Thread: U.S. mayor, police chief charged with smuggling guns to Mexi

Washington Post
By Nick Miroff

U.S. mayor, police chief charged with smuggling guns to Mexico

MEXICO CITY - Drug gangsters in northern Mexico looking for high-powered weapons have benefited from some well-placed American suppliers lately, U.S. prosecutors say.

While drug violence raged in the Mexican town of Puerto Palomas, the mayor and police chief of next-door Columbus, N.M., formed part of a U.S. smuggling ring selling weapons to gangsters across the border, U.S. prosecutors say.

Columbus Mayor Eddie Espinoza, Police Chief Angelo Vega and nine others amassed weapons beginning in January 2010 for sale across the border, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday. At least a dozen of the 200 guns they purchased later turned up in Mexico.
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nm/pr/2011/ ... ctment.pdf

The suspects were arrested Thursday in a raid by federal agents and state police. One suspect is at large.

Court records show that many of the weapons, including 9mm handguns and AK-47-style pistols that resemble a shortened version of the rifle, were purchased at Chaparral Guns, a federally licensed arms dealer, and sold in bulk purchases of up to 20 at a time. The store's owner, Ian Garland, was taken into custody and charged with smuggling, making false statements and conspiracy.

Residents of Columbus say news of the sweep hit the town hard, coming two days before an annual heritage celebration in honor of friendship and peace between Puerto Palomas and Columbus, which was famously attacked in 1916 by Mexican rebel leader Francisco "Pancho" Villa.

"I'm so mad I could spit nails," said Martha Skinner, who runs a bed and breakfast in Columbus, a town of about 1,800. "They took an oath to uphold the law. What if the cartels decided they weren't selling enough guns and got mad and sent someone to shoot up our town?"

Federal prosecutors have filed 84 counts against the defendants, who allegedly engaged in the kind of "straw" purchases that have drawn increasing scrutiny from U.S. authorities, wherein gun buyers legally acquire weapons, often in large quantities, on behalf of criminals.

Trafficking of U.S. guns into Mexico, where firearms are strictly controlled, has been a source of increasing tension between the two countries, and Mexican officials have pressed the Obama administration to do more to stem the flow of weapons south.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... =emailpage

Like nearby El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Columbus and Puerto Palomas have experienced Mexico's drug violence in dramatically uneven ways. Columbus residents say their town has remained quiet, unfazed by the murders on the other side or such events as the discovery of 20 bodies in a mass grave in November.

When three human heads were left in the town square of Puerto Palomas in August, Vega, the police chief, told reporters that the violence was "knocking at our back door."

"We'll maintain the line," he said at the time.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 05906.html

U.S. mayor, police chief charged with smuggling guns to Mexico (Tip of the iceburg! Corruption of our 'public officials is the ONLY explanation for this mess!)

related

The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_corruption.html


Mexico’s cartels are corrupting US law enforcement

http://cominganarchy.com/2009/10/31/mex ... forcement/

Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano will get right on this!

Eddie Espinoza, and Angelo Vega.

Their last names lets me know anything is possible with the pair and I bet they were also involved with illegal substances trafficking.

I guess we all know now why there are so much support for illegal aliens.

How many more are hiding in darkness and have never been caught

Originally Posted by Pisces_2010

Eddie Espinoza, and Angelo Vega. Their last names lets me know anything is possible with the pair and I bet they were also involved with illegal substances trafficking.

=================================

“I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico."
Mexican President Felipe Calderón

Originally Posted by HAPPY2BME

Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano will get right on this!

WHAT! WHEN?

Originally Posted by Pisces_2010

Eddie Espinoza, and Angelo Vega.

Their last names lets me know anything is possible with the pair and I bet they were also involved with illegal substances trafficking.

I guess we all know now why there are so much support for illegal aliens.

How many more are hiding in darkness and have never been caught

Was thinking the same thing but not any different then the Hispanic Caucus representing their own over all others.....................

Originally Posted by HAPPY2BME

Originally Posted by Pisces_2010

Eddie Espinoza, and Angelo Vega. Their last names lets me know anything is possible with the pair and I bet they were also involved with illegal substances trafficking.

=================================

“I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico."
Mexican President Felipe Calderón

Naw... only when one ethnicity or culture grows 20-40 percent in one year would there be any correlation with corruption or crime....

Oh...... NO..........Say it ain't so...!..

"Mexico, where firearms are strictly controlled,"

Oh yea.. Hows that working for you?

Ya just could not make up this ignorant spew!

South America and Mexico are so great yet their people break into the U.S.

Guess they just want cheap drugs and to get away from American guns.
Idiots.