 280 miles.”*

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Taking aim at a flood of weapons smuggled from the United States into Mexico and into the hands of warring drug-cartel gangsters, officials from both countries vowed Monday to do more to take on traffickers.

Weapons smuggling is not new, but the flow has increased dramatically in recent years, Julie Myers, an assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said Monday.

“What was once a drip or even a steady but manageable flow has swelled to become an all out tidal wave,” said Myers, who was in town for a three-day closed door conference on border security.”*

A note threatening a Mexican journalist was found outside the office of a newspaper in southern Mexico on Monday, two days after someone left a severed head there.

Tabasco state Attorney General Gustavo Rosario said the letter was directed at Juan Padilla, editor of El Correo de Tabasco, which recently carried reports about migrant smuggling and kidnapping in the area.”*

With gasoline prices hovering near $4 per gallon, Texans along the U.S.-Mexico border have discovered a cheaper alternative: Mexico.

Mexican service stations all along the border report brisk sales in recent weeks as fuel prices in Texas continue to climb. Even Ciudad Juárez has seen a notable increase in customers from the United States, despite escalating drug violence that includes gunbattles in the streets and several decapitations.

Victor Gonzalez was among those risking their lives for cheaper gasoline Monday. Mr. Gonzalez crossed the border from El Paso in his silver Ford F150 truck with Chip, his cranky Chihuahua, riding next to him.”*

When he came to office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderón implemented a strategy against organized crime. But the plan is failing because it has focused solely on the seizure of drugs, weapons and traffickers without attacking the larger financial or political structure.

National security and organized crime experts came to this conclusion to explain the escalation of violence, including beheadings, torture, kidnappings and mass killings that have been unleashed during the current administration.

“This is the experience of 107 countries: If you only go after gangsters without attacking the financial structure or political protection, what happens is a paradox: you add more troops, prosecutors and police, and the criminal groups put more money into corruption,” says Edgardo Buscaglia, advisor to the UN and academic at Mexico’s Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM). “*

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