Acapulco Police Chief Killed in Mexico Drug Feud

Another Chief is murdered in the streets. No discussion of "waring drug gangs" needed.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen shot and killed a local police chief on Saturday in Acapulco, a Mexican beach resort that has been sucked into a bloody turf war between drug gangs in northern and western Mexico, local media reported.

Gunmen in two or three vehicles shot up to nine bullets into 45-year-old Jorge Arturo Lopez, a chief detective in Guerrero state, as he was getting into his car in the old town of Acapulco, according to reports in two Mexican dailies.

Local police and justice officials would not immediately confirm the killing, but relatives of the victim told Mexican radio on Saturday that Lopez had received death threats.

The shooting came a day after one of Mexico's worst death counts this year, with 15 people reported murdered on Friday in gangland-style killings related to organized crime.

The victims, including two found inside the trunk of a car with their hands bound, were spread across western and northern states and Mexico City.

Some 2,000 people were killed in drug-related violence last year.

Killings have continued apace this year despite President Felipe Calderon sending out thousands of troops within days of taking power in December to hunt down drug trafficking gangs.

Acapulco police chief killed in Mexico drug feuding - Yahoo! News

Kidnapped Newspaper Editor Found Dead

Calderon is working hard to turn things around, more arrests of corrupt police. But it came too late Saul Noe Martinez Ortega, the editor who was abducted last week.

Mexico City

Top cartel leader arrested, police say

Authorities said Monday they have arrested a top operator for the Gulf drug cartel who was in charge of operations in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon and its capital city, Monterrey.

Eleazar Medina Rojas, "El Chelelo," was detained last week in Nuevo Laredo, the home base of the enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel — the Zetas — to which Medina allegedly belongs. Nine other Zetas were detained along with Medina, police said.

Elsewhere in Mexico on Monday, federal police took over the police station in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon, and arrested eight local officers.

And in the border city of Agua Prieta, authorities found the body of newspaper editor Saul Noe Martinez Ortega, who was abducted last week.

Nation & World | Ahmadinejad wants meeting with Bush | Seattle Times Newspaper

Police chief killed in Mexico amid wave of violence

Being an honest police chief is a really deadly job in Mexico.

Mexico City (eCanadaNow) - A police chief in the Mexican town of Cardenas was killed Monday, taking some 40 shots to the head in the latest of a wave of murders that have shaken Mexico in recent days, authorities said.

Jorge Alberto Gonzalez, general coordinator at the Public Security Department in Cardenas, died immediately, according to officials in the south-eastern state of Tabasco.

In another attack Monday, a local public security director escaped unharmed in the north-western city of Culiacan. But Octavo Lopez Valenzuela’s 7-year-old son was injured and a bodyguard suffered serious wounds.

In the first four months of 2007, there have been about 700 violent deaths, despite anti-drug gang operations launched by President Felipe Calderon.

E Canada Now - Breaking News » Police chief killed in Mexico amid wave of violence

Cartel hires Laredo teen as hit man

Plenty of blame to go around here.

If the teenage hitman had stayed locked up in his concrete cell after the first murder, maybe Moises Garcia would still sing goofy Spanish songs to his son.

Maybe Noe Lopez, a 27-year-old father of four, wouldn’t be buried under a sapling in the city cemetery.

Maybe.

If a judge hadn’t reduced Gabriel Cardona’s bail after the second murder charge, perhaps Mariano Resendez would be close to finishing his junior year of high school.

If the justice of the peace hadn’t decreased Cardona’s bail on another murder charge and a charge of engaging in organized crime from a total of $3 million to $200,000, maybe Jesus Maria Resendez would still take his nephew Mariano fishing.

Maybe.

But the judge, the justice of the peace and to a degree the Webb County District Attorney’s Office didn’t keep Cardona, a Martin High School dropout, locked up in Webb County Jail.

Instead, court records show, Cardona, who already was in jail on murder and kidnapping charges, made bail twice, allowing him to get out and go on two killing sprees on the orders of a leader of the Gulf drug-smuggling cartel in Nuevo Laredo.

In all, Cardona, who is now 20, was charged with killing five people in the span of 10 months, including Garcia, Lopez and the Resendezes. So far, he’s pleaded guilty to two murder charges and faces three more.

Laredo Morning Times - Cartel hires Laredo teen as hit man

Mexican police find 17 bodies, suspect drug-related crime

The article goes on the blame USA for allowing guns into Mexico. Hey, maybe this fence idea isn't so bad ... nah, forget it. Meanwhile towards the end the mention the arrest of 100 police officers. One assumes the Mexican police don't get their guns smuggled in illegally, but in Mexico one never knows.

MEXICO CITY


Police found 17 corpses stuffed in cars or dumped on streets in garbage bags across Mexico on Monday in what appeared to be the latest wave of violence by drug gangs.
In the resort city of Cancun, the bodies of three men and two women were found in an SUV, state police said in a news release. The victims' heads were covered in tape and their hands bound behind their backs, it said. One of the male victims was dressed in women's clothes.

Taipei Times - archives: "Mexican police find 17 bodies, suspect drug-related crime

Police beheading in Acapulco

You may be thinking "didn't you post this already?" It does seem so familiar. But in searching the vast archives of BOTG we see that while there have been many many "police killed" stories and a surprising number of "beheading stories" this is the first where the police themselves are beheaded. Usually they are shot, or kidnapped and shot.

ACAPULCO, Mexico - The decapitated heads of two police officials were found early Thursday dumped in front of a government building in this Pacific coast resort, authorities said.

The heads of police commander Mario Nunez Magana and officer Jesus Alberto Ibarra were found at the same site where four drug traffickers died during a shootout with law enforcement. The heads of the two — who were involved in the Jan. 27 shootout — were accompanied by a sign that warned, “So that you learn to respect.”

They were discovered about 3 a.m. in front of the city’s Finance Department — just over a mile from the city’s main tourist zone — next to black plastic bags apparently used to carry them in, said local attorney general’s office official Rogelio Quevedo Mendoza.

Heads of police found in Acapulco - Americas - MSNBC.com

Mexican Crime Reporter Kidnapped from Police Station

The press is to be commended for still trying to report the news under these conditions. As is pointed out later in the story there still are no leads in the previous high visibility crimes of this type, including a Acapulco TV reporter who was shot in the head.

A Mexican newspaper reporter on the Arizona border remains missing after he was snatched by armed men who chased him to a police station.

Saúl Martínez Ortega, 36, apparently drove to the Agua Prieta police station to seek help during the high-speed chase early Monday.

When he arrived, the only officer around was a night watchman who didn't have a radio or a weapon.

The gunmen used a weapon to smash the window of Martínez's sport utility vehicle so they could open the door and take him away.

MySA.com: Mexico

Matamoros cop arrested with 600 pounds of marijuana

Corrupt Mexican Cops bring their business to our side of the border. Only someone dropped a dime on him. I don't think he'll be able to bribe his way out of this in Texas as easily as he could in Old Mexico.

An off-duty Matamoros police officer was arrested Wednesday afternoon on charges of possession of marijuana after agents with the Cameron County District Attorney’s office found more than 600 pounds of the leafy drug at a home in the Brownsville Country Club.

Agents with the district attorney’s Special Operations Unit received an anonymous tip Wednesday that large amounts of marijuana were being housed at 245 Las Villas Ave.

Brownsville Herald : Matamoros cop arrested with 600 pounds of marijuana

The government and the druglords, who rules Mexico?

Very good summary of the status of the joint US/Mexican war on druglords, which is mostly failing according to the authors.

Drug trafficking is Mexico’s cancer, bringing the population an indescribable number of problems, while it is barely being noticed back in the U.S. The issue is not simply the thousands of deaths in drug-related incidents every year, but also the government’s inability to control the drug cartels. This situation creates a profound sense of fatalism and disillusionment over the ability of elected officials and the security forces to effectively cope with crime and to honestly bring law and order to the community. Furthermore, rampant corruption and drug-related violence discourages foreign investment and prevents development, two issues that Mexico needs to resolve.

The government and the druglords, who rules Mexico?

Drug war turns Mexico border city into ghost town

It's sad that an entire city has been ruined by drug war fighting.

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico, April 2 (Reuters) - With heavily armed Mexican soldiers patrolling Nuevo Laredo's graffitied, rubbish-strewn streets, Mario Cepeda is having a tough time convincing anyone to take his horse-drawn city tour.

Once an easygoing Mexican border town thronging with U.S. tourists, Nuevo Laredo is becoming a ghost town because of a brutal, three-year-old turf war between rival drug cartels that has driven residents and businesses across the Rio Grande to the safety and prosperity of its Texan sister city, Laredo.

"Business is no good, nobody comes any more," said Cepeda in broken English as he waited in vain for passengers on Nuevo Laredo's main avenue, a few steps from the U.S.-Mexico border footbridge.

Almost 200 people were murdered in often gruesome, daylight shootings in Nuevo Laredo last year in a war between drug gangs from Mexico's western Sinaloa state and the local Gulf cartel that that killed around 2,000 people nationwide in 2006.

Reuters AlertNet - FEATURE-Drug war turns Mexico border city into ghost town

Mexican cop found guilty of drug smuggling

One down, one thousand left to go.

LAREDO — A federal jury Wednesday found a Mexican police officer guilty of conspiracy, smuggling and intent to distribute cocaine in the United States.
Ricardo Gonzalez Camacho, 37, a Monterrey, Mexico-based officer with the Nuevo León state ministerial police, faces 10 years to life in prison.


Gonzalez was arrested on Sept. 10 at the Bridge of the Americas after inconsistencies in his story to customs agents raised suspicion.

On that day, Gonzalez told agents he had driven from Monterrey to go shopping in downtown Laredo, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement. But a permit to travel deeper into the United States that was hanging out of Gonzalez's shirt pocket led to an inspection of the 1994 Chevrolet truck he was driving.

Agents found 55 pounds of cocaine in vacuum-sealed bundles inside the truck's gas tank.

Gonzalez told Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that he knew that the truck had drugs in it, and that he was to be paid $2,000 for delivering the vehicle to a Burger King restaurant in downtown Laredo, the original complaint in the case states.

Court documents don't mention the names of the individuals or group in Monterrey that hired him to transport the drugs.

That city has recently become one of the hot spots for drug-related violence in Mexico, and some of the killings suggest that some cops have become entangled in the illicit business. More than 14 police officers have been killed in Monterrey and its suburbs this year. They include a few ministerial officers, members of a high-level state investigative agency that handles serious crimes.

A grand jury indicted Gonzalez in September and a plea bargain with federal prosecutors was reached the following month, court records show.

Gonzalez pleaded guilty to the smuggling charge in exchange for a lenient sentence. But during the sentencing phase, Gonzalez changed his mind and the case went to trial.

During the trial he denied having confessed to smuggling the cocaine.

Jurors came back with a guilty verdict after about two hours of deliberation, the U.S. Attorney's office said.