Thread: More killing on border as 'madness' continues

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3298610

More killing on border as 'madness' continues
Nuevo Laredo councilman and city policeman slain in ambush
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
MEXICO CITY - Unidentified gunmen shot dead a Nuevo Laredo city councilman and a police commander just blocks from City Hall Friday, continuing a wave of underworld violence gripping the border city this year.

Leopoldo Ramos Treviño, 44, who headed the City Council's public security committee, died in a fusillade of bullets at 9:20 a.m. as he drove his pickup toward City Hall in downtown Nuevo Laredo. Witnesses told police that three teenage gunmen boarded a car and drove off following the assassinations.

Federico Ocampo, a municipal police commander, also was killed, while city patrolman Alfredo Barberena and an unidentified passerby were wounded, police said.

State police investigators recovered more than five dozen spent bullet casings, most from AK-47 automatic rifles, at the scene.

A member of a prominent Nuevo Laredo ranching family, Ramos had joined the City Council in January and was an ally of Mayor Daniel Peña. His death comes nearly two months after the June 8 assassination on another downtown Nuevo Laredo street of Alejandro Dominguez, who had been named the city's police chief hours before he was slain.

"We are losing our city," said Nuevo Laredo merchant Jack Suneson, a vice president of the city's chamber of commerce who has been trying to woo back the U.S. tourists who have evaporated since the violence escalated this year.

"It's hard to put a good face on this when we have ... murders in front of City Hall," Suneson said. "It's madness.

"Everytime something happens we think we've hit bottom," he said. "But we're in a bottomless pit."

With Friday's killings, 109 people have been slain so far this year in Nuevo Laredo, a city of nearly 500,000 people across the Rio Grande from Laredo. All but a handful of the killings have been linked to the narcotics traffickers' turf war for control of the city's smuggling routes into the United States.

Ramos's death came almost simultaneously with U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza's decision to reopen the American Consulate in Nuevo Laredo on Monday.

Garza had ordered the consulate closed following a July 28 shootout between suspected gangsters in a wealthy Nuevo Laredo neighborhood that involved automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

In announcing the consulate's reopening, Garza said he was convinced Mexican federal authorities had heeded his call for "decisive action" in combating Nuevo Laredo's gangland violence. He did not elaborate as to what that action might entail.

The ambassador issued another statement Friday afternoon, pointing to Ramos's killing as proof "that the battle against Mexico's drug lords will not be won overnight."

Referring to his meetings with senior Mexican officials this week about the Nuevo Laredo violence, Garza said that "the commitments made and plans announced over the last few days are but a second step in a long road ahead for both our nations."

Ramos's killing "once again highlights the need for Mexico to stand resolute in its effort to rescue Nuevo Laredo from the hands of the kingpins and capos that are actively undermining the fabric of life in both our countries," he said.

A spokesman for President Vicente Fox this week conceded that a seven-week-old show of federal force in Nuevo Laredo and other cities plagued with gangland violence has not had the intended effects.

Fox called for intensifying the crackdown, known as Operation Secure Mexico, and met with top law enforcement officials. But no new strategies have been announced, or apparently launched.

Ramos was a founder of the annual trail ride across the northern Mexican desert in which Fox and border state governors participate. The slain councilman was an "attentive public servant willing to help the needy as if they were his friends," the Nuevo Laredo mayor's office said in a statement.

As the city councilman charged with overseeing public security, Ramos was deeply involved in the workings of the city's troubled municipal police force.

The councilman's brother, a former federal law enforcement official, was in the running this year to become the city's police chief, a Nuevo Laredo merchant who knows the family said.

Many Nuevo Laredo residents, like other Mexicans, blame U.S. consumers of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and other narcotics for their current crisis.

The belief is that if Americans stop buying the drugs, or U.S. officials stop them at the border, underworld gangs won't be scrambling to get the narcotics across the border.

Suneson, the Nuevo Laredo merchant and business leader, called on Fox to intensify the crackdown and for greater cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in obtaining and acting on intelligence as to gang leaders' whereabouts.

"They need to come in here and clean this place up," Suneson said. "It's not an impossible task. It just takes political will."

Originally Posted by Brian503a

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3298610

More killing on border as 'madness' continues
Nuevo Laredo councilman and city policeman slain in ambush
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
MEXICO CITY - Unidentified gunmen shot dead a Nuevo Laredo city councilman and a police commander just blocks from City Hall Friday, continuing a wave of underworld violence gripping the border city this year.

Leopoldo Ramos Treviño, 44, who headed the City Council's public security committee, died in a fusillade of bullets at 9:20 a.m. as he drove his pickup toward City Hall in downtown Nuevo Laredo. Witnesses told police that three teenage gunmen boarded a car and drove off following the assassinations.

Federico Ocampo, a municipal police commander, also was killed, while city patrolman Alfredo Barberena and an unidentified passerby were wounded, police said.

State police investigators recovered more than five dozen spent bullet casings, most from AK-47 automatic rifles, at the scene.

A member of a prominent Nuevo Laredo ranching family, Ramos had joined the City Council in January and was an ally of Mayor Daniel Peña. His death comes nearly two months after the June 8 assassination on another downtown Nuevo Laredo street of Alejandro Dominguez, who had been named the city's police chief hours before he was slain.

"We are losing our city," said Nuevo Laredo merchant Jack Suneson, a vice president of the city's chamber of commerce who has been trying to woo back the U.S. tourists who have evaporated since the violence escalated this year.

"It's hard to put a good face on this when we have ... murders in front of City Hall," Suneson said. "It's madness.

"Everytime something happens we think we've hit bottom," he said. "But we're in a bottomless pit."

With Friday's killings, 109 people have been slain so far this year in Nuevo Laredo, a city of nearly 500,000 people across the Rio Grande from Laredo. All but a handful of the killings have been linked to the narcotics traffickers' turf war for control of the city's smuggling routes into the United States.

Ramos's death came almost simultaneously with U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza's decision to reopen the American Consulate in Nuevo Laredo on Monday.

Garza had ordered the consulate closed following a July 28 shootout between suspected gangsters in a wealthy Nuevo Laredo neighborhood that involved automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

In announcing the consulate's reopening, Garza said he was convinced Mexican federal authorities had heeded his call for "decisive action" in combating Nuevo Laredo's gangland violence. He did not elaborate as to what that action might entail.

The ambassador issued another statement Friday afternoon, pointing to Ramos's killing as proof "that the battle against Mexico's drug lords will not be won overnight."

Referring to his meetings with senior Mexican officials this week about the Nuevo Laredo violence, Garza said that "the commitments made and plans announced over the last few days are but a second step in a long road ahead for both our nations."

Ramos's killing "once again highlights the need for Mexico to stand resolute in its effort to rescue Nuevo Laredo from the hands of the kingpins and capos that are actively undermining the fabric of life in both our countries," he said.

A spokesman for President Vicente Fox this week conceded that a seven-week-old show of federal force in Nuevo Laredo and other cities plagued with gangland violence has not had the intended effects.

Fox called for intensifying the crackdown, known as Operation Secure Mexico, and met with top law enforcement officials. But no new strategies have been announced, or apparently launched.

Ramos was a founder of the annual trail ride across the northern Mexican desert in which Fox and border state governors participate. The slain councilman was an "attentive public servant willing to help the needy as if they were his friends," the Nuevo Laredo mayor's office said in a statement.

As the city councilman charged with overseeing public security, Ramos was deeply involved in the workings of the city's troubled municipal police force.

The councilman's brother, a former federal law enforcement official, was in the running this year to become the city's police chief, a Nuevo Laredo merchant who knows the family said.

Many Nuevo Laredo residents, like other Mexicans, blame U.S. consumers of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and other narcotics for their current crisis.

The belief is that if Americans stop buying the drugs, or U.S. officials stop them at the border, underworld gangs won't be scrambling to get the narcotics across the border.

Suneson, the Nuevo Laredo merchant and business leader, called on Fox to intensify the crackdown and for greater cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in obtaining and acting on intelligence as to gang leaders' whereabouts.

"They need to come in here and clean this place up," Suneson said. "It's not an impossible task. It just takes political will."

Bush said that life begins at "Conception".After that it means nothing.
Just talk to the "Americans" that live on or near the boarder.Bush cares nothing about thier lives or rights as an "American".Bush is letting the "Illegals" make life "Unbareable" for these "Americans" and Bush is doing "NOTHING" to make it better for them.Bush is doing more for the "Illegals" than he is for the "Americans".It`s only because we are letting him do it.WE are the problem,not BUSH

The sad thing is that all this crime has already spilled over our borders and has been for a long time, with no action taking by our government.

I don't know if any of you have read this web site. A group out of Atlanta


http://www.thedustininmansociety.org/info/links.html

Awesome! Let's keep those borders open!! Let's just take in the chaos of the Third World until America is run by drug cartels!!! Woohoooo

You know it doesn't take 80 or 90% of a population not following the rules to bring an entire civilization down, it takes approximately 10%-20%. Ask the ancient Romans!

And just how long will it be before this mess spills across our borders? People in the US should be outraged that this killing is happening because warring drug cartels want to control Nuvedo Laredo because it is a major distribution point for drugs into the United States.

Just 2 days ago, here in San Jose, 500 miles from the border, Drug Enforcement officials raided a 3 acre pot farm that was being run by illegal Mexican immigrants working for the Mexican Drug Cartels. The pot farm was less than 1/2 mile from residential homes. A gun fight ensued with one official wounded, one illegal killed and there is still one on the loose with a high powerd rifle. DEA agents said that pot growing in California is now 85% controlled by Mexican drug lords! Needless to say, I doubt that they are here on green cards.

This is all the result of the federal government's abdication of their constitutional responsibility to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws. When are we going to wake up?

Welcome Dave, you are right. We have a hell of a mess on our hands.

William