Azteca crackdown may ease violent-crime rise
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 06/10/2008 02:06:42 AM MDT


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FBI officials hope that a crackdown earlier this year on the leadership of the Barrio Azteca gang will lead to a drop in violent crime, which increased in El Paso last year.
Violent crime rose 6.3 percent while property crime fell about 5 percent last year compared with 2006, according to figures from the Preliminary Uniform Crime Report released Monday by the FBI.

Though gang violence has decreased significantly in El Paso since the early 1990s, gang conflict is still a factor in some of the assaults in the city, said Officer Chris Mears, an El Paso Police Department spokesman.

"We've done several anti-gang operations, including (targeting) graffiti, that have led to several arrests in an effort to keep our gang problem in check," Mears said.

The violent crime category includes homicide, robbery, rape and aggravated assault. Property crime includes burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft.

"Gangs protect their turf through force and intimidation, which often results in aggravated assaults," said David Cuthbertson, special agent in charge of the FBI in El Paso.

"By the FBI taking on the leadership of a violent El Paso street gang, the Barrio Aztecas, we hope to see the number of murders and aggravated assaults in our city reduced," Cuthbertson said in a statement

Earlier this year, the FBI arrested more than a dozen suspected gang leaders, soldiers and associates indicted on federal racketeering charges. Several street gangs funnel into the Barrio Azteca, which



was formed as a prison gang but expanded to charge "taxes" on street-level drug dealing.
The crime categories in the report that saw the biggest percentage changes was a 30 percent rise in homicides (17 deaths compared with 13 in 2006) and a 14 percent drop in auto thefts.

El Paso has a small homicide rate for a city its size and remains one of the safest communities in the nation, FBI officials said. The violent crime increase last year is not related to the current violence in Juárez, officials added.

Daniel Borunda may be reached at dborunda@elpasotimes.com;546-6102.







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