PHOENIX (Reuters) – Hit men dressed in fake police tactical gear burst into a home in Phoenix, rake it with gunfire and execute a man.
Armed kidnappers snatch victims from cars and even a local shopping mall across the Phoenix valley for ransom, turning the sun-baked city into the
"kidnap capital" of the United States.
Violence of this kind is common in Mexico where drug cartel abductions and executions are a daily feature of a raging drug war that claimed 6,000
lives south of the border last year.
But U.S. authorities now fear that violent crime is beginning to bleed over the porous Mexico border and take hold here.
"The fight in Mexico is about domination of the smuggling corridors and those corridors don't stop at the border," Arizona Attorney General Terry
Goddard said.
Execution style murders, violent home invasions, and a spiraling kidnap rate in Phoenix -- where police reported an average of one abduction a day
last year linked to Mexican crime -- are not the only examples along the border.
In southern California, police have investigated cases of Americans abducted by armed groups tied to the Tijuana drug trade. One involved a
businesswoman and her teenage daughter snatched in San Diego last year and held to ransom south of the border.
In south Texas, a live hand grenade traced back to a Mexican cartel stash was tossed onto the pool table of a bar frequented by off-duty police
officers in January. The pin was left in it and the assailant fled.
COPING WITH SPILLOVER
Mexican traffickers have always been violent, but the death toll has soared since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and sent tens of
thousands of troops to fight the country's powerful cocaine cartels.
Soldiers have fought pitched battles with drug gangs in several Mexican towns and overwhelmed police officers have fled municipal forces the length of
the border. In many cases, police officers have been paid off by the drug gangs or even joined them.
In a sign of an increasingly desperate struggle to rein in the violence, Calderon this week ordered 5,000 more troops and federal police to Ciudad
Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
The cartels have killed 250 people in Ciudad Juarez in the past month, forced the police chief to resign, and shut down the airport with bomb threats.
The struggle by outgunned Mexican authorities to contain the violence was highlighted for Arizona state police last November, when Mexican police
officers pinned down in a raging gun battle in Nogales, Sonora, reached out to them with an urgent request for more bullets.
While U.S. authorities stress they have not seen anything like the kind of street battles and horrific beheadings that are now common in Mexico, they
are already taking action to curb was has become known as "overspill".
Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he wants 1,000 troops to guard the border. The state's Attorney General Greg Abbott is backing legislation to crack down on
money laundering and human, drug and weapons trafficking through the state by the warring Gulf and Sinaloa cartels.
Lawmakers in Arizona heard testimony on border violence last week from police and prosecutors, who are seeking more robust measures to seize
smugglers' assets, as well as cracking down harder on gunrunning to Mexico.
PLANNING FOR THE WORST
Washington has stepped up support for Calderon, pledging to give Mexico helicopters, surveillance aircraft, inspection equipment and police training
under a $1.4 billion plan to beat the cartels in Mexico and Central America.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano -- a former Arizona governor -- told a Congressional hearing last week she was focused on curbing the
southbound traffic in guns that are being used to arm the violent cartels.
In a measure of that commitment, a Phoenix gun dealer goes on trial next week on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles,
to smugglers knowing they would send them to a powerful cartel in Sinaloa state on Mexico's Pacific coast.
As the spiraling drug violence shakes Mexican cities and towns along the U.S. border, U.S. Senate lawmakers announced last week they would hold two
hearings to assess the ability of U.S. security forces to deal with the rise in crime on the U.S. side.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the homeland security governmental affairs committee, said the panel would assess border security programs
already in place and review whether federal, state and local authorities are ready to respond to any serious spillover of the Mexican drugs war.
For the sheriff of Hidalgo County, in south Texas, where the live grenade was thrown into a bar in Pharr, possibly by street gang members armed by a
Mexican cartel, that renewed attention to the war on his doorstep can only be welcome.
"It's the first time we've had a hand grenade attack," Guadalupe Trevino told Reuters. "I believe there's more out there that we need to find."Barry A. - 3-1-2009 at 05:25 PM
-------according to ToneArt, we can ignor the stuff near the end of the article about "gun dealers in the USA smuggling AK-47's into
Mexico"--------not to worry. Only the lead-in (beginning of the article) counts.
(sorry Tony, I had to do it)
BarryWoooosh - 3-1-2009 at 06:12 PM
Meet The Press today touched on this for the first time. Secretary Gates was asked about the "Who's in Charge" article about the Juarez Police Chief
resignations demanded by the cartels. He let Gates expand on the topic- which he did.
Originally posted by Barry A.
"gun dealers in the USA smuggling AK-47's into Mexico"--------
It's their customers that are doing the smuggling.Bajahowodd - 3-1-2009 at 06:35 PM
When are people going to see that we are a two-pronged problem in this? We, as a nation, have an insatiable demand for drugs, while at the same time,
are an open bazaar for heavy duty weapons that aid the cartels. Wake up folks. We need to get involved here. And in the right way.
I saw just the other day, some pundit that opined that within the next decade, or two, the U.S. and Mexico will be one country. I have no problem with
that, but i'm sure that rich Mexicans do.Barry A. - 3-1-2009 at 06:50 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Dave
Quote:
Originally posted by Barry A.
"gun dealers in the USA smuggling AK-47's into Mexico"--------
It's their customers that are doing the smuggling.
Picky, picky, picky------------I was talking about "gun dealers" in a strickly generic way. The clowns making the guns available to the cartels are
not "official/legal" gun dealers, as far as I know. I stand corrected.
Barry
The only way Mexico will be cleaned up is by the government forces dealing out brute force and I mean brutal brute force!
ELINVESTIG8R - 3-1-2009 at 06:55 PM
Grenades
bajaguy - 3-1-2009 at 06:58 PM
Unexploded grenades used in the above attacks were manufactured in South Korea. Lot numbers traced to a shipment sold to the Mexican ArmyPackoderm - 3-1-2009 at 09:14 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by ELINVESTI8 The only way Mexico will be cleaned up is by the government forces dealing out brute force and I mean brutal brute force!
Wrong. Even if they used the most brutal force possible and gain tactical victories, they'll lose popular support and suffer an overall loss just like
what's happening in Iraq. There is no kind of pitched battle with well defined sides. There is no real definition of victory. The only way to put out
this fire is action along the lines of the 21st Amendment.ELINVESTIG8R - 3-2-2009 at 04:16 AM
I AM RIGHT!
I did forget to mention that the President of Mexico also must invoke Article 29 of the Mexican Constitution to go along with the surge of federal
troops. Once that is invoked they can then start at one end of Mexico and move through to the other end of Mexico using the brutal brute force I speak
about along the way against the “BAD GUYS.” After the mess is clean up, which it will be if they do this, Mexico can re-instate civil liberties. This
is the only way it can be won. To put it bluntly Legalization plain and simple is a wrong-headed approach and will never end the violence.Packoderm - 3-2-2009 at 04:20 AM
I'd wager the chance for success in the War on Drugs to be about the same as it was for the War on Poverty. I hope the brutal force thing works out
for somebody.ELINVESTIG8R - 3-2-2009 at 04:40 AM
Look let's face it none of what I have stated will happen. So no harm no foul. The same crap will go on and nothing is going to be fixed. Who cares
anyway according to the Mayan calendar the end of the world as we know it will occur at midnight on Friday December 21, 2012.Packoderm - 3-2-2009 at 04:46 AM
Packoderm - 3-2-2009 at 04:59 AM
The violence spilling over into Phoenix is surely a bad thing, but what I fear is graft and corruption spilling over.ELINVESTIG8R - 3-2-2009 at 05:16 AM
Packoderm if graft and corruption comes to the USA to the extent it is
on-going in Mexico then everything as we know it is doomed. Let's hope it never comes to that.The Gull - 3-2-2009 at 07:32 AM
Yea, in the USA, let's keep graft and corruption in state, local and federal government where it belongs and survives quite nicely. Let's not share
it with the everyday people, like in Mexico.
Hey, the elite have to stay elite by some means!!!!
