17 Charged With Brutal Kidnappings, Slayings In San Diego

Authorities announced charges Thursday against a Mexican gang that took Tijuana-style violence to the upscale suburbs of San Diego County, kidnapping, torturing and killing well-to-do residents, even after some families paid large ransoms.

The gang, a rogue cell of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, moved across the border in 2002 and posed as U.S. law enforcement, donning FBI and police uniforms and caps while snatching victims outside homes and public places, said San Diego County prosecutors.

Nine victims were killed from 2004 to 2007, and the bodies of two of them were dissolved in chemicals at a rented house in San Diego. Gang members were also charged with trying to murder a Chula Vista police officer in September 2005, peppering his car with high-caliber bullets before fleeing in a car.

The gang targeted people it suspected of having links to organized crime, although some victims had no known ties, authorities said. Prosecutors charged 17 defendants, including gang leader Jorge Rojas Lopez, who is serving a life sentence for one of the abductions. Eight of those charged Thursday remain at large. The others are in custody on previous charges.

“This rogue group of individuals is responsible for a string of brutal murders and kidnappings that demonstrate the ugly reality of cross-border violence,” said San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie M. Dumanis.

Spillover crime from Tijuana’s gang wars is relatively small, given the scale and brutality of the violence there. Nevertheless, the gang’s migration to the San Diego area reinforces concern that border vigilance is no match for Mexican organized crime.

via 17 charged in string of brutal kidnappings and slayings in San Diego suburbs — latimes.com.

Bizarre Kidnap Warning Issued In Canada

This ranks among one of the strangest news stories I have seen. ~Martin

Mounties in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, B.C., have issued an unusual warning about a potential child kidnapping plot.

Cpl. Jennifer Pound says they have information to believe an abduction may happen in the next several weeks.

She calls the information “minimal” but advises parents to be vigilant, urging them to tell their children to walk in groups in well lit, high-traffic areas.

“If approached, kids need to know that it is okay to misbehave,” Pound said.

“Talk to your kids and ensure them that it is important for them to draw attention to themselves. It is okay to yell and scream and do whatever they can do to get the attention of passer-bys.”

Pound would not specify how the RCMP received the information, but stresses the importance of the warning.

“We understand parents will be panicked about this,” Pound said.

“We don’t want them to be panicked but we want this information to get out there because it’s a child, and we need to get out that info to a large group.”

Bruce Beairsto, superintendent of the Richmond School District, says he was informed of the threat on Tuesday afternoon.

Beairsto says the Richmond School Board intends to take “prudent precautions around schools” and will also relay safety tips to students about the danger of strangers.

Linda McPhail of the Richmond School Board says a letter, translated into several languages, will be sent home to parents Wednesday.

“It will contain the notice by RCMP about a possible situation and how parents can take action,” McPhail said.

“And if they notice anything strange to contact both the school and the RCMP.”

The RCMP believes the potential victim is Asian and attends one of the Richmond elementary schools.

Pound says the potential perpetrator knows who the child is, but they have been unable to identify the potential victim.

The RCMP Serious Crimes Unit, as well as the Youth Section, General Duty, and Bike Sections have all been alerted, and are all participating in the joint investigation.

via CTV British Columbia- RCMP issue warning about child kidnapping plot – CTV News, Shows and Sports — Canadian Television.

Mexico Nabs Hitman Linked To US Kidnap

Police on Saturday said they arrested a Mexican drug cartel hitman wanted in connection with the abduction of a US anti-kidnap expert in December and the death of at least five people.

German Torres Jimenez, who allegedly works for the powerful Gulf drug cartel, was detained after a shootout in the eastern city of Veracruz, Mexico’s Public Safety Secretariat (SSP) said in a statement.

Two other suspected hitmen and two women were also arrested when police raided a home in the Poza Rica neighborhood of Veracruz.

Torres is allegedly one of the founders of Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel. Los Zetas reportedly took control of the organization when cartel boss Osiel Cardenas was arrested, then extradited to the United States in 2005.

Torres is suspected of involvement in the December 2008 kidnapping of Felix Batista, a US security consultant and ex-US army officer who was abducted in the northern city of Saltillo where he was giving security seminars to local businessmen.

Source

TSA Warns Truckers Of Violence In Mexico

Drivers in cross-border operations to Mexico and along the U.S. Southwest border are being advised to take precautions to avoid being caught in the drug violence in the region, a Transportation Security Administration contractor said.

According to Total Security Services, Inc., which operates TSA’s Highway Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the violence among Mexican drug cartels has killed more than 200 Americans since 2004, and truckers may be victims of crimes ranging from hijacking and kidnapping to murder.

The Highway ISAC is recommending that drivers with deliveries in Mexico keep in scheduled contact with dispatchers and report in at every scheduled and non-scheduled stop. Drivers also should avoid unsafe highways, and establish a verbal “duress code” to use on the phone when they in the presence of people who may have criminal intent.

Interested parties may receive a copy of the report “Border Violence” by calling the ISAC at 1-703-563-3275

via Source

Drug Cartels New Weapons Pushes Mexico Towards Edge

It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city’s police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico’s drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government’s 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.

“There is an arms race between the cartels,” said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government.

“One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them.”

Source

Homeland Security Plans For Violence On US Border

Tighter gun control and stronger law enforcement in Southwestern states were recommended Thursday by lawmakers concerned about drug violence in Mexico possibly spilling across the border.

The escalating violence — which has killed thousands, mostly south of the border — has been blamed on Mexican drug cartels which one Homeland Security official described as the biggest organized crime threat facing the United States.

Roger Rufe, Homeland Security’s head of operations, outlined the agency’s plans for protecting the border, a response that includes — as a last resort — deploying military personnel and equipment to the region if other agencies are overwhelmed.

Echoing comments a day earlier from President Barack Obama, Rufe said there currently was no need to militarize the Southwestern border with Mexico, despite violence that threatens to migrate into the United States.

“We would take all resources short of DoD (Defense Department) and National Guard troops before we reach that tipping point,” Rufe told lawmakers on a House homeland security subcommittee. “We very much do not want to militarize our border.”

Rufe did not specify what circumstances would trigger a call for troops.

Source  – Full Article

General: Drug Cartels Are Linked To Terrorism

The head of the U.S. National Guard Bureau,  Gen. Craig McKinley said the link between terrorism and drug cartels along the United States’ border with Mexico is increasingly clear.

He went on to say the National Guard will be critical in helping protect the United States in the event of a terrorist attack and the growing threat of violent drug cartels operating along the Southwestern border with Mexico.

McKinley said the drug cartels in Latin America are clearly connected to organized criminal groups who support and funnel money to terrorist organizations.

“The Southwest border is one of the most critical areas in the nation right now,” McKinley said.

“The nature of the drug cartels along the Southwest border is becoming increasingly menacing, and the linkages between drug cartels through organized crime back to terrorist organizations cannot be disputed.”

via Source.

Mexico Offered U.S. Help In Battle With Drug Cartels

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the United States could help with equipment and intelligence techniques after returning from a six-day trip to Latin America punctuated by news of beheadings and intimidation by Mexican drug cartels.

Mexico could borrow from U.S. tactics in the fight against terrorism as it battles a crisis of drug-related violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, the top U.S. military officer said Friday.

Returning from a six-day trip to Latin America punctuated by news of beheadings and intimidation by Mexican drug cartels, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the United States could help with equipment and intelligence techniques.

Adm. Mike Mullen would not be specific about what kind of intelligence or surveillance help the United States might offer, but said he saw ways to employ experience the United States has gained in the ongoing hunt for extremists and terrorists.

He would not say whether there may already be U.S. drones flying over bloodstained cities such as Ciudad Juarez, where 17 bodies came into the morgue on one day recently, including the city police force’s second-in-command and three other officers.

“Obviously it affects us because of the relationship between the two countries,” Mullen said during a telephone news conference as he flew to Washington following meetings in Mexico, his last stop.

Source

Threat of Mexican Drug Cartels Near Crisis

Two of Mexico’s deadliest drug cartels have reached a combined force of 100,000 foot soldiers, wreaking havoc across the country and threatening U.S. border states, the U.S. Defense Department told The Washington Times.

The cartels rival the Mexican army in size and have both Mexico and the U.S. in crisis mode as they deal with what they fear is a coming insurgency along the border.

“It’s moving to crisis proportions,” an unidentified defense official told The Times. The official also said the cartels have reached a size where they are on par with Mexico’s army of 130,000.

About 7,000 people have died in the last year — more than 1,000 in January alone — at the hands of Mexico’s increasingly violent drug cartels. Murders often involve beheadings or bodies dissolved in vats of acid.

The two most dangerous cartels are the Sinaloa cartel, nicknamed the “Federation” or “Golden Triangle” by law enforcement agencies, and “Los Zetas” (the Gulf Cartel). They have been growing and are reportedly discussing a truce or merger to better withstand government forces, The Times reported.

Mexico is now only behind Pakistan and Iran as a U.S. national security concern, coming in ahead of Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official told The Times.

Source

Mexico Send In Military To Restore Order

The Mexican government will deploy 1,000 more federal police officers as part of a wider effort to restore order in Ciudad Juarez, the nation’s most violent city, officials said Monday.

Some of those uniformed federal officers began arriving in the border city Monday, two days after about 2,000 soldiers landed there in a related military buildup. Those soldiers were the first of an expected 5,000 additional troops who will be sent to help perform basic police functions.

The military reinforcements will bring to more than 7,000 the number of soldiers in Ciudad Juarez.

The nation’s public safety chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, said that along with the soldiers, he planned to dispatch the additional 1,000 federal police officers, Notimex news agency reported.

About 425 federal officers already had been posted in Ciudad Juarez, where the death toll last year exceeded 1,600, the highest in a country racked by drug-related violence.

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Kidnapping Capital of the U.S.A. – Phoenix Arizona

Brian Ross and ABC News report what officials caution is now a dangerous and even deadly crime wave. Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone. But local authorities say Washington, DC is too obsessed with al Qaeda terrorists to care about what is happening in their own backyard right now.

“We’re in the eye of the storm,” Phoenix Police Chief Andy Anderson told ABC News of the violent crimes and ruthless tactics spurred by Mexico’s drug cartels that have expanded business across the border. “If it doesn’t stop here, if we’re not able to fix it here and get it turned around, it will go across the nation,” he said. Read more

Drug Gangs Threaten Tijuana Cops On Radio, Then Kill Them

The situation along the border continues to deteriorate.

Mexican drug gangs are breaking into Tijuana police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war.

“You’re next, bastard … We’re going to get you,” an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman.

The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping “narcocorrido” music, popular with drug cartels, over the airwaves.

“No one can help them,” an officer named Jorge said of his threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car.

Sure enough, two hours later the dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads.

Cartels killed some 530 police in Mexico last year, some of them corrupt officers who were working for rival gangs. Others were killed in shoot-outs or murdered for working against the gangs or refusing to turn a blind eye to drug shipments.

Violence has hit shocking levels in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego, since President Felipe Calderon launched an army crackdown on traffickers in late 2006, stirring up new wars between rival cartels over smuggling routes.

The drug war is scaring tourists and investors away from northern Mexico, forcing some businesses to shutter just as the country heads into recession this year.

Badly-paid Tijuana municipal police, often accused of collaborating with rival wings of the local Arellano Felix cartel, are badly demoralized, senior officers say.

“These death threats are part of the psychological warfare that organized crime is using against officers,” said Tijuana police chief Gustavo Huerta.

“Before, the gangs began infiltrating the radio after a police execution, which was bad enough, but now they are doing it beforehand and the force feels terrorized,” he said.

Source

Obama Faces Drug War At Mexican Border

Cartels’ turf fights escalate and threaten to spread into U.S.

Add another pressing challenge to President-elect Barack Obama’s growing to-do list – tamping down a dramatic rise in violence and corruption that has overwhelmed the U.S.-Mexico border and spread an escalating turf fight between warring drug cartels into the United States.

Near-daily shootouts and ambushes along the southwestern border pose a serious threat, according to separate government reports, which predict a rise in “deadly force” against law enforcement officers, first responders and U.S. border residents.

Even President Bush, during a Dec. 21 interview with The Washington Times, warned that Mr. Obama faced a looming war with drug cartels where “the front line of the fight will be Mexico.” He said the new president will need to deal “with these drug cartels in our own neighborhoods.”

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the agency has begun to make progress against “the criminals and thugs” operating along the U.S.-Mexico border, but “we are beginning to see more violence in some border communities and against our Border Patrol agents as these traffickers … seek to protect their turf.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of Homeland Security, said in a recent report that border gangs were becoming increasingly ruthless, targeting rivals, along with federal, state and local police. ICE said border violence has risen dramatically over the past three years as part of “an unprecedented surge.”
Source -Washington Times

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US Anti-kidnapping Expert Kidnapped In Mexico

A U.S. anti-kidnapping expert was abducted by gunmen in northern Mexico last week, a sign of just how bold this nation’s kidnapping gangs have become.

U.S. security consultant Felix Batista was in Saltillo in Coahuila state to offer advice on how to confront abductions for ransom when he himself was seized, local authorities said.

Unknown assailants grabbed him on Dec. 10, said Charlie LeBlanc, the president of the Houston, Texas-based security firm ASI Global LLC., where Batista is a consultant.

“We have notified the FBI and Mexican authorities, and they are working on the case,” LeBlanc said Monday. “What we are doing is we’re offering our support to the family and hoping for the best.”

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said it would not comment on the case, and LeBlanc declined to say whether a ransom demand had been received.

LeBlanc said Batista had his own security business and that “he was in Mexico for business that wasn’t associated with our company.”

“Part of that could be or may involve negotiations with kidnappers,” Leblanc said. ASI Global’s Web site advertises “kidnap and ransom response” and says the company has worked for major insurance companies.

A woman who answered a phone number listed under Batista’s name in Miami, Florida said she did not wish to comment on the case.

Batista was frequently cited as an anti-kidnapping expert at conferences and in the press.

A story in the December issue of the trade magazine Security Management describes how Batista organized relatives’ response to a kidnapping in Mexico, even cooking the family at times. He advised the family during months-long negotiations that eventually reduced the ransom request to about a third of the original amount the kidnappers had demanded. The victim was eventually released.

Local media reported that Batista was 55 years old, but his age was not included on his professional profile.

via Source.