BajaNomad

Leyzaola former police Chief in TJ and Juarez shot

JoeJustJoe - 5-12-2015 at 10:58 AM

Crime-bashing ex-police chief gunned down in Mexico


MEXICO CITY — A gunman Friday shot and seriously wounded a renowned former police chief who battled organized crime in two of Mexico’s most violent border cities, most recently in Ciudad Juarez, a city on the Texas border, where Friday’s attack occurred.

Gunmen in a trailing vehicle pulled alongside the parked white Jeep Commander of retired army Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola shortly after noon, and one of them opened fire on the retired chief, spokesman Arturo Sandoval of the Chihuahua state attorney’s office said.

Leyzaola was hit once in the neck and once in the back, Sandoval said in a telephone interview. His wife was in the vehicle but was not hurt.

Leyzaola, who brought a successful law-and-order campaign to both Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, was in “delicate but stable condition” at the city’s Angeles Hospital, Sandoval said.

The victim and his wife were parked outside a money exchange house in central Ciudad Juarez, preparing to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, when the attack occurred, Chihuahua state deputy prosecutor Jorge Gonzalez Nicolas told reporters outside the hospital.

One of the assailants got out of the chase vehicle and “fired three times at him with the only three bullets he had in his gun,” which was a .380 pistol, Gonzalez said. Two of the bullets hit the former police chief.

Leyzaola took over as the secretary of public security in Tijuana in 2008, and gained fame as a law-and-order commander unwilling to negotiate with organized crime bosses even as he was accused of tolerating police torture of suspected criminals.

He swept out corrupt cops on the Tijuana police force, considered one of the most corrupt in a nation of corrupt forces, and took on Baja California’s most feared crime boss, Teodoro “El Teo” Garcia Simental, who was finally arrested in 2009 elsewhere in Baja. Leyzaola ridiculed Garcia after his arrest, saying that he had “acted like a woman” during his capture.

Three years later, amid a dramatically lower homicide rate in Tijuana, Leyzaola was brought in as police chief in Ciudad Juarez, then known as “Murder City” because of its sky-high homicide rate of some 3,000 killings a year.

Leyzaola served for more than two years, leaving the post in 2013. He oversaw the removal of hundreds of police officers who refused to take lie detector tests or were believed to be on the payroll of crime gangs. By the time of his departure, the homicide rate in the city had plummeted.

Today, Ciudad Juarez has sprung back to life. The city tallied 18 murders in April, the lowest monthly total in a decade, and a sharp reduction from the 10 or so murders a day at the height of the violence as rival drug trafficking gangs clashed in the city.

But charges that Leyzaola tolerated – and perhaps even orchestrated – human rights abuses have dogged the former army officer, who took over as head of a private security firm upon retiring in 2013.

Just this week, the quasi-official National Human Rights Commission said six municipal police officers under Leyzaola’s command executed four Juarez residents on April 24, 2012, and remain on the city’s police force because no investigation was ever opened into the killings.

Leyzaola made a lot of enemies along the border but the motive for the attack Friday was not immediately clear. Authorities said they arrested two men in a Mitsubishi SUV near the crime scene, and said they suspected one of them, 33-year-old Alonso Cereniel Luna, of being the trigger man against Leyzaola. The driver of the Mitsubishi, 25-year-old Jesus Antonio Castaneda, was also arrested. A small amount of cocaine was found in their vehicle.

Sandoval said the two alleged suspects might have been ordered to kill Leyzaola without knowing his identity.

“A lot of people who are hired guns are told to go out and kill a person in such and such a vehicle,” Sandoval said, and simply carry out the order without caring for further details.

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/08/6218090_crime-bashing-ex...




JoeJustJoe - 5-12-2015 at 11:42 AM

I'm surprised none of the usual Baja new sources are covering the shooting of retired army Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola, who was once the Tijuana chief of police, and then later took his act to Ciudad Juarez.

The good news is that Leyzaola, will survive the attack, in part because the so-called hit men were rank amateurs, although some reports say the two belonged to some gang with ties to the Sinaloa cartel. It doesn't even appear the two shooters even knew they were supposed to hit, but were just given a few pesos, to make it happen.

Leyzaola, was a polarization figure when he was in Tijuana, and I understand, he was the same way when he was in Juarez.

It seems you either loved Leyzaola's methods, which many human rights advocates say involved torture, of alleged cartel members, including torture of suspected dirty cops on the police forces of the two cities.

Leyzaola also had an in your face style, and engaged in name calling of cartel members, who in turn took it personal, and street wars were started a few years ago, which I remember well in Tijuana. ( I remember at one point, Tijuana police refused to patrol the streets alone, unless they were in a group, because of the Mexican cartel's death threats towards them)

Leyzaola sure cleaned house in the police departments in both TJ and Juarez, as many suspected dirty cops were fired, but one of the complaints was that Leyzaola listened to cops who were close to Leyzaola, but were in fact dirty, but that Leyzaola didn't know they were dirty, and those cops in turn fingered some good cops, who refused to get on the cartels payroll, and they were fired.

I was not a fan of Leyzaola, or his so-called blueprint on how to rid the drug cartels from Mexico. I did respect the man, and so did his police forces, because when Leyzaola was around, corrupt cops feared him, and shake downs in TJ was way way down when he was the police chief.

And if you look a the index of the most dangerous cities in Mexico, both Tijuana, and especially moved way down the list, however, Leyzaola, never really slowed the drug cartels down, the illegal drugs moved pretty much freely as before.

So therefore, allowing guys lke Leyzaola abuse and ignore basic human rights, and the Mexican Constitution, is just too high of a price to pay, in my opinion, especially when the drugs are still flowing to the USA because Americans have an insatiable appetite for drugs.

woody with a view - 5-12-2015 at 11:51 AM

Quote: Originally posted by JoeJustJoe  

Leyzaola sure cleaned house in the police departments in both TJ and Juarez, as many suspected dirty cops were fired, but one of the complaints was that Leyzaola listened to cops who were close to Leyzaola, but were in fact dirty, but that Leyzaola didn't know they were dirty, and those cops in turn fingered some good cops, who refused to get on the cartels payroll, and they were fired.


the epitome of a dog chasing its tail or trying to prove a negative!:?:

chuckie - 5-12-2015 at 11:51 AM

Old news....Well covered in the press already....

chuckie - 5-12-2015 at 02:47 PM

MORE MORE..................flockup the entire website AGAIN

VegasNick - 5-13-2015 at 07:38 AM

Quote: Originally posted by ELINVESTIG8R  



Ok, newbie here and pardon me if this sounds rude but WTF is this about?

JoeJustJoe - 5-13-2015 at 02:46 PM

The articles are all over the place of the shooting of Leyzaola. This article below is from the "Borderland Beat" a news source known for sensationalizing their stories they translate. They claim, one of Leyzaola's body guards was killed in the hail of bullets.

I haven't read anything in other articles about a body guard so far.

In another article, I think it was in the "El Mexicano" it said, one of the shooters, went up to Leyzaola, at point blank range, and tried to shoot Leyzaola in the head, but the gun at first, jammed, and then Leyzaola was trying to protect his young child with his body, and that's the reason why he was shot in the back.

The most outrageous article, claims, it wasn't a hit on Leyzaola by a Mexican cartel, but rather it was personal, and the shooter had a personal grudge against Leyzaola, that looks like a made up story, that's not worthy that I even repeat.

However, the alleged gunmen's lawyer, have charged the two were tortured while in custody, and made to confess. Now that one I could believe, that's Leyzaola's old MO. The shooter is facing 33 years in prison, if he is convicted.

Other articles, say Leyzaola is on the way to Mexico City, for treatment, and is under very heavy protection.

I'll link a few of the articles below.

__________________________

From the "Borderland beat:

The former mayor of Tijuana, Jorge Ramos Hernández, reported this afternoon that his good friend and great human being, Lieutenant Colonel Julian Leyzaola is stable, but that one of his bodyguards died during the attack. The unidentified bodyguard, "lost his life protecting Julian". ((other reports have his condition as critical but stable)

The attack occurred when Leyzaola stopped his vehicle at a commercial area on avenida Internacional, in the city of Juarez, so that his family could exit the vehicle to do some shopping. It was while he stopped and still behind the wheel that a blue Mitsubishi pulled up, one gunman exited the vehicle and began shooting.

Leyzaola was transferred to a private hospital, where they performed the surgery and he is recovering, while being heavily guarded. It is not uncommon for sicarios to go to the hospital and finish the job.

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/

other articles:

http://diario.mx/Local/2015-05-12_7810bec0/acusan-por-otro-a...

http://puentelibre.mx/_notas/1992060

JoeJustJoe - 5-13-2015 at 03:14 PM

Forget about all the different stories in this articles on both sides of the border. There is security camera footage that shows exactly what happened. The wife gets out of the car, to exchange her pesos for dollars for the planned trip to El Paso, the gunman, exited a car as a passenger, walks towards Leyzaola, on the driver side and shoots, and then walk away, the wife returns, tries to get the child out of the car who is in the back seat, and then others come to help, and finally the ambulance arrives.

Here is the video, it's not gruesome, otherwise I would not show it.

Capta cámara de seguridad ataque contra Leyzaola

http://diario.mx/Local/2015-05-13_48cf9c47/capta-camara-de-s...

bajaguy - 5-13-2015 at 04:51 PM

So this guy (Leyzaola) drives around without a security detail???
Quote: Originally posted by JoeJustJoe  
Forget about all the different stories in this articles on both sides of the border. There is security camera footage that shows exactly what happened. The wife gets out of the car, to exchange her pesos for dollars for the planned trip to El Paso, the gunman, exited a car as a passenger, walks towards Leyzaola, on the driver side and shoots, and then walk away, the wife returns, tries to get the child out of the car who is in the back seat, and then others come to help, and finally the ambulance arrives.

Here is the video, it's not gruesome, otherwise I would not show it.

Capta cámara de seguridad ataque contra Leyzaola

http://diario.mx/Local/2015-05-13_48cf9c47/capta-camara-de-s...

Kgryfon - 5-13-2015 at 10:15 PM

What "that" is all about is a sad man with no social skills who occasionally pokes his head out of the "off topic" forum to annoy everyone with repeated postings of really stupid graphics. I think it's when he's been drinking too much or maybe when he needs an attention fix. Then he targets anyone who complains and starts posting hateful things about them and complaining that he's just a victim exercising his God-given right to be an ass. With pictures. Over and over and over again.

I'm sure he got his butt kicked on a regular basis on the playground at school. Not enough, though, apparently, since he never learned how to play well with others.

I'll probably be featured in a stupid graphic coming your way soon for posting this...

LOL,,,LOL

captkw - 5-13-2015 at 10:48 PM

No human skills at all.... LOL

I hope its me

captkw - 5-14-2015 at 03:42 AM

Would give me a reason to pay off doug and come find your sick ass !! Go back under your rock POS !!

piece of chit !!

captkw - 5-14-2015 at 04:46 AM

I wont make threats.......I make ya a promise....If you want to play with the big dogs..your gonna have lift your leg a little higher !! only tweakers,, are up all night...so are you crack or meth ??

Ateo - 5-14-2015 at 07:37 AM

Don't forget to click "Report". Threats and intimidation are worthy of being banned, in my book.

bajabuddha - 5-14-2015 at 07:44 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Ateo  
Don't forget to click "Report". Threats and intimidation are worthy of being banned, in my book.


They are according to the Forum Rules too. I clicked 'REPORT' 3 or 4 times, but I guess my opinion doesn't matter to the administrators. I urge more people who are fed up do the same. Responding directly only feeds the animal. Most people didn't learn a thing from the last debacle.

ELINVESTIG8R - 5-14-2015 at 07:58 AM