Border Cartel$ bloodbath TJ cops run to USA for protection

Jeweledchameleons · #1 05-15-2008, 02:14 PM

In prep for the supershow.... some might wanna know.

It was one thing when all of my mexican friends refused to go down to Tijuana anymore
("because I ain't stupid" was the common reply last year)
It's another to have close to a hundred average americans snatched off the street, raped
beaten the crap out of and held for ransom last year.
But when the TJ police chief's have started running to the border
with their family in tow to get political asylum in the USA.... it's just insane.

It's not like they don't all have good reason too be scared.
Their entire force is basically working for the cartels or running their own schemes
and the whole rule about "No women, No Kids"
has gone out the window.... they're all easy targets now when someone doesn't play ball.

There's a news media blackout on the whole thing.
The TJ reporters are being killed off if they write anything
about the cartels that they don't like
(which is just about anything that mentions them).

The government also is attempting to protect it's tourist money and NAFTA
by way of a desperate attempt to keep things quiet by not reporting the violence
Mexico has moved in thousands of army troops and disarming/ firing the local police force
(for the 3rd time in recent years) to get a grip on the situation.
But it's kinda hard when they have shootouts like the one last month
between different groups and over a dozen bodies littering the street.

Kidnappings are so bad that all the local doctors in TJ
went on strike last and this month to stop their being nabbed themselves
and ransomed (at the rate of about 2 per week).

Just try googling "Tijuana + violence / death / cartel / war / kidnapping
and see what kinds of results there are.

Quote:

Violence in Mexico spills across U.S. border

“They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases,” Ahern told AP.

Associated Press
In this May 9, 2008, file photo, Mexican army soldiers patrol the area near the site of a high level security cabinet news conference after meeting with various sectors of society to address the growing violence in the region in Tijuana.
At a glance: Recent Mexican drug-war violence

WASHINGTON – Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.

In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

Ahern said the Mexican officials – whom he didn't name – are being interviewed and their cases are under review for possible asylum.

In the most recent high-level assassination, a top-ranking official on a local Mexican police force was shot more than 50 times and killed. Drug-related violence killed more than 2,500 people last year alone in Mexico.

“It's almost like a military fight,” Ahern said Tuesday. “I don't think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border.”

As the cartels fight for territory, this carnage spills over to the U.S., Ahern said – from bullet-ridden people stumbling into U.S. territory, to rounds of ammunition coming across U.S. entry ports.

U.S. humvees retrofitted with steel mesh over the glass windows patrol parts of the border to protect agents against guns shots and large rocks regularly thrown at them. At times agents are pinned down by sniper fire as people try to illegally cross into the U.S.
Mexico's drug cartels have long divided the border, with each controlling key cities. But over the past decade Mexico has arrested or killed many of the gangs' top leaders, creating a power vacuum and throwing lucrative drug routes up for the taking.

President Felipe Calderón, who took office in December 2006, responded by deploying more than 24,000 soldiers and federal police to areas where the government had lost control. Cartels have reacted with unprecedented violence, beheading police and killing soldiers.

In general, violence along the U.S. border has gone up over the years. Seven frontline border agents were killed in 2007, and two so far in 2008. Assaults against officers have also shot up from 335 in fiscal 2001 to 987 in fiscal 2007.

There have been 362 assaults against officers during the first four months of 2008, according to Border Patrol statistics. The pattern has been that when more security resources are deployed along the U.S. border, violence against officers spike in response.

Most assaults are along the San Diego and Calexico, Calif., border, as well as the Arizona border near Yuma and south of Tucson.

Now, about 14,000 U.S. border agents work on the southern border, up from more than 9,000 in 2001.

The Bush administration has requested $500 million to fight drug crime in Mexico. Congress is currently considering the proposal.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...rviolence.html
More: massive shootout

here's a list of *some* of the stuff from may alone:

Quote:

A look at recent Mexican drug war-related violence:
May 10 – The No. 2 on the Juarez police force was shot more than 50 times and killed near his home. The Juarez police chief resigned that same day.

May 9 – Four gunmen in a truck shot and killed a former commander of Mexico City's anti-kidnapping unit. The former commander was shot seven times in the head in front of his apartment. At the time he was working for the Honor and Justice Council of Mexico City's police, which is similar to the internal affairs units in U.S. police forces.

May 8 – Mexico's acting federal police chief opened the door to his Mexico City apartment and was shot nine times and killed.

May 6 – The Ciudad Juarez Police captain was shot four times with an AK-47 and killed a block from his police station.

May 5 – A state police officer was shot and killed in front of her Ciudad Juarez home. A group of attackers spoke to her briefly before they shot her.

May 2 – The director of the Public Security Secretariat General staff was shot and killed as he left his Mexico City house.

May 1 – The head of the Organized Crime Department at the Federal Secretariat of Public Security was shot in the head by two men. The shooters ran off with the victim's car, and authorities found a .380 caliber weapon with a silencer.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...ce-glance.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/world...BrandChannel=0
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...-tijuana-.html

SoCaliSon · #2 05-15-2008, 02:41 PM

Wow

... I had no idea this was going on... And I was planning a trip to TJ... That is scary stuff.

KevinA · #3 05-15-2008, 06:52 PM

I've been hearing about this over the past year or so. It's not just in shady TJ also. I remember hearing about the 3 police oficers found decapetated on the nice sandy beaches of the resort town rosarito. A popular party spring break spot for college students. Some girls from ohio that I know wentt down their by themselves for their spring break this year, I told them about how it is and they apparently didn't have a clue or seem to care

Just 3 blond 20 somethings walking around the streets of mexico at night by themselves.

Jeweledchameleons · #4 05-16-2008, 05:10 PM

Oh bodies are washing up all the time down there.

The kidnapping and extortion racket is just another business
- they're not stupid.
They know that everyone makes more money if the gringo's come down for spring break. It's jsut that they're hardcore about it and more likely to kill people vs haggle over money
Rosarito was kinda a nice place but the food is way overpriced
and kinda shoddy at Ortegas nowdays so even before the violence
I wasn't going there to eat on the weekends anymore.

Guess the final nail in their coffin was when britney spears goes down there to get all loopy.

anyway....
The danger is for the non-spring break season.
Then it's all fair game imo.
All I'm trying to say is "be careful" if you do down there in the
evenings after the reptile show.... it's VERY wild west.

Kent67 · #5 05-16-2008, 05:22 PM

A VERY well-known fixture of the San Diego surfing community was held at gunpoint and forced to watch his wife perform unspeakable acts on their last ever surf trip to Baja. Tijuana and Rosarito have never been safe places to travel but after all this....I'll never willingly set foot in that state again. It's really a shame.

SoCaliSon · #6 05-16-2008, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kent67

A VERY well-known fixture of the San Diego surfing community was held at gunpoint and forced to watch his wife perform unspeakable acts on their last ever surf trip to Baja. Tijuana and Rosarito have never been safe places to travel but after all this....I'll never willingly set foot in that state again. It's really a shame.

Wow... That infuriates me. Do they let you bring a gun with you over the border... Cause that is the only way in hell I would ever cross the border.

KevinA · #7 05-16-2008, 06:46 PM

you cant have a gun in mexico, only the bad guys are allowed to have them. If you got caught with one you'd be spending a few years in a mexican prison.

SoCaliSon · #8 05-16-2008, 07:07 PM

Then I'm not going...

Dean Pulcini · #9 05-16-2008, 09:03 PM

I was stationed in 29 Palms they should call out the Marines and be done with this insanity. The Mexican government got it under control they wont do a thing because they are to busy receiving bribes.

Jeweledchameleons · #10 05-19-2008, 05:22 PM

something in today's paper:

Quote:

Four Americans killed in Mexico near border-police
REUTERS,9:52 a.m. May 19, 2008
ROSARITO, Mexico – Four people believed to be Americans were shot in the head and dumped in a notorious drug-smuggling area in northern Mexico near the border with California, Mexican police said Monday.
Police in the beach town of Rosarito, across the border from San Diego, said they discovered the bodies of three men and a woman Sunday in an abandoned car in a remote patch of scrubland near the Pacific coast.

“The bodies had been there for at least a week. They were spotted by local people out hunting,” a municipal police spokesman said.
Police concluded the victims were U.S. citizens because the vehicle had California license plates, the three men were of African-American appearance, the woman was Caucasian and a U.S. driver's license was found in the car, the spokesman said.

The remote area is one of many along the border used by drug gangs to smuggle marijuana and cocaine into the United States, police said.

Violence from Mexico's vicious war between rival cartels and the police and army has spilled over from the rough nearby city of Tijuana into once-quiet Rosarito and its outlying areas as gangs fight over smuggling routes into California.

Some 1,300 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico this year and more than 2,500 died in 2007.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...americans.html

I was talking to a friend of mine about going out for some yellowtail later this month.
I'm kinda shaky on it all... even though, I got my wits about me
It's just that I've got the feeling that the situation down there is beyond my being "mexican streetwise".

(JC gets on his soapbox)
Dean P
This whole situation is the result of our nation and it's drug prohibition.
The border here is the largest channel for both illegal crossing and drug running.
all money that is made from drugs on their way to the USA is one of the
top sources of Mexican national income (NGP)
(It's right up there with the US billions $$$ being sent back home from illegal alien workers).

The only way to solve it is to pull the rug out from under the cartels
by legalizing
some the low risk forms of what's currently prohibited to take care of the illegal
multi billion dollar demand that's in this nation (imo).

I'm not suggesting that everybody get looped in the streets.
I'm just suggesting that "we" face the facts. (prohibition -funds crime)
It's our nations consumption that is driving the crime and murders
in mexico as well as central/south america. It's corrupting the governments
there and all of it is making it's way north... into this nation.

You can't stop it by sending in the marines or anyone else with a gun.
What's been shown to work is taxation & regulation... use some of that $$$
to treat those with self control issues and we're all going to come out ahead.
Just look at what happened to cigarettes.
Taxing, anti-smoking PSA's, laws limiting public use etc. - killed the demand.
hardly anyone smokes anymore cig sales are the lowest in 50 years!
We can do the same thing here and keep hundreds of billions in our economy
AND cut crime at the same time.
(I'll get off my soapbox now...

)

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