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  • From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Border issues- spilling violence
  • Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:58:40 -0800 (PST)

This is from this am NYT, and concentrates on my hometown, Phoenix. But,
Sage, Leslie, and maybe others have close enough proximity to the border to
concern themselves with these issues. And, they are occuring in the rural
parts of S. AZ, as well as the cities.

I find this quotation telling. He said it in such a non-pluused ,
no-big-deal manner :

"Still, federal authorities have said there is no sign that the pattern of
beheadings and mutilations of victims and the regular killings of law
enforcement officers that characterize the violence in Mexico has arrived in
the United States."

We are still okay, because, so far, they aren't rolling severed heads down
the street, is the way I read that comment.

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Wave of Drug Violence Is Creeping Into Arizona From Mexico, Officials Say
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMy SpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: February 23, 2009
PHOENIX — The raging drug war among cartels in Mexico and their push to
expand operations in the United States has led to a wave of kidnappings,
shootings and home invasions in Arizona, state and federal officials said at
a legislative hearing on Monday.

The drug trade has long brought violence to the state, which serves as a hub
as illicit drugs and illegal immigrants are smuggled to the rest of the
nation.

Over all, in this city and surrounding Maricopa County, homicides and violent
crime decreased last year. But the authorities are sounding an alarm over
what they consider changing tactics in border-related crime that bear the
marks of the violence in Mexico.

A home invasion here last year was carried out by attackers wielding
military-style rifles and dressed in uniforms similar to a Phoenix police
tactical unit. The discovery of grenades and other military-style weaponry
bound for Mexico is becoming more routine, as is hostage-taking and
kidnapping for ransom, law enforcement officials said.

The Phoenix police regularly receive reports involving a border-related
kidnapping or hostage-taking in a home.

The Maricopa County attorney’s office said such cases rose to 241 last year
from 48 in 2004, though investigators are not sure of the true number because
they believe many crimes go unreported.

The violence in Mexico — where more than 6,000 people were killed in the last
year in drug-related violence, double the number of the previous year — is
“reaching into Arizona, and that is what is really alarming local and state
law enforcement,” said Cmdr. Dan Allen of the State Department of Public
Safety.

“We are finding home invasion and attacks involving people impersonating law
enforcement officers,” Commander Allen told the State Senate Judiciary
Committee, whose chairman, Jonathan Paton of the Tucson area, called the
hearing. “They are very forceful and aggressive. They are heavily armed, and
they threaten, assail, bind and sometimes kill victims.”

Chief David Denlinger of the State Department of Public Safety said that
while tactics like home invasions might not be new in the drug trade, “they
are getting more prevalent.”

“Border crimes are not just on the border,” Chief Denlinger said, pointing to
posters showing weapons, drugs and people who had been held hostage.

The hearing comes at a time of heightened anxiety in the United States
brought on by the escalating violence in Mexico and a federal report in
December that said the Mexican cartels “maintain drug distribution networks
or supply drugs to distributors in at least 230 U.S. cities.”

The report from the National Drug Intelligence Center said the cartels posed
“the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States; they control most
of the U.S. drug market and have established varied transportation routes,
advanced communications capabilities and strong affiliations with gangs in
the United States.”

The violence in Mexico has come from a government crackdown on the cartels
and a war among them over turf and trading routes to the United States.

Still, federal authorities have said there is no sign that the pattern of
beheadings and mutilations of victims and the regular killings of law
enforcement officers that characterize the violence in Mexico has arrived in
the United States.

In some cases, the connection to the cartels in American cities are tenuous
or not fully understood, law enforcement officials have said.

But in this border state, the anxiety is acute and the ties to drug and human
smuggling strong.

The police and federal agents regularly seize large loads of cocaine,
marijuana and other drugs smuggled in vehicles and sometimes on the backs of
couriers and illegal immigrants linked to drug organizations.

At the same time, the vast majority of the weapons used in Mexico’s
drug-related killings come from the United States, and Arizona is a top
exporter.

Terry Goddard, the Arizona attorney general, said his office had sought to
clamp down on money wire transfers through the state that were believed to
help finance the smuggling of drugs and people.

“They send us drugs and people, and we send them guns and cash,” Mr. Paton
said in an interview.

Mr. Paton, a Republican who favors gun rights, said he was considering the
possibility of introducing legislation intended to restrict “straw
purchasers,” people who buy guns with legal documentation at shops and gun
shows and then turn them over to drug traffickers.

Federal laws prohibit such purchases, but Mr. Paton said he believed that
adding state sanctions would provide more muscle in fighting the practice.

Mr. Paton said there were already bills pending in the Legislature focusing
on border crime. Prompted by the discovery of a rash of so-called drophouses
in and around Phoenix, where migrants have been held against their will, one
bill would increase penalties for those caught smuggling people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/us/24border.html








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