BAJA CRIME WAVE PART 5
EXPLOSIVE NEWS HEADLINE APRIL 23!
HEADLINE FROM TIJUANA TODAY!
Criminals attack a childs birthday party:
"the assailants fired dozens of shots and flung a grenade toward an enclosed patio".
San Diego gang member killed when he attacked a childs party in Tijuana, the gang member was acting on behalf of criminal elements of the deeply entrenched Tijuana gangsters.
CLICK HERE: Quoted from the news story.
The USA State Department reposted their Mexico Travel Warnings today.
USA Issues Newest Mexico Travel Alert
The unvarnished Truth. Why will the government never be in the business of telling you the truth about travel to Mexico? Google "SPP". The very same federal department that issues the "Travel Alerts" is coordinating the largest unauthorized promotional deal with Mexico in history. CLICK HERE Here's a recent meeting to judge from.
Wonder why US federal agents are not being allowed to do their job?
So, when you read through the State Department Alerts and you wonder why all the death, suffering and risk to Americans today and they still have not said, 'don't go', SPP! They have a deal to promote, on your skin.
The report issued today, is as close to 'don't go' you'll ever see.
OPEN YOUR EYES BAJA TRAVELERS!
"Americans should be careful when visiting northern Mexican towns near the U.S. border like Tijuana, where dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped or murdered in 2007". Quoted from the USA State Department Newest Travel Alert.
ARCHIVED HERE: http://web.archive.org/web/20070206015946/http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_3028.html
NEWS REPORT:
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The State Department on Monday issued a new travel alert warning of rising violence in northern Mexico, but stopped short of suggesting that Americans avoid traveling in the border region.
The alert detailed an uptick in drug-related homicides, shootouts, kidnappings and car thefts near the border, particularly in the cities of Tijuana, Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez.About 200 people have been killed so far this year in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, Texas."These conditions are widely known here in Mexico from watching the news every day, but many tourists are simply not as aware of what goes on in other countries as they are in their own," U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza said in a statement.However, the alert "does not advise Americans to avoid travel to any region or city," Garza said.
Mexico has suffered a wave of organized crime and drug-related violence in recent years that killed more than 2,500 people in 2007 alone.
FROM THE NEWEST REPORT:
Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily-armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades. Confrontations have taken place in numerous towns and cities in northern Mexico, including Tijuana in the Mexican state of Baja California, and Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua. The situation in northern Mexico remains very fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements there cannot be predicted.
Armed robberies and carjackings, apparently unconnected to the narcotics-related violence, have increased in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007. Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas.
Criminals are armed with a wide array of sophisticated weapons. In some cases, assailants have worn full or partial police or military uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles. U.S. citizens are urged to be especially alert to safety and security concerns when visiting the border region. While Mexican citizens overwhelmingly are the victims of these crimes, this uncertain security situation poses risks for U.S. citizens as well. It is strongly recommended that travelers avoid areas where prostitution and drug dealing occur.
Criminals have followed and harassed U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Tijuana."
SPEED Mex INSIDERS REPORT:
"The kidnapping of American citizens along the border with Mexico are being held in holding areas and it's carried out in a 4 prong manner, locator's, abductors, transporters, and holders. It's very hard to kill a 4 headed snake. The number of kidnappings has risen each year for the last 3 years. On BOTH sides of the border!
In other cases Mexican cartels through enforcers of Mexican and American gangs order smaller American gangs to kidnap and in some cases murder Americans.
"U.S. citizens should be aware of the risk posed by the deteriorating security situation, along the border" said a statement issued in Mexico City and Washington. "Violent criminal activity, including murder and kidnapping, in Mexico's northern border region has increased."
New cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom continue to be reported. No one can be considered immune from kidnapping on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors."
On the Net:
Recent Baja Crime Reports
April 7
- The body of a federal agent who had been kidnapped the day before was found in Tijuana, Baja California state, with a gunshot wound to the head and signs of torture.
- Gunmen traveling in a vehicle fired several shots at a government building in Rosarito, Baja California state.
- Four suspects were detained following a firefight outside a police station in Tijuana, Baja California state. Authorities said the attack on the building came after police arrested a man and impounded his vehicle.
- A Baja California state police officer died after he was shot by several armed men while he was driving to work in the border city of Mexicali.
- A report from Baja famous, 'Coco': Calamajue and Ensenada Grande are now deemed dangerous. He told us we should stay away from those bays because they are often used to bring drugs in by Pangas. Coco also said 6 months ago someone was camping there and was held at gunpoint until the drug runners cut his fuel lines and took all his fuel.
April 12
A deputy police chief in Tijuana, Baja California state, was wounded along with a bodyguard after they engaged a group of armed assailants that entered his home, presumably to assassinate him. At least two of the gunmen were killed. The attackers reportedly arrived at his home during a child’s party.April 14
At Hotel Serenidad in Mulege, Baja California Sur, six assailants, after torching the car they drove onto the Serenidad airstrip in, forced out Americans from their airplane, which was prepped and running for departure and hijacked the aircraft, flying off. Intel suggests criminals are taking cars, aircraft and other means to transport themselves around northern Mexico to avoid the federal agents and troops.
The News Story:
"Gunmen robbed a family of U.S. tourists of its small plane Tuesday in Mexico, police said. The robbers struck as the American couple and their two daughters, ages 6 and 8, were about to take off from a hotel airstrip in the Baja California beach town of Mulege. Detective Juan Carlos de Jesus Jimenez said the thieves pulled a car in front of the six-seat Cessna Stationair, knocked out one of the craft's windows and forced the family out at gunpoint. They then set fire to the car and flew off in the plane. U.S. officials said they had heard reports of the incident but had not yet been in contact with the victims. The plane's identification number matched a craft registered to a firm in Boise, Idaho. Small aircraft are commonly used by Mexican drug cartels to smuggle narcotics."
This is not Old News. It's ONGOING. It's just that the information hasn't gotten around. From June 23, 2006:
""Mexico's Cartels Escalate Drug War By: Richard Marosi, LA Times, Tijuana
Gangs enlist militias, whose tactics include beheadings, in battles over smuggling routes. The caller painted an ominous scene: A convoy of 40 vehicles carrying 70 heavily armed and masked men was prowling the streets of Rosarito Beach on Tuesday evening. The three police officers who arrived were quickly abducted. The next morning, their mutilated bodies turned up in an empty lot. Their heads were found in the Tijuana River later that day. The assault is believed to be one of the largest in Baja California, and is the latest in a series of precisely executed paramilitary operations that have beset Mexican cities as drug cartels escalate their battles to control key smuggling routes. With Mexican authorities relying more heavily on the military to combat drug smuggling, traffickers have responded in kind, forming large forces of assailants and arming them with frightening arrays of weaponry. In April, nearly two dozen heavily armed men tried to assassinate Baja California's top-ranking public safety official in a shootout on a Mexicali street. The attackers fired grenades and more than 600 rounds from assault weapons, wounding three bodyguards. Over the last year, commando-style raids have been regular occurrences in Tijuana, with convoys of masked gunmen snatching victims from restaurants and street corners in brazen daylight raids." It's a disturbing manifestation of the latest drug war frenzy…. The militarization of the drug war in many ways on the side of law enforcement has corresponded with the militarization of tactics and personnel on the criminal side," said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. The situation, Shirk added, "has heightened the competition and raised the stakes in a way that has led to extreme violence, at a level we have not seen before in Mexico."
Cartels also are using increasingly brutal methods to intimidate their enemies. The Rosarito Beach beheadings followed the decapitation in April of a police commander in Acapulco, whose head was found in a public plaza. Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, the top organized crime prosecutor in the Mexican attorney general's office, has taken over the investigation of the Baja California beheadings. In an interview for today's editions of the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, Santiago said the abductions and beheadings were characteristic of the brutal Central American-based Mara Salvatrucha gang, which has become increasingly involved in the Mexican drug trade."Acts like the ones we have just seen are manifestations of groups related to the Maras," he said. "We have seen the phenomenon of decapitation in El Salvador, a brutal act of intimidation that is occurring here as drug gangs are worn down and resort to recruiting this kind of group."Jeffrey McIllwain, a criminal justice professor at San Diego State University who studies border security issues, believes the violence is a sign that pressure from law enforcement is affecting the cartels' bottom line. "The fact is that it has hurt operations, severely in some cases … so it makes sense that the cartels would step up their game," McIllwain said.
In Baja California, the crime wave could signal an escalation of the fierce war to control the lucrative Tijuana smuggling corridor, which traditionally has been controlled by the Arellano-Felix cartel. Several top-ranking members of the cartel have been killed or arrested in recent years, and other cartels may be sensing weakness, experts say. Some recent attacks were shocking for their audacity, experts say. Last month, three men armed with AK-47s stormed into the Mexican federal attorney general's office in Tijuana and shot two agents, killing one. In December, assailants attacked the Tijuana home of a state police commander, killing two of his bodyguards. In October, Tijuana's chief of homicides narrowly escaped an attack by assailants who fired more than 50 bullets at his car."It's a more aggressive form of violence, with new ingredients," said Victor Clark, a border expert and director of Tijuana's Binational Center for Human Rights.""
From June 23, 2006!
SPEED Mex for BAJA RACING NEWS.com
LINK TO BAJA CRIME WAVE PART 6