Nuevo Laredo Police, disarmed and suspended once again!
Special forces of the Mexican Army and federal agents surrounded municipal police headquarters early Tuesday all along the South Texas-Mexico border, seizing more than 1,000 police officers’ firearms and other equipment and holding an unspecified number at military headquarters.”It was a direct order from the highest level,” said a spokesman for the Army stationed in Nuevo Laredo. “Faith has been lost in the city police working in Tamaulipas.”
Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramón Garza Barrios said his office was aware of the drastic action to be taken by the federal authorities, and is in complete support of the effort to get rid of corruption along the border.”General DEM Rigoberto García Cortez, garrison commander, had notified us,” the mayor said. “It’s part of the anti-crime operations that (national authorities) have activated in our city.”Nuevo Laredo streets, as well as those in Miguel Alemán, Río Bravo, Valle Hermoso, Reynosa y Matamoros, are now patrolled by heavily armed soldiers, federal agents and state police as every city police officer was relieved of duty until officials can ascertain whether any are involved with drug traffickers.
In Nuevo Laredo, some 500 officers were pulled off the street and disarmed. An untold number are in detention at the Army headquarters.
In 2005, the Army disarmed 600 local police and 40 of them were taken to Mexico City for interrogation at the federal public safety office. Several months later, firearms were returned to a select group of officers who underwent extensive background checks and completed new training designed to clean up the department.
All the weapons seized Tuesday were taken to the garrison in Nuevo Laredo to be checked by ballistics experts to determine whether they had ever been used in drug-related crimes.
In addition to checking the firearms, each officer’s personal documents and backgrounds will be under a microscope. Drug tests were administered to every officer.
The Army spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said every city grants its officers a license to use firearms. The checks will verify whether the weapons being carried by officers match the licenses they were issued.
The actions of the special forces, known by the Spanish acronym of GAFES, alarmed many officers in the six cities that border South Texas.
“They have us (stunned). If they know who to take, then they should fulfill their responsibility,” said one officer, who asked not to be identified. “They have lists. They have been working for some time on gathering intelligence and they know the bad officers.”
In Reynosa, soldiers and federal agents surrounded police headquarters. Some officers said they were afraid because the agents might make mistakes and arrest people who aren’t connected to drug traffickers. The police headquarters in Matamoros also was surrounded by armored vehicles, as agents and soldiers commandeered weapons and began checking identification.
Garza Barrios said that as soon as city police officers pass the inspection, they will be returned to the streets but no time frame has been established for that.
UPDATE: Nuevo Laredo Police back on the job without weapons or vehicles
Nuevo Laredo’s police force is back to its patrolling duties Wednesday but without their firearms, said city spokesman Alberto Rodríguez Wednesday morning.
All they have are night sticks and shields, he said.
El Norte (Monterrey) reported in the early afternoon that the police were being required to remain inside the city’s police station.
In a follow-up phone conversation with Rodríguez this afternoon, he said that the police don’t have access to their patrol vehicles either.
Officers are just doing foot patrols in some part of the city, he said.
No officers have been arrested and they are no longer being required to remain at police headquarters by the military, he said.
The 450-member police force is taking its normal shift changes, he said. It appears many officers remain at police HQ.
“They were just playing soccer right now,” said Rodríguez.
Local authorities ordered drug tests on the officers.
Police do not know when they will be given their weapons or vehicles or normal job descriptions back.
With the occupation of the northern frontier of Mexico by the Mexican military, I thought it would be interesting to see just who these guys are. What I found was a very proud, highly trained and specialized force that could stand shoulder to shoulder with any Army unit in the world.
The Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Forces Airmobile Group, GAFE) is a very powerful special forces unit of the Mexican Army’s Special Forces Corps, trained by the world’s special forces.
There are a total of nine battalions, one High Command GAFE unit and one other group is assigned to the Infantry Parachutists Brigade.
Within the structure of the unit there are regular, intermediates and veterans. The regulars usually operate more as light infantry. The intermediates are mainly instructors with medium ranks such as lieutenants and captains, they are also known as the COIFEs, considered by many the Mexican Green Berets. They carry out the most delicate black ops, they are known as the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales del Alto Mando(High Command GAFEs). The GAFE motto is “Todo por México” (Everything for Mexico).
History of GAFES
It was created in 1986 as the “Fuerza de Intervención Rápida” (Rapid Intervention Force) to provide security for the World Cup soccer games in Mexico City. The French Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) trained the group in special weapon and counter-terrorism tactics. On June 1. 1990, the group adopted its current name.
Eight years later the GAFEs saw action fighting the EZLN guerrillas in Chiapas, Mexico. Nobody knows for sure, except for the army, the operations they carried out.
Nowadays the army special forces continue fighting the war against drug cartels in Mexico. They have successfully captured many big drug leaders such as Benjamin Arellano Felix and Osiel Cardenas Guillen of the Cartel del Golfo.
Training
Since its creation they have received a wide variety of training from different special forces groups from around the world. The Army unified all the knowledge by creating in 1998 the Escuela Militar de Fuerzas Especiales ( Special Forces Military School). Later on changing its name to Centro de Adiestramiento de Fuerzas Especiales (“Special Forces Training Center”), located in the foothills of the Iztaccíhuatl volcano, on May 1, 2002. The basic special forces course lasts 6 months.
The training takes on various forms.
- Jungle/Amphibious/Combat Diving: Jungle and Amphibious Operations Training Center in Xtomoc, Quintana Roo. Training also takes place in different scenarios in the state of Guerrera.
- Urban/Intervention: San Miguel de los Jagueyes, La Casa de la Muerte ( Killing House) in Puebla and Temamantla, Estado de México.
- Mountain: El Salto, Durango and Guerrero.
- Desert Operations Training Center: Laguna Salada and Baja California
- Airmobile/Airborne: Air Force base of Santa Lucía, Estado de México and Guerrero.
- High mountain: Nevado de Toluca, Iztaccíhuatland Pico de Orizaba volcanoes.
Transportation and Weaponery
The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in addition to the MI-17/8, CH-53 Yassur 2000, MD-530F & Bell 212/412 helicopters, make up the air fleet of GAFES.
The weapons preferred are varied. FX-05 Xiuhcoatl, HK G3 assault rifles, M4 carbine, HK MP5 submachine gun, BARRET .50, HK PSG-1, REMINGTON 700 & the Fusil de Precisión Morelos sniper rifles, Remington M1100 tactical, Mossberg 500 shotguns, B-300, RL-83 Blindicide & RPG-7 rocket launchers, HK P7M13, Beretta 92F & Colt .45 pistols, M249SAW light machineguns, MGL Mk-1, and M203 40mm grenade launchers.
Now, any of you right wing nut cases up for a friendly little border war?
OTTAWA — On Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006, a silver SUV stopped on a dirt road along the Canada-U.S. border and a man in a windbreaker and jeans emerged toting a gym bag containing four small canisters of weapons-grade uranium.
He walked about eight meters through a scrub field, past a stone obelisk marking the international boundary and a further dozen metres into the United States, where he handed the bag to a waiting accomplice. An alert citizen reported the suspicious rendezvous to the U.S. Border Patrol but when agents arrived, the men and the bag were gone. This fall, U.S. congressmen learned the incident was a federal government test of border security against terrorists slipping nuclear bomb components, notably fissile materials such as highly enriched uranium 235, into the U.S. from Canada.
Read the rest of the story in Canada’s NATIONAL POST
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