Tijuana Police Try to Restore Public Trust

By Dan Keane

ASSOCIATED PRESS

5:31 p.m. August 12, 2008

TIJUANA, Mexico – People have so little confidence in the police here that the army invited citizens to report crimes to soldiers instead. Officers are so mistrusted that federal authorities even took their guns away for a time last year.

Now Tijuana is campaigning to regain that trust with an accountability campaign to break the officers' old, corrupt habits.

Public Safety Secretary Alberto Capella proudly points to a Tijuana policeman accused of murder who was promptly arrested by his fellow officers.

“If this scenario had happened nine months ago, he wouldn't have been captured. Or he would have asked for help, and they would have let him go,” Capella told The Associated Press. “That's a clear indication of the change of attitude taking place among Tijuana police.”

See this related story! -mm

Mexican soldiers enter Arizona, hold agent briefly

By Arthur H. Rotstein

ASSOCIATED PRESS

11:44 a.m. August 6, 2008

TUCSON, Ariz. – Federal authorities say four Mexican soldiers crossed into Arizona and briefly held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before realizing where they were and returning to Mexico.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Dove Crawford says the incident early Sunday on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, about 85 miles southwest of Tucson, was in an area likely fenced only with barbed wire.

She says the soldiers lowered their weapons after about four minutes when the agent convinced them who he was and where they were, then retreated into Mexico.

Crawford says there have been about 40 similar incursions along the entire border this fiscal year.

Mexican military losing drug war support

The Associated Press

Published: 07.25.2008

OJINAGA, Mexico - This hardscrabble Mexican border town welcomed 400 soldiers when they arrived four months ago to stop a wave of drug violence that brought daytime gunbattles to its main street.

But then the soldiers themselves turned violent, townspeople say, ransacking homes and even torturing people.

The frustration boiled over this week. More than 1,000 people marched through the streets carrying signs begging President Felipe Calderon for protection from his own troops.

Ojinaga, across the Rio Grande from Presidio, Texas, is not alone. People in cities on the front lines of Mexico's battle against trafficking say they are increasingly frustrated with military tactics — a shift in opinion that threatens to undermine Calderon's nationwide crackdown.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission says it has documented more than 600 cases of abuse since Calderon sent 20,000 soldiers across the nation to take back territory controlled by drug lords.

Mexico's attorney general argues the cases are isolated incidents. The army says it investigates all allegations and punishes those found to have to violated the law.

But many people say the soldiers have become part of the problem.

Soldiers raid Tijuana cartel party

The Associated Press

June 22, 2008

Mexican soldiers captured at least 10 suspected members of a Tijuana-based drug cartel in a raid on a child's baptism party in this border city, officials said Sunday.

A total of 61 people were arrested in the sweep late Saturday, including the band hired to play the party and three city police officers, Baja California state police spokesman Agustin Perez told The Associated Press.

Authorities had been tracking the movements of suspected members of the Arellano Felix drug cartel for days and acted 'at a moment when they were vulnerable,' the spokesman said.

Perez denied initial Mexican military reports that alleged cartel cell leader Filiberto Parra Ramos could be among those arrested.

Mexican troops make marijuana haul in Sharp unit premises

REUTERS

8:48 p.m. May 22, 2008

TIJUANA, Mexico – Mexican troops Thursday uncovered more than 1.5 metric tons of marijuana hidden in a truck inside an installation of a unit of Japanese electronics firm Sharp Corp.

Gen. Sergio Aponte, in charge of a crackdown on drug trafficking in the northern state of Baja California, told a news conference the marijuana was in 336 packets behind boxes carrying TV screens bound for Canada.

Sharp's local lawyer, Marco Antonio Esconda, said the company had no knowledge the drugs and Sharp was not the owner of the truck. He declined to give the name of the company that had been contracted to move the TV screens.

“The (drugs) cargo belonged to one of our local contractors, the drugs appeared inside the premises,” he said. ”What we have to do is to increase security.”

The haul of 1,586 kilos of marijuana was found on the premises of a Sharp subsidiary in the town of Rosarito, close to this gritty border city. One man was arrested at the scene.

Mexican military takes over town's police force

The Associated Press

Article Launched: 05/20/2008 07:55:23 PM PDT

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico—There are no police anymore in Villa Ahumada. Even the mayor has fled.

Drug gangs have virtually seized this town of 1,500 not far from Texas, as Mexico's cartels grow increasingly audacious.

The Mexican military took over the police department this week because all 20 officers on the force have either been killed, run out of town or quit, officials said Tuesday.

Mayor Fidel Urrutia took refuge in the state capital of Chihuahua City—600 miles (1,000 kilometers) away—where he's waiting for the soldiers to recover his town.

"Security will be in the hands of the army and the state (police) ministries, and it will remain like that indefinitely," Chihuahua state police spokesman Marco Antonio Moreno said.

Late Saturday, some 70 assailants barged into town and killed the police chief, two officers and three residents. At least eight people were kidnapped.

The killings came a month after soldiers arrested eight men, including a police officer, during the burial of an alleged drug hit man in Villa Ahumada, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of El Paso, Texas.

14-year-old boy among latest slain in Juárez

By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times

Article Launched: 05/21/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

Juárez's newly appointed public safety secretary, Roberto Orduña Cruz, urged residents to get involved to help stop a crime wave that has left more than 300 dead this year.

Orduña Cruz on Tuesday asked residents to report crime anonymously, even as the killings continued with four more homicides reported, including the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old boy.

"The citizenry should have confidence in authorities, confidence we are looking to gain," Orduña Cruz said in a statement. In coming days, he added, changes to the police force will be announced.

On Tuesday, Chihuahua Sen. Ramon Galindo, who is a former mayor of Juárez, responding to complaints that the military crackdown on drug gangs spurred the violence, said that state and local authorities had not done enough to address the problem in the past.

"I will repeat it until it gets tiresome: There is not enough federal police or military to fight crime in a determined location if É municipal and state police are completely infiltrated by narco-traffickers," Galindo said.

Feud between Baja prosecutor, army general goes public

By Sandra Dibble

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

7:44 p.m. April 23, 2008

TIJUANA – A simmering feud between Baja California's top prosecutor and an outspoken army general boiled over Wednesday as the general went public with allegations of police corruption in the state.

In an open letter published in the state's major daily newspapers, Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito named about three dozen municipal, state and federal police officials.

The general said they have been protecting immigrant smugglers, bank robbers, and worked as escorts for drug traffickers. He said agents with the state's anti-kidnapping unit in Tijuana had themselves conducted kidnappings, then negotiated the ransom.

The general said top Tijuana police officials with the previous mayoral administration – he did not name them – are constantly approaching the current police chief, a military lieutenant colonel on leave, offering to act as go-betweens with organized crime.

Baja police commander, bodyguards held on suspicion of extortion

UNION-TRIBUNE

7:37 p.m. April 22, 2008

TIJUANA – A top state police commander and his five bodyguards were being held on suspicion of extortion after a woman they detained outside their regular working hours accused them of demanding that her family pay $5,000 for her release.

Jose Angel Meza Valdez, commander of the Baja California Preventive Police in Tijuana, and five fellow agents were taken into custody in eastern Tijuana by members of the Mexican military Monday night.

A military communique said the six agents were arrested when soldiers responded to a complaint that a woman had been abducted by members of the State Preventive Police.

Meza, interviewed by reporters at a Tijuana military base, proclaimed his innocence Tuesday morning. He said the agents had detained a woman with packets of suspected cocaine, and they were taking her to an office of the Baja California Attorney General to confirm the content.

“It's not right that we risk our lives and then we don't receive even the least bit of support,” he said.

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Six Mexican agents held on suspicion of extortion

Mexico's Gulf cartel undaunted by military assault

Fri Apr 18, 2008 12:31 PM ET

By Robin Emmott

REYNOSA, Mexico (Reuters) - In one of its most audacious moves yet, Mexico's Gulf cartel drug gang this week openly advertised for army troops to desert and join it in a fight that has killed some 900 people this year.

The cartel's feared Zetas hit squad strung banners from bridges over main roads in the towns of Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border offering well-paid jobs.

"The Zetas want you, soldier or former soldier. We offer a good salary, food and family care. Don't go hungry any longer," the ads read.

The cartel, based across the border from Texas, is Mexico's most violent gang in a war between rival drug smugglers that the army has deployed thousands of troops to try to quash.

"This shows how brazen, how arrogant they are, born of the huge profits that drug trafficking brings," said Steve Robertson, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent.

"They want to be known as the biggest and baddest, they aim to intimidate. Violence is their way of life," he said.

Mexican troops arrest armed squad

Times staff

Article Launched: 04/17/2008 06:50:52 AM MDT

The Mexican army arrested an armed squad believed to have been guarding a wounded man at a Juarez hospital, federal authorities said Wednesday.

The group was in two vehicles, both with Texas plates, outside Poliplaza Medica hospital where they were allegedly providing security for Victor Jesus Jimenez Soto, who is recovering from a gunshot wound, officials said.

Soldiers seized two AK-47s, an AR-15 rifle, a handgun and more than 17 kilos of marijuana in three packs. Arrested with Jimenez Soto were Veronica Jimenez Serrano, Benjamin Verdugo Villalobos and Alfonso Leyva Carrasco. They were all arrested on drug and firearm charges.

Mexican military to investigate abuse

Calderon pledges 'unrestricted support for human rights'

By JEREMY ROEBUCK/The Monitor

March 11, 2008 - 1:29AM

The Mexican military will investigate claims that its soldiers performed unwarranted searches, stole private property and otherwise abused their authority in cities along the country's northern border, according to one of its spokesmen.

In a written statement, Mexican President Felipe Calderon's defense ministry pledged "unrestricted support for human rights and the firm intention to make (its) operations transparent."

Allegations of abuse surfaced soon after Calderon dispatched hundreds of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border early this year with a mandate to weed out police corruption and combat the nation's entrenched drug cartels.

Shootout with soldiers kills 7 in northern Mexico

Posted: March 9, 2008 02:01 PM

MEXICO CITY (AP) - A bloody shootout between soldiers and gunmen in northern Mexico left six suspects and a military captain dead and wounded seven others, Mexico's Defense Department said Sunday.

Soldiers responded to a report Friday night that armed gunmen were hiding out in a house in the northern city of Chihuahua, the department said in a statement. The suspects opened fire and launched fragmentation grenades at soldiers when they arrived at the scene, the statement said.

The six suspects killed in the ensuing gun battle have yet to be identified and three others were arrested at the scene, the statement said.

Authorities also seized 10 high-powered rifles, 12 fragmentation grenades and seven bulletproof vests.

Fed up Reynosa residents protest military presence

Jeremy Roebuck, Paige Lauren Deiner and Jared Taylor

February 27, 2008 - 10:36PM

REYNOSA — Thousands of chanting demonstrators filled Reynosa’s downtown plaza Wednesday afternoon to protest alleged abuses by the Mexican military and federal police.

Carrying banners that compared the soldiers to terrorists and bearing crosses with the names of people killed in encounters with authorities, the marchers outlined a list of complaints including unwarranted searches of homes, stolen property and assaults on city residents.

The breaking point, many said, was the shooting of two civilians at a military checkpoint two weeks ago.

“We’re not at war,” demonstrator Sandra Quiñones said in Spanish. “Coming into houses and pointing guns at people — it scares people.”

Mexico's human rights commission investigates army in shooting death

By Jessica Bernstein-Wax
ASSOCIATED PRESS
8:22 p.m. February 20, 2008

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's human rights commission on Wednesday said it was investigating allegations that soldiers opened fire on a car at a checkpoint south of the Texas border, killing a man and wounding a U.S. citizen.

Jose Antonio Barbosa Ramirez solicited the National Human Rights Commission's help after the Mexican army opened fire on a car he was traveling in with his brother-in-law, Sergio Meza Varela, early Saturday morning in the border city of Reynosa in Tamaulipas state, the commission said in a statement.

The statement said the men had been drinking and doing drugs and decided to drive around the city. At about 4 a.m. Saturday, they were chased by a military-style Jeep and ended up at an army checkpoint where they attempted to flee by putting the car in reverse.

Barbosa, who said he was a U.S. citizen living in Reynosa, then felt a pain in his arm, lost control of the car and crashed into a pole. The soldiers fired more than 10 shots at the pair, the statement said.

Meza died at the scene, and Barbosa suffered a fractured arm and gunshot wounds in his arm and back, the commission said.

The Mexican Army as Cartel

PATRICK O'DAY

University of Texas-Pan American

This article deals with one of the least examined aspects of smuggling along the U.S./Mexico border: the role of the Mexican army as a major player in the traffic of drugs into the United States. It is hoped that this study will help to eliminate a lacuna in our understanding of organized criminal activity south of the border. It will do this by examining the chaotic conditions obtaining along the Mexican side of the border due to the breakup of the Matamoros cartel and the consequent functional necessity of the Mexican Army's stepping in to assure safe and unimpeded drug shipments into the United States. In addition, it will be demonstrated that the antidrug role of the military in combating the drug trade is a necessary adjunct to its role as a major trafficker in drugs. Finally, it will be argued that the administration's policy of ignoring Mexican military corruption as well as its incursions into U.S. territory is counterproductive in terms of effectively curtailing the drug trade, that it lends itself to the militarization of Mexican society, and that ultimately it threatens harmonious international relations with Mexico by encouraging an increasingly aggressive military presence along the U.S. border.

Mexican gangs try to bribe army as drug war flares

By Lizbeth Diaz
REUTERS
7:53 a.m. February 8, 2008

TIJUANA, Mexico – Mexican drug gangs are trying to corrupt the army into siding with them in a turf war near the U.S. border, threatening to blunt President Felipe Calderón's offensive against the cartels.

Military men from generals to foot soldiers say they are being offered up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to turn a blind eye to shipments or call off anti-drugs operations in Baja California state, where there has been a surge of violence this year.

“These groups are coming to us to try to negotiate, to take us over to their side, trying to break us down,” Gen. Sergio Aponte, who co-heads the military operation in Baja California, told reporters.

Since the late 1990s, Mexico has convicted at least five army generals for taking drug money, including the man who was once its anti-drugs czar and led the war against the gangs but was later found to be on the payroll of the Juarez Cartel.

Arms cache in Miguel Aleman, biggest seizure in decades

February 9th, 2008

MONTERREY, Mexico — A huge weapons cache found in a ranch building near the Texas border this week was the nation’s single largest weapons bust in 20 years, said the federal attorney general’s office, or PGR, in a statement Friday. A Mexican army unit found the stockpile, which included 89 assault rifles and more than 83,000 rounds of ammunition, on Thursday near Miguel Alemán, a border city just south of Roma, authorities said.

Soldiers also seized about 9 metric tons of marijuana and arrested five people at the ranch, called “El Mezquitito,” the Defense Ministry said in a brief statement.

The latest wave of military and federal police action in the troubled border region continued Friday when police chased and exchanged gunfire with organized crime suspects along the main highway between Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria, authorities said.

U.N.: Dangerous to use Mexico army against drug gangs

REUTERS
10:32 a.m. February 5, 2008

MEXICO CITY – Mexico risks committing more rights abuses if it continues the “dangerous” policy of using its military to fight brutal drug gangs, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday.

“I understand there are those who say that at times you have to turn to a more powerful force such as the army, but it seems to me that in the long term it is frankly dangerous,” Louise Arbour told television network Televisa during a visit to Mexico.

“The army should not be doing the job of the police,” she added.

President Felipe Calderón has mobilized some 25,000 Mexican troops since taking office in December 2006 to try to crush powerful drug cartels that are warring over lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

Calderón has won praise at home and in Washington for using the military, as Mexico's corrupt police forces side with drug gangs, especially in states bordering the United States.

But Calderón has faced criticism from rights groups such as Amnesty International. Mexico's Human Rights Commission also says heavy-handed soldiers have committed abuses. A Mexican court last year sentenced at least four soldiers to up to 40 years in prison for rape in 2006.

Police official arrested in Rosarito assassination attempt

By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
8:37 p.m. February 1, 2008

ROSARITO BEACH – A top municipal police officer being investigated for participating in an assassination attempt of the city's director of public safety was taken into custody Friday by Mexican soldiers.

Jose Luis Lugo Baez had been serving as a deputy commander of Rosarito Beach's 149-member police department. According to a statement from Baja California's Second Military Zone, the policeman was taken into custody after soldiers searching his house seized a package of marijuana, chargers for automatic weapons, police uniforms, and numerous bullets.

Among the identification cards seized were a California driver's license with a Chula Vista address and a U.S. permanent resident card.