Thread: BREAKING NEWS: Major gun battle in Tijuanaâ€

A San Diego radio station was advising Americans not to go into Tijauna this morning.
This is the busiest border crossing in the world, I wonder how this will effect what people do?

More Tijuana news

Cops rush Tijuana house to end 3-hour gunbattle

6 bodies found inside with suspects
By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

January 18, 2008



The tile dome of a house in Tijuana's La Mesa area was riddled with bullet holes and windows shot out by gunmen yesterday during a three-hour standoff with the Mexican military and federal, state and municipal police. The photo was taken from the vantage point of an attacker.

TIJUANA – Automatic weapons rattled, neighbors huddled low in their locked homes and uniformed preschoolers were hustled to safety as heavily armed law enforcement agents stormed a house yesterday in a middle-class neighborhood here and found the bodies of six people believed to be victims of the Arellano Félix drug cartel.
One suspect was killed and four police agents were injured in the three-hour gunbattle.

Mexican authorities announced last night at a news conference that four people were in custody, including a Tijuana police officer and a man who identified himself as a member of the Baja California ministerial police.

Video

Authorities say they've found six executed kidnapping victims inside a Tijuana house where gunmen took refuge during a shootout with police. Mexico has recently seen a spike in gang-related killings.
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The suspects are members of a cell of the notoriously violent cartel, said Edgar Millán, a top official with Mexico's federal Public Security Secretariat. While the drug gang is believed to have lost its lock on the region's drug trade in recent years, it remains active.

The gunbattle was part of a daunting spike in regional violence in recent weeks. Some analysts say the spate of killings is an indication that drug cartels and kidnap gangs feel threatened by the federal, state and municipal governments' vow to work together against organized crime. Others say it is a sign of a power struggle as the Arellano Félix cartel loses its grip.

“The Mexican state will not take one step backward in its frontal battle against organized crime,â€

Things are really getting hot down there!!! Just check out this website for Illegal alien activity tracking system: http://illegal.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

Local news is reporting that 2 of the 5 men that were aprehended in today's gun battle in the La Mesa area of Tijuana, are local police officers Carlos Alberto Espinoza Vega and Roman Gomez. Gomez works for the intelligence department of the prosecutor's office.

Originally Posted by jjmm

Looks like an average day at Wal-Mart.

This will be at a major U.S. city within the year, I predict.

I wonder what the animal rights folks would say about the dead doves?

This is just insanity .. .we are importing insanity in this great, great land.

And here's also what I predict: drug cartels will soon infiltrate the U.S. and will be a regular thing. Prez Bush or another like him will use it to inject fear into our nation, and soon even more civil liberties will be taken away as a result ... No carrying guns, no being out after a certain time at night, etc, etc -- all in the name of "protection" of our safety.

I just have a feeling this is where this would lead. Call me crazy if you want.

"And here's also what I predict: drug cartels will soon infiltrate the U.S. and will be a regular thing."

It is already happening!!

Kidnappings cross border into U.S. cities
Drug trafficking, immigrant smuggling rings fuel violent trend

"PHOENIX - A woman leaving an eyeglass store is grabbed in the parking lot by four men who force her, kicking and screaming, into a pickup. The kidnappers demand a $900,000 ransom.

But police soon realize her family is holding something back and isn't fully cooperating with them. Later, investigators find out that relatives have arranged the woman's release on their own. And they discover that members of the family are heavy into marijuana trafficking.

The case illustrates how a terrifyingly common crime in Latin America has moved across the border into the United States: Criminals and their family members are being kidnapped by fellow criminals and held for six-figure ransoms.

The abductions are occurring in the Phoenix area at the rate of practically one per day, and police suspect they have led to killings in which bound and bullet-riddled bodies have been found dumped in the desert.

The kidnap victims are typically drug or immigrant-smugglers, who are seen as inviting targets because they have a lot of money, they can raise large sums of cash on short notice, and they are unlikely to go to the police, for fear their own shady dealings will come to light.

"We have never had a victim that we have investigated that has been as clean as the new driven snow," said Sgt. Phil Roberts, who investigates the kidnappings. "There has always been some type of criminal element to it. Either they are criminals, drug dealers or human smugglers — or a close family member is."

The kidnappers themselves are fellow traffickers who are doing it for the money or to punish their rivals.

Rise in violence, kidnappings
Phoenix had more than 340 such kidnappings reported last year, but police said the real number is much higher because many cases go unreported.

The San Diego area has also seen a rise in kidnappings over the past year, with two or three reported during busy weeks, and some victims were mixed up in drug smuggling. But the hostage-taking appears to be most prevalent in Phoenix, the nation's biggest base of operations for immigrant smugglers.

Kidnappings are common in Mexico, and the victims often include criminals as well as legitimate businessmen, such as bankers. Phoenix police said they believe the kidnappers here are not going after legitimate businessmen for fear their families will go to the police.

The kidnappings first came to light in Phoenix three years ago but are rising as overall violence associated with immigrant smuggling intensifies in Arizona.

Drop houses and torture
Immigrant smuggling is a lucrative line of work: A ring that moves a load of 30 illegal immigrants through Arizona can gross $45,000 to $75,000.

And smugglers can quickly get their hands on large sums of money — sometimes in the middle of the night. In one case, someone who turned to authorities about a kidnapping brought more than $300,000 in ransom money to the police department in cereal boxes."

Click on link for Page 2...................

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22614102/

Originally Posted by bootsalinda

Honey. Honey, Wake Up! It has done CREEPED over the Border.

It is about to EXPLODE!

I am terrified that you are right

Looks like an average day at Wal-Mart.

true, but still

Lou Dobbs did a small report about this on his show.

6 Kidnapping Victims Killed During Tijuana Shootout
Authorities Say 4 Gunmen Taken Into Custody

POSTED: 4:46 pm PST January 17, 2008
UPDATED: 8:57 am PST January 18, 2008

"TIJUANA, Mexico -- Officials said they found six executed kidnapping victims inside a Tijuana house following a three-hour shootout between gunmen and soldiers and police.

The victims, all male, were blindfolded and gagged and had been shot execution-style in the head, said Edgar Millan, a spokesman with the federal Public Safety Department, at a news conference in Tijuana.

One kidnapping suspect was also killed in the battle. Five police agents were wounded and four suspects taken into custody. Authorities said two of the kidnapping suspects are police officers.

Soldiers, state and local police were sent in to help control the firefight that began when federal agents prepared to raid a house near the U.S. border that police now say was a shelter for a cell of the Arellano Felix drug cartel.

Three nearby schools were evacuated, and television showed police running with small children in their arms while shots rang out. More than 100 children were escorted at gunpoint out of their preschool by armed guards, following the gun battle in the Ermita neighborhood, NBC 7/39 reported.

One of the captured gunmen is a state police investigator and another a Tijuana police officer, Millan said. The four suspects will be flown to Mexico City for questioning.

Millan said officials recovered 11 automatic rifles and three bulletproof vests inside the house.

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.nbcsandiego.com/news/15079591/detail.html

Dodge city