Thread: Police beef up patrol as drug war grips W. Mexico state

July 15, 2008, 8:14PM
Police beef up patrol as drug war grips W. Mexico state
Meanwhile, officers suspect victims were intentionally targeted in shootings that left a 12-year-old girl and a group of teenagers dead


By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau


MEXICO CITY — About 200 Mexican federal police reinforcements flew into Sinaloa on Tuesday as authorities struggled to control the narcotics-related violence roiling the Pacific Coast state.

The police, sent to beef up a force of 3,000, were dispatched amid escalating bloodshed that includes two massacres in recent days that killed a 12-year-old girl, at least four teenagers and several other apparent innocents.

There had been reports that the victims of the most recent massacre were caught in a cross-fire between rival gangsters as they rode in four cars on Guamuchil's main street about 1 a.m. Sunday.

But Martin Robles, a senior police investigator, said his agents believe that the victims were intentionally targeted. He said the agents were uncertain whether the attackers were gunning for one or more of the people in the cars or were simply trying to terrorize the local population. Police recovered more than 300 spent shells from the scene.

"There's no evidence that would make us presume there was some sort of clash between rival criminal bands," Robels told a local newspaper in an interview later distributed by his office.

"The evidence indicates the shots were directed at the vehicles."

The Sunday attack came just days after gunmen killed two state policemen and nine civilians in apparently related attacks in the center of the state capital, Culiacan, about 60 miles south of Guamuchil.

Police have arrested eight suspected gangsters in the Culiacan attacks, which took place shortly before noon Thursday.

Angry civic leaders were trying to organize protests against the violence. But such efforts in the past have had little success in building a civic movement for security, activists say.

Sinaloa, considered one of Mexico's prime drug-production and drug-smuggling corridors, has been submerged in bloodshed this year as two of its largest smuggling gangs, which until recently were allies, battle for supremacy.

The new reinforcements will join the nearly 3,000 other federal police and army troops that have been patrolling Culiacan and nearby cities and towns since mid-May.

The federal presence is part of President Felipe Calderon's deployment of nearly 30,000 police and soldiers in nine states across western Mexico and along the U.S. border aimed at controlling Mexico's drug gangs.

The 19-month-old campaign has resulted in the seizure of 57 tons of cocaine and 2,900 tons of marijuana, according to government figures. But it has so far failed to stop the violence between warring gangs, which so far this year has claimed more than 2,000 lives, a quarter of them in Sinaloa.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in drug violence since Calderon launched the campaign in December 2006.

dudley.althaus@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5889978.html

Today Glenn Beck had a U.S. border agent on his show that is pissed at the 450 million dallars just given Mexico and yet this congress told our Border Patrol they had no money to help them with the Drug cartel and violence on our so. border.

He said they have wrote to Bush and congress and have been ignored by all

Mexico boosts police presence in drug hot spot

16 Jul 2008 00:51:50 GMT
Source: Reuters

MEXICO CITY, July 15 (Reuters) - The Mexican government said on Tuesday it was nearly tripling the police presence in Sinaloa state after hitmen killed 20 people and took hostages in various attacks by criminal gangs over the last week.

More than 300 people have died in drug-related violence so far this year in Sinaloa, about a fifth of the 1,700 people killed in cartel battles across Mexico as rival gangs fight each other amid an army-led government crackdown.

The government is raising the number of intelligence agents and police officers in Sinaloa to 2,000 from 740. The state, home to Mexico's most-wanted kingpin, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, is one of the most affected by drug violence.

On Saturday, six armed men caused pandemonium in the Pacific port city of Mazatlan by taking refuge in a shopping mall after killing a police chief when he resisted their attempt to kidnap him.

The attackers took some 40 people hostage in a restaurant while they negotiated their escape.

In an incident on Sunday, a group of hitmen sprayed four cars with bullets on a busy street in the city of Guamuchil, killing eight youths.

Last week, hitmen killed 11 people in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan in two daylight shootouts. (Reporting by Cyntia Barrera Diaz; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N15385054.htm