Thread: Laredo's Mayor Asks Gov Perry for Help in Drug War

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/11908224.htm
Posted on Thu, Jun. 16, 2005

Laredo's mayor asks Perry for help in drug war

By Jay Root
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

For years, they've promoted these bustling twin cities as los dos Laredos, -- the two Laredos. Now, as drug violence spills across the Rio Grande and tourists run for cover, officials on the U.S. side are wishing their catchy slogan didn't ring so true.

On the same day last week that the police chief in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, was gunned down after spending just six hours on the job, top officials are connecting two gangland-style killings in Laredo to escalating violence between two warring drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo. Mexican federal agents were still patrolling that city's streets Wednesday night after detaining hundreds of municipal police officers with suspected ties to drug traffickers.

"I was born and raised in Laredo," said Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores, who patrols 80 miles of territory along the Rio Grande. "I have never, ever seen anything like this before in my life."

Even the relentlessly upbeat Laredo mayor, Betty Flores (no relation), is hitting the panic button. With local police on their highest alert level, she calls the situation "out of control" and is asking Gov. Rick Perry to provide financial assistance to combat the crime crossing the border into her city of 215,375 residents.

"We're not going to be able to cover this," she told the Star-Telegram. "I'm telling you right now we can't do it on our own anymore. We need this assistance."

Flores, above all, wants state help to buy communications equipment and helicopters to aid in the apprehension of suspects. In a letter to Perry on Monday, Flores called her request for help a matter of "great urgency" and cited violent incidents that are the "direct result of the organized crime and violence occurring in our neighboring city of Nuevo Laredo."

"This violence is spreading to our city," she wrote.

Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said Laredo's request for a $1.2 million grant to buy communications equipment was being expedited. She also said Perry asked the Texas Department of Public Safety on Wednesday to "go ahead and increase some trooper presence" in Laredo.

"They will have their own helicopters," Walt added.

The mayor cited several spillover incidents. In one recent case, Mexican police chased a suspect into the U.S. border compound in Laredo. More worrisome to Laredo authorities are the two gangland-style killings that occurred on the Texas side of the border on the same day that Nuevo Laredo Police Chief Alejandro Dominguez was riddled with dozens of bullets on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

The chief was killed just hours after taking a job that nobody else wanted.

Both homicides on the U.S. side occurred in broad daylight on June 8, and either the suspects or the victims had drug trafficking ties, officials said.

In one of the incidents, a 24-year-old man was shot repeatedly at a Laredo intersection. He was from Nuevo Laredo and carried a credential from the Nuevo Laredo municipal police force, Laredo police spokesman Juan Rivera said. The Nuevo Laredo police force is suspected by U.S. and Mexican authorities of being rife with drug cartel corruption. Rivera said authorities were still investigating the extent of the victim's ties to Nuevo Laredo police.

In the other incident, a 29-year-old man with what Rivera called "an extensive background in drug trafficking and violence" went to a Laredo car dealership to retrieve his Mercedes Benz. He received a phone call at the dealership and was told somebody wanted to see him outside.

When he stepped out, two men shot him dead and drove off. The killers' car was recovered, but police are still trying to find them.

Local police cautiously say ties to Mexican drug trafficking aren't definite but can't be ruled out. Others in Laredo say it's time to recognize that the violence, like a communicable disease, doesn't stop at the border or apply only to people who live in Mexico.

In what's considered an offshoot of the drug violence, 37 U.S. citizens have been kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo since last August. Thirteen are still missing and two are dead, according to the San Antonio office of the FBI.

It has gotten bad enough that in April the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert warning of a "deterioration of public safety" along the border.

Fueling the spreading violence is a bloody war between two drug cartels, the Pacific Coast-based Sinaloa alliance and the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel.

Just like the legitimate commercial interests that have made Laredo the top inland point of entry in the United States -- and the second-fastest-growing city in the country -- drug traffickers need access to the string of highways that lead to all points north to meet the demand for cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

And they are fighting each other for control of those lucrative routes.

Federal officials say the the war began after cocaine trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped from prison four years ago. In recent months, his effort to seize control of the South Texas transportation hub from the Gulf cartel has sparked an explosion of drug violence in Mexico, where over 500 people have been killed this year, according to published reports. Most of the deaths have occurred in the Mexican states that border Texas.

In Nuevo Laredo alone, more than 60 people have been slain -- including two more overnight Tuesday, even as federal officials were patrolling the city of more than 500,000 people in an attempt to restore order.

The federales were poised to begin leaving Nuevo Laredo today, to be replaced by city police who have undergone investigations, authorities said. Meanwhile, the administration of President Vicente Fox announced plans to expand efforts in other Mexican cities to purge police departments of corruption.

Back across the border, Flores, the Webb County sheriff, said he noticed the increasing violence by well-armed and well-financed cartels both at home and in Mexico even before he took office in January.

He said the cartels have been aggressively recruiting members of prison gangs, such as the Mexican Mafia and HPL -- Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos -- or Brotherhood of Latin Gunmen, to ferry drugs north and cash back to Mexico.

Flores said he has received new intelligence that extortion rackets are flowing north into the Laredo business community.

"There have been people that have been approached on this side to contribute monetarily, to pay a quota so they won't be bothered," Flores said. "These people have been approached according to what we've gathered, and have been asked, 'You know, hey, you need to pay so we won't bother you. ... We wouldn't like for one of your kids to get lost one day.' "

Like the mayor, the sheriff is calling for state and federal assistance to fight drug trafficking violence. He carries a semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 and .40-caliber Glock at all times and rarely leaves the office without a couple of bodyguards.

But he said he and his deputies need more powerful weapons, better technology and stronger body armor.

"We're having to fight people with rocket-propelled grenades, bazookas and .50-caliber weapons," Flores said. "I don't think a 9 mm or a .357 magnum is in any way going to compete against these guys. ... So, yeah, we are in dire need."

GOVERNOR PERRY!!

GET NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS TO THE BORDER NOW and help this town and all your towns and all your property owners putting up with this unnecessary dispicable and highly dangerous problem!!

"We're having to fight people with rocket-propelled grenades, bazookas and .50-caliber weapons," Flores said. "I don't think a 9 mm or a .357 magnum is in any way going to compete against these guys. ... So, yeah, we are in dire need."

OK, Kids, what have I said all along (as well as most of the rest of you), let's militarize that border before chaos truly reigns supreme. This is insanity.

We need troopers in Bradleys with 20mm cannon to deal with this. Come on, Jorge, when will you awaken from your siesta? (siesta being a Spanish term, which Jorge can clearly understand).

I may do an ALIPAC announcement call for Gov Perry to deploy the national guard immediately!

Call out the guard!

W

William, please do that. Under the United States Army National Guard, there are two missions. A State Mission and a Federal Mission. The State Mission authorizes Governors in every state of the United States to activate their state's National Guard with one phone call to the Adjutant General of their state.

The Texas National Guard can be on the Mexican Border from one end to the next within 6 hours of that phone call from Rick Perry to his Adjutant General.

Judy is right, this may be the opportunity to get the guard involved.

By the way, William, very cool pic of TR!

Do it...do it...it's been needing done for months...if not years. That's what we pay our guard and military for...protection of the citizens..AMERICAN citizens that is.

RR

Slick Rick Scary can't send the Texas National Guard to the border because most of them are in IRAQ
This is the first half smart thing this single digit, low frequency, FOOL has said in YEARS. Too many years.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers, not the bottom feeding baseball team, but the real TEXAS RANGERS, will handle up. If the TEXAS RANGERS show up on your doorstep, your day has been ruined.

Well.... he should put on the Borders what he's got with lots of "equipment" which they have alot of!!

Then have the Texas Rangers on the scene as well!!

And the Minute Men too!!

That will make a HUGE DIFFERENCE!!

Four organizations working together:

Guard, Rangers, MMP and Border Patrol!!

Oh yeeeeeah!!

Originally Posted by Judy

Well.... he should put on the Borders what he's got with lots of "equipment" which they have alot of!!

Then have the Texas Rangers on the scene as well!!

And the Minute Men too!!

That will make a HUGE DIFFERENCE!!

Four organizations working together:

Guard, Rangers, MMP and Border Patrol!!

Oh yeeeeeah!!

He might. Sen. Hutchison and Carole Keaton Strayhorn are considering running for governor next year. He practically has to do something.