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.

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Mexico Army Nabs Cartel Suspect – Claims To Have Dissolved 300 Bodies In Acid

A suspect in police custody calls himself a “stewmaker” for a Mexican drug lord, saying he disposed of about 300 bodies by dissolving them in acid.

A suspected hit man who allegedly dumped more than 300 bodies in vats of lye at the behest of a top Tijuana crime boss has been arrested near Ensenada, according to the Mexican military.

Alleged crime boss Teodoro Garcia Simental, nicknamed El Teo, narrowly escaped after soldiers on Thursday raided an upscale resort outside the Baja California port city 70 miles south of San Diego, according to one Mexican news report.

The military said Santiago Meza Lopez, a 45-year-old from the state of Sinaloa, was arrested after allegedly trying to flee from soldiers and federal agents on the Ensenada- Tijuana coastal highway. Soldiers also arrested Garcia’s cook and seized four automatic weapons and two grenades.

Military authorities said Meza admitted being Garcia’s body disposal expert, nicknamed “El Pozolero del Teo” — roughly translated: Teo’s soup maker.

Garcia, said to be in his mid-30s, is believed to be battling the Arellano Felix drug cartel for control of the Tijuana area in a turf war that has claimed more than 500 lives since late September. Many of the disintegrated remains left in barrels on busy streets have been attributed to El Teo, and have included messages addressed to reputed rivals threatening to make their henchmen into pozole, a Mexican soup.

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