Thread: 1/17/08 Gun Battle Prompts Evacuations In Tijuana

As predicted, no national coverage of the Tijuana police shooting of a couple of days ago in the MSM.


Gun Battle Prompts Evacuations In Tijuana

POSTED: 4:46 pm PST January 17, 2008
UPDATED: 5:45 pm PST January 17, 2008


TIJUANA, Mexico -- A shootout with police in Tijuana on Thursday has prompted the evacuations of their City Hall and police headquarters, NBC 7/39 reported.


The evacuations were due to direct threats that were received, according to the station.

Earlier in the day, more than 100 children were escorted at gunpoint out of their preschool by armed guards, following the gun battle in the Ermita neighborhood.

Four people were injured as a result of the gunfire.

As many as 1,500 Mexican authorities will be in Tijuana by the end of the week to get control over rioting drug gangs. Authorities in Mexico said they're responsible for the deaths of at least three police officers, including a district commander, his wife and 12-year-old daughter. Those shootings took place earlier this week.

District chiefs are being asked to carry assault rifles at all times and move their families from their homes.

The Mexican Army has been sent in to help control the ongoing confrontation.

Tijuana residents e-mailed NBCSandiego.com to report on the violence. One man, who said he works in Tijuana, said the violence was taking place near Plaza Rio. He said televised reports were warning residents to stay in their homes.

The violence came following a car chase and shootout Monday afternoon between municipal police and at least two people who allegedly tried to rob an armored car after it made a cash pickup at a bank.

One suspect was killed and another was wounded and taken to a hospital under police custody, municipal police said.

Local media reported that police commanders received threats on their radio signal after the shootout, a common intimidation tactic among gangs of organized criminals.

The shootings come just one week after the Mexican government stepped up its anti-drug efforts throughout the country where drug cartels battle each other for the best smuggling routes.

Previous Stories:
January 17, 2008: Shootout In Tijuana Wounds 4
January 16, 2008: Cop, Wife, Daughter Shot To Death In Tijuana
January 15, 2008: 3 Cops Gunned Down In Tijuana
December 2, 2007: Authorities: Baja Tourists Targeted By Gunmen
September 26, 2007: Tijuana Cop Accused Of Trying To Smuggle Drugs
April 19, 2007: 3 Dead After Shootout At Tijuana Hospital
January 23, 2007: Tijuana Police Rearm -- With Slingshots
January 5, 2007: Local Police Stop Patrolling In Tijuana
October 16, 2006: Tijuana Mayor: City Is Much Safer
August 24, 2006: Cops Accused Of Decapitating Fellow Officers
June 23, 2006: Suspects Questioned In Baja Beheadings
June 22, 2006: Headless Bodies Found In Rosarito; Heads Found In Tijuana
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/15079591/detail.html

Only other countries report on what is happening on our border.

Mexico gunmen target children in gruesome drug war
Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:32pm GMT
By Lizbeth Diaz

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Hitmen from Mexico's drug gangs are breaking traditional codes of honour by killing children in a chilling new chapter of a narcotics war that President Felipe Calderon is struggling to control.

In unprecedented attacks, gunmen killed a 3-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl and seriously wounded a 12-year-old girl in the city of Tijuana on the U.S. border this week as they targeted a senior local police officer.

Even hardened residents of Tijuana, where more than 300 people were killed in drug violence last year and severed heads were dumped on city streets, were shocked by photos of young Jose Luis Ortiz's body riddled with bullets.

"How much longer must we wait for results from the military? Now the narcos are killing our children," said a Tijuana shop assistant who gave her name only as Fernanda.

Ortiz and his mother and father were shot dead as they slept on Monday night. Gunmen apparently mistook the boy's father for a police officer and had no qualms about killing the 3-year-old.

Moments later, they found the police officer they were looking for and murdered him, his wife and their youngest daughter. Their other child was wounded.

"This is a new strategy to attack children and families and respond to the government's military assault on the cartels. The gangs want to sow panic and fear to overwhelm the authorities," said Victor Clark, a drug trade expert at San Diego State University.

Over the past three decades, Mexican drug cartels hauling cocaine north to the United States have generally held to a code of honour that bans killing women and children and stops them from becoming addicted to the drugs they traffic.

But as the cartels feud over smuggling routes and fight troops and federal police trying to crush them, violence has escalated and many traffickers are now addicts.

Mexican folk singers who praised the escapades of drug smugglers are also being murdered in the conflict.

"We know this is a war and we have to win it every day," Baja California's state governor, Jose Guadalupe Osuna, said after the Tijuana killings.

MORE TROOPS, FEW RESULTS

The main struggle is between the Gulf Cartel on Mexico's eastern coast and an alliance headed by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, a jail escapee and Mexico's most wanted man.

Calderon has made crushing the drug cartels a priority since taking office a year ago, sending 25,000 soldiers and police to attack the gangs.

A main focus of the campaign has been Baja California, Mexico's deadliest state last year with more than 400 drug-related murders.

In January, hundreds of police and soldiers rolled into Tijuana and the nearby town of Rosarito to reinforce an already large troop contingent, but street shootouts and daylight kidnappings by hooded men continue.

Baja California officials and Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora this week promised a redoubling of efforts to stop the violence, but some officials are pessimistic.

"The corruption among the state's police forces runs so deep that it is impeding our work," Gen. Sergio Aponte, joint head of military operations in Baja California, told Reuters. "There are many police officers who have dedicated themselves to protecting criminal interests."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews ... 2020080117

Jan. 17, 2008, 9:20PM
Tijuana shootout kills gunman, wounds 4


By LUIZ PEREZ Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press

TIJUANA, Mexico — A shootout Thursday between police and gunmen killed one man, left four officers wounded and forced the evacuation of nearby schools in Tijuana, as violence continued to surge across the border from San Diego.

Soldiers, state and local police were sent in to help control the three-hour shootout that began when federal agents prepared to raid a house in a Tijuana neighborhood near the border, Baja California state attorney general Rommel Moreno said in a news release.

Moreno said one assailant was killed and five were arrested, and that no civilians were wounded.

An official with state prosecutors who was not authorized to be quoted by name said three schools close to the shootout were evacuated and five blocks were cordoned off. Television showed police carrying away small children while shots rang out.

Already this week, gunmen shot and killed eight people in Tijuana, including two local police officers, as well as a district commander, his wife and his 12-year-old daughter.

Also Thursday, employees at Tijuana's City Hall and police headquarters were evacuated after receiving death threats over a police radio frequency, said Abraham Sarabia, a spokesman for city police.

Mexico has seen a spike in gang-related killings since the beginning of the year. The Mexican government has described the violence as revenge for President Felipe Calderon's year-old crackdown on organized crime that sent thousands of soldiers and federal police into violence-plagued cities nationwide.

In the central Mexican state of Hidalgo on Wednesday, assailants killed the director of public safety for the town of Tulancingo.

Jose Alvarado was shot more than 20 times, Hidalgo state police director Ahuizotl Figueroa said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 65267.html