Mexico Trucker Online

PFP seizes weapons in Reynosa imported from the US

Ninety-five percent chance guns came from U.S.

REYNOSA, Mexico - Federal police in Reynosa made a bust at home and now several hundred pounds of drugs and lots of guns are in their custody.

An anonymous tip led authorities to the house. No one was home at the time of the raid. But police did find 10 packages of marijuana and several automatic assault rifles.

They also took into custody a Dodge truck with Mexican plates and over 30 bullet holes. No arrests have been made in this case.

There is a 95-percent chance those assault rifles in Reynosa were bought in the U.S. That’s according to new information being released this morning by the ATF and the FBI.

They’re in El Paso at the 5th Annual Border Security Conference. Officials from both sides of the border say they are getting lots of results from Project Gunrunner, where U.S. and Mexican authorities share information and can track individual guns.

The director of the FBI also says they are working with Mexican officials as part of an anti-kidnapping effort in Laredo.

A bus owned by Autobuses Lucano of Dallas Texas, traveling from San Luis Patosi, SLP to Houston Texas crashed 35 miles south of Nuevo Laredo Thursday morning, killing 2, including a pregnant 19 year old woman whose body was found under the bus and injuring 10.

The injured were taken to hospitals in Sabinas Hidalgo NL and Cruz Roja in Nuevo Laredo.

Juan Carlos Flores Sanchez, Commandander of Federal Police Highways, reported initial investigation and interviews with passengers suggested the driver fell asleep at the wheel shortly before the bus left the highway and overturned.

The driver left the scene and a warrant was issued with the Nuevo Leon State Police for his arrest and detention.

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Nuevo Laredo. - More than 4 tons of marijuana in addition to other drugs and pirated CD’s,were destroyed yesterday by personnel of the Army in the presence of federal, state and municipal authorities.

Operativo Permanente, has resulted in the seizure of enormous amounts of narcotics in Nuevo Laredo, Nuevo Guerrero, Cd. Mier, Miguel Alemán, Díaz Ordaz y Camargo, according to spokesmen from the First Motorized Cavalry regiment, headquartered in Nuevo Laredo.

The contraband was turned over to the Military and State and local authorities by the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), after being used as evidence in administrative and legal proceedings

The contraband was incinerated at Cuarentenaria Station, located on the Ribereña Highway, between Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa.

The destruction of the goodies was overseen by members of the local Subdelegation of the PGR, of the Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI), the Army, the Preventive Federal Police (PFP) and the Municipal Police.

Among the items destroyed were various chemicals from a clandestine laboratory in the Municipality of Miguel Aleman that were part of a meth lab.

Also destroyed were more than 50,000 pirated CD’s seized in raids around the city.

This is more evidence of President Calderon’s ongoing effort to fight organized crime and corruption in Mexico.

Mexico deserves and needs the $1.4 billion dollar aid package recently approved by Congress to fight the cartels. Mexico does not need US interference or boots on the ground however. Calderon is quite capable of turning this country around.

Calderon vows to press war on cartels despite the body count

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s security forces have been swept into the eye of the storm since President Felipe Calderon decided to get tough on the country’s drug-smuggling gangs.

Once-untouchable federal officials have been assassinated in the streets. Out-gunned soldiers and police have battled gangsters armed with grenades and bazookas. Local police chiefs have resigned, a few fleeing to the United States for safety. Hundreds of police and soldiers have been sent early to their graves.

Amid a fierce counteroffensive by the drug cartels, the question becomes: How long can, or will, Mexico’s thin police line hold?

Calderon and his top assistants say the security forces are up to the task. The gunfights and killings, including the assassinations this month of four top police officials, are signs of success rather than defeat, they say.

“This reaction is precisely a desperate act to weaken the federal police,” Calderon said, defending his policies and trying to rally the public to support them. “The effectiveness of a new, cleaned-up police force was hitting the criminals. We’re going to continue this frontal attack.”

But Bush administration officials, pushing Congress to approve a $1.4 billion, three-year package of equipment and training for Mexico’s security forces, warn that Calderon’s campaign will founder without the aid.

Analysts on both sides of the border worry that Mexico’s underequipped and poorly trained police forces — with long histories of ineffectiveness and corruption — will come up short.

“There comes a moment when the imbalance in resources reverses the relationship between government and cartels,” George Friedman, founder of Strategic Forecasting, an Austin political risk firm, wrote in a report on Mexico’s drug war this week.

“Government officials, seeing the futility of resistance, effectively become tools of the cartels.”

A relatively new twist
Other analysts point out that many Mexican policemen and officials have long been at the cartels’ service. They argue that much of today’s sustained violence against police — a relatively new twist in the country’s decades-long dance with the drug trade — arises from a fragmentation of a protection system that existed for decades.

Hundreds of dedicated police and soldiers have been killed over the years in the line of duty. But for much of the past, authorities and gangsters preferred their relationships to be defined by business rather than bloodshed.

Officials were killed if they welched on a deal with the criminals. They rarely were targeted for simply doing their jobs.

“They didn’t have to kill the police before, because the agreements were clear, and the limits were well defined,” said Ernesto Lopez Portillo, president of a Mexico City think tank that studies police and public security.

That has changed since the presidential elections of 2000 ended seven decades of one-party rule and shook the protection that it afforded the country’s gangsters, Lopez Portillo said.

Political power, and the cover it can provide drug traffickers, has splintered among the federal, state and local governments.

At the same time, a reorganization of the federal security forces, including the replacement of the notoriously corrupt Federal Judicial Police with a quasi-military force, has made enforcement more effective. Narcotics use has ballooned in Mexico, while smuggling organizations grew more powerful and more competitive with one another.

Now, each cartel has its own protection system, often based on the guns of local and state police. Many crime bosses also employ gunmen who until recently were active-duty soldiers.

Gangs’ firepower and vendettas have multiplied. Police have been caught in the crossfire. Chaos reigns.

“All the old alliances have broken down,” said Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami political scientist who specializes in the Latin American drug trade. “And they are striking back against cops, many of whom are dirty. The whole process has been thrown into flux.”

Calderon has ordered nearly 30,000 soldiers and quasi-military police into the fight against the cartels. The offensive has proved ineffective in stopping the trafficking of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin to American consumers. But more than 3,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in the 18 months since Calderon became president.

The dead include about 300 federal, state and local police. Some have been killed by rivals of the gangsters who employed them. Many others were slain doing their jobs.

“There have been, obviously, very lamentable losses on our side,” Calderon told reporters this week. “But fortunately Mexico has many patriots like them.”

Calderon insists he is determined to press the crackdown, regardless of the body count. He has asked Congress for a five-fold increase in the budget of the federal police, to be used in large part to build new regional bases across the country.

“We will continue building a better federal police, which this country has severely needed,” Calderon said. “We’re not going to add to the abandonment, the cowardice or the complicity that allowed Mexico to arrive at this situation.”
Read more in the Houston Chronicle

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s top security official blamed organized crime for the brazen killing of an acting federal police chief, saying today his death shows a nationwide crackdown is hurting gangs.

Public Safety Secretary General Garcia Luna said authorities would not be deterred by an onslaught of attacks against police as he presided over the funeral of Edgar Gomez Millan and two other federal officers killed this week.

Millan, 41, was shot 10 times early Thursday by gunmen who waited for him inside the courtyard of his Mexico City apartment complex. His two bodyguards were wounded.

The two other officers were killed Wednesday in a shootout with suspected drug traffickers in southern Morelos state.

The “attacks by organized crime against federal police in the last few days are in response to their interests being affected,” Garcia Luna said as he stood near the three coffins guarded by heavily armed agents wearing bulletproof vests. “But we will not be intimidated.”

President Felipe Calderon attended the funeral, hugging Millan’s sobbing wife and handing her a folded Mexican flag. He did not speak publicly.

Millan was responsible for coordinating operations — many of them targeting drugs — between federal police and the army. He was named acting chief March 1 after his superior was promoted to a deputy Cabinet position.

On May 1, he announced the arrest of 12 suspected hit men tied to the Sinaloa cartel.

Hours later, a federal intelligence analyst was killed in Mexico City by assailants who tried to steal his car, and a federal commander was gunned down the next day.

Police would not comment on whether the Sinaloa cartel was behind Millan’s killing, but said they were investigating possible drug links. Police were interrogating two suspects, including one of the alleged gunmen.

Since taking office in 2006, Calderon has sent more than 25,000 troops to drug hotspots. Cartels have responded with unprecedented violence, beheading police and killing soldiers. Drug-related violence killed more than 2,500 people last year alone.

In Washington, Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, urged Congress to approve the Merida Initiative, a US$1.4 billion (euro0.91 billion) proposal to help fight drug crime in Mexico and Central America. The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush wants Congress to approve US$550 million (euro355 million) of the package, the majority of which would go to Mexico.

“Central America and Mexico are facing public security threats of tremendous proportions,” Shannon told the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. “The leaders of the region have shown that they are committed to working together to put an end to the growing violence and crime, but their resources are limited.”

The acting chief of Mexico’s federal police was shot dead early today outside his home in the capital.

The Public Safety Department said Edgar Millan Gomez was shot 10 times and died hours later in a hospital. Two of his bodyguards were wounded.

A police official, who was not authorized to give his name, said Millan had been temporarily heading the federal police since his superior was promoted to a deputy Cabinet position on March 1.

Police have arrested a suspect with a record of car theft but have not yet determined a motive for the pre-dawn attack today. The official said police were investigating possible drug links.

Mexico has suffered a wave of organized crime and drug-related violence in which more than 2,500 people died last year alone.

Millan was in charge of coordinating drug operations with the military. Since taking office in 2006, President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 24,000 troops to drug hot spots. Cartels have lashed back, killing soldiers and federal police.

Millan was the second top federal police official killed in less than a week in Mexico City. A Mexican federal police intelligence analyst was killed on May 2 in an apparent armed robbery attempt outside his home.

In January, police in Mexico City arrested three men armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers who were allegedly planning to assassinate Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a top prosecutor who oversees the extradition of drug traffickers.

Calderon condemned the attack on Millan.

“The government of Mexico expresses its deepest sympathy in light of this cowardly killing of an exemplary official, committed to the safety of Mexican families,” Calderon’s office said in a statement.

Millan helped capture one of Mexico’s most feared kidnappers, Andres Caletri, in 2000, and helped disband two notorious abduction rings. In 2001, he was named head of anti-kidnapping operations for the Federal Agency of Investigation, Mexico’s version of the FBI.