Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Mexico's former security chief sentenced to 38 years in US prison for aiding cartels

2024-10-17

[France24] Genaro Garcia Luna, the former security chief behind former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's crackdown on drug trafficking between 2006 and 2012, was sentenced to 38 years in a US prison on Wednesday for taking millions in bribes from drug cartels as their "partner in crime".

Mexico's former top security official Genaro Garcia Luna was sentenced to more than 38 years in a US prison on Wednesday for aiding the very drug cartels he was tasked with dismantling.

Garcia Luna, 56, was convicted at a high-profile trial in New York last year of taking millions of dollars in bribes to allow the Sinaloa Cartel to smuggle tons of cocaine.

District Judge Brian Cogan sentenced Garcia Luna, who served as secretary of public security under president Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012, to 460 months in prison and a $2 million fine at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn.

Prosecutors had sought a life sentence.

"Today's sentencing of Genaro Garcia Luna is a critical step in upholding justice and the rule of law," US Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

"His betrayal of the public trust and the people he was sworn to protect resulted in more than one million kilograms of lethal narcotics imported into our communities and unleashed untold violence here and in Mexico," Peace said.

Garcia Luna's month-long trial shone a spotlight on the corruption of the highest-ranking Mexican government figure ever to face trial in the United States.

It also opened a window on the vast resources of the Sinaloa Cartel under Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who is now serving a life sentence in a US penitentiary.

At his trial, prosecutors said Garcia Luna, who held high-ranking security positions in Mexico from 2001 until 2012, was the cartel's "partner in crime."

That included his time as the architect of Calderon's crackdown on Mexico's drug gangs between 2006 and 2012.

But instead of stopping the smuggling, Garcia Luna took millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel to allow safe passage of narcotics shipments.

According to prosecutors, he tipped off drug traffickers about law enforcement operations, targeted rival cartel members for arrest and placed other corrupt officials in positions of power.

Garcia Luna served as chief of the Mexican equivalent of the FBI from 2001 until 2006, when he was elevated to secretary of public security, essentially running the federal police force and most counter-drug operations.

Calderon said after the sentencing that he never had "verifiable evidence" or information from Mexican or foreign intelligence agencies implicating Garcia Luna in illegal activities.

"I am in favor of those who break the law assuming the consequences of their actions," the ex-president wrote on social media.

'SUPERCOP'
Nine of the 26 witnesses who testified against Garcia Luna, once known as "supercop," were accused drug traffickers extradited from Mexico and collaborating with US prosecutors in exchange for possible leniency in their own trials.

They included high-level cartel bosses Jesus "Rey" Zambada, Sergio Villarreal Barragan and Oscar "Lobo" Valencia.

They claimed to have paid millions of dollars to Garcia Luna collectively, and through Arturo Beltran Leyva, who ran his own drug cartel and served as a go-between with Garcia Luna in exchange for protection.

Garcia Luna, a mechanical engineer by trade, moved to the United States in 2012 and was detained in Texas in December 2019.

He was convicted of multiple charges including engaging in a criminal enterprise that involved conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine.

US Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram said Garcia Luna's sentencing "sends a clear message to corrupt leaders around the world who use their positions of power to help the cartels: no amount of power will shield you from justice."

The world's biggest narcotics organization at one time, the Sinaloa Cartel moved multi-ton loads of cocaine each month from producing countries in the Andean region up through Mexico and on to streets in Europe and North America.

Link

Government Corruption

Hunter Biden used Joe's VP perks to pursue deal with Carlos Slim

2021-07-04

[NYPOST] Hunter Biden
......son of President Joe: cashiered from the Navy, a crackhead, wheeler dealer, leg humper, horn dog, and general all around ne'er do well. We're supposed to feel sorry for him.....
used the perks of the vice presidency — parties, meetings with Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. Former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect hacked up by the World's Greatest Deliberative Body....
and flights on Air Force Two — to pursue business deals with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim while his father was in office, records show.Hunter’s involvement with Slim, at one time the world’s richest man, commenced soon after a White House state dinner the magnate attended in May 2010, along with Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, to honor Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

The diary on Hunter’s abandoned laptop shows he and Slim were both guests at a State Department luncheon during Calderon’s visit, which was hosted by his father and then-Secretary of State Crooked Hillary Clinton
...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away. Politix is not one of her talents, but it's something she keeps trying to do...
. Spanish tenor Placido Domingo also reportedly attended.

The charmed path that always opens for Hunter when his father meets a foreign leader or oligarch led him to Mexico on a VIP trip the following year. Hunter’s diary in May 2011 shows a "tentative tour hosted by Carlos Slim" of the tycoon’s private "Soumaya Museum," in Mexico City, which Slim founded and named after his late wife, Soumaya Domit. Containing priceless sculptures from pre-Spanish Mesoamerica, it is the most visited museum in the country. There could be no greater honor offered to Hunter than a private tour with the billionaire founder.

Hunter also had breakfast with Slim’s friend, Mexican billionaire Carlos Bremer, at his magnificent villa in the shadow of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range in Monterrey. Bremer, former director of the country’s stock exchange, had donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and sat on the foundation’s board.

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Caribbean-Latin America

Mexico reports over 61,000 people missing, discovery of 873 burial pits amid raging drug war

2020-01-09

[FOXNEWS] The Mexican government released "statistics of horror" on Monday that showed nearly 62,000 citizens have vanished since the government began its increasingly violent offensive against ruthless narco mobs in 2006. Karla Quintana, head of the National Registry of Missing or Missing Persons (RNPED), revised the number of missing to 61,637 people, a figure far surpassing a previous estimate of 40,000 from June.

"We have to remember we’re talking here about lives and families and people who are still missing," Quintana said during a presser in Mexico City. "These are statistics of horror behind which lie so many stories of such great pain."

While the statistics date back as far as the 1960s, more than 97.4 percent of the total have disappeared since 2006, when the country first waged its drug war against the cartels. Women represent 25.7 percent of the missing, Quintana said.

In 2006, then-President Felipe Calderon had his army take the fight against narcos to the streets ‐ a move that fragmented the cartels and made it more difficult to oppose them, Rooters reported.

The revised numbers come as Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has faced criticism for his policy of using "hugs, not bullets" when fighting narco mobs amid a skyrocketing murder rate during his first year in office.

In November, new figures from Mexico's Secretary General of National Public Safety showed that the country's homicide was on pace to reach its highest overall annual total since the government started tracking in 1997. The data showed that there had been 29,414 homicides in 2019 ‐ that's nearly 100 people killed each day.

In 2018, there were a total of 36,685 murders in Mexico, the most since the office started gathering data on the crime more than two decades ago. This year, the number of homicides is expected to surpass that figure.

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Caribbean-Latin America

After drug war contracting boom, Mexican prisons stand idle

2017-02-18

[Reuters] Guards at one of Mexico's high security prisons have to worry much more about criminals breaking in than busting out. Despite a price tag of more than 2 billion pesos ($98 million), the Papantla prison built for about 2,000 men in the eastern state of Veracruz does not have a single inmate, and only a handful of staff look after the site.

So it was not surprising that last year, construction materials were stolen from inside the prison perimeter.

"In reality, it's a white elephant," Galdino Diego Perez, the legal representative for Papantla's municipal government, said of the enormous white and gray complex outside of town.

The Papantla facility is the most egregious example of wasted taxpayer money under a 2008 prison-building plan that aimed to solve chronic overcrowding in Mexico's prisons and house an influx of new inmates as security forces cracked down on drug cartels.

Under the plan, then-President Felipe Calderon's conservative government gave out some 176 billion pesos ($8.65 billion) of no-bid contracts to open 15 facilities. But years later, four of them stand only partially built or are still not open.
Such a poor country. I wonder where the $8.65 billion originated, and where most of it actually went ?
Public policy experts say the idle prisons reflect inadequate planning by Calderon's government, though the facilities that were opened did help reduce overcrowding in the penal system.
People involved in executing Calderon's plan blame current President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration for the delays.

Most agree, however, that Mexican taxpayers lost out.

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-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

Mexico says army to stay in streets against the cartels

2016-12-10

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Friday troops will remain in the streets to combat drug violence after his defense minister issued a rare complaint about the controversial deployment.

Although Pena Nieto acknowledged that the soldiers and marines have been doing law enforcement tasks that "don't correspond to them in the strictest sense," he said the armed forces are "determined to continue" policing the streets.

The military deployment has allowed "cities and regions in our country to return to peace and calm," he said.

Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos said on Thursday that the military "didn't ask" to be fighting criminals.

"We don't like it. We didn't study how to chase criminals," the general said.

"Our function is something else and it's been made into something unnatural. We are doing things that don't correspond to our training because there's no one else to do them."

Mexico marks 10 years on Sunday since then president Felipe Calderon deployed for the first time thousands of troops to combat drug cartels.

The deployment has led to the capture of major drug lords but soldiers and marines have been accused of committing torture and other abuses over the years.

Violence also soared in the years that followed as the arrests of drug bosses sparked turf wars in several regions.

Pena Nieto, who took office in 2012, has said that troops would return to their barracks once citizens feel safe across the country.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Why do they bag the parts?

2016-08-29

Violence in Mexico has been on the rise in recent months as fragmented criminal organizations clash around the country, competing with Mexican authorities and one another for control of illegal enterprises.

Data released by the Mexican government reveals that homicides, perhaps the most visible aspect of the country's violence, reached an ugly milestone in July.

The 2,073 killings recorded that month were the most of any month since the President Enrique Peña Nieto entered office in December 2012, and it was the first time the country exceeded 2,000 homicides in a month since August 2011.

2011 was the bloodiest year in the six-year term of Felipe Calderon, Peña Nieto's predecessor who launched a heavily militarized crackdown on narco mobs and criminal organizations throughout the country.

The previous high in monthly homicides registered under Peña Nieto was 1,895, recorded in May.

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Caribbean-Latin America

2nd former Mexican president unloads on Donald Trump

2016-02-28

[AP] MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Saturday joined his predecessor in office in unloading on Donald Trump, calling the Republican front-runner's campaign racist and saying his discourse on immigration is fueling anti-American sentiment around the world.

Calderon, a conservative who was president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, even said he thought Trump was trying to exploit the same social feelings and resentments as did Adolf Hitler.

"I think his logic of exalting white supremacy isn't even acting against immigration -- Donald Trump is the descendant of migrants -- it is acting and speaking against immigrants who have a different skin color than him, which is frankly racist and is a bit like the exploitation of sensitive fibers that Hitler did in his day," Calderon told reporters after a meeting of the National Action Party, or PAN, in Mexico City.

Calderon's comments parallel those made earlier by former President Vicente Fox, who preceded Calderon in office and also belonged to the PAN party.

In interviews with Univision and Mexican media, Fox called Trump "crazy," a "false prophet" and an embarrassment to his party. When asked about Trump's assertion that he was going to get Mexico to pay for his proposed border wall, Fox used an explicative to make his point the country would never do so.

Trump said Fox ought to be "ashamed of himself" for his vulgarity and demanded an apology.

Trump has angered many Mexicans for his campaign rhetoric denigrating some immigrants as "rapists" who bring crime and drugs to the United States. Threats of mass deportations of Mexicans and other migrants illegally in the country, along with his promise to build a wall separating the nations, have added to the bad feelings.

Calderon said Trump's discourse is "sowing hate" against the United States around the world and this is not is Washington's interest.

During a visit to Mexico's capital, Vice President Joe Biden apologized for the inflammatory rhetoric about Mexico in the U.S. presidential campaign.

"Some of the rhetoric coming from some of the presidential candidates on the other team are I think dangerous, damaging and incredibly ill-advised," Biden said on Thursday. "But here's what I'm here to tell you: They do not, they do not, they do not represent the view of the vast majority of the American people."

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Home Front: Politix

Donald Trump Finally Puts Price Tag On "Great Wall" Of Mexico

2016-02-11

Donald Trump bailed out TV news operations struggling to flood the zone with today's New Hampshire primary voting -- only so much you can do to make parka'd lines at polling places look sexy and only so many different ways to say voter turnout is expected to be a record -- when he finally announced his estimated cost of that wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
I'll bet his estimate does not include the usual graft, corruption, and crony capitalism paybacks.
"The wall is probably $8 billion, which is a tiny fraction of the money that we lose with Mexico," he told MSNBC's Tamron Hall in the middle of Granite State voting. Trump said he came to that number by "multiplying the number of miles by a certain number."
How much have we spent on laughable excuses for a "wall", development of surveillance systems and other vaporware walls, lost opportunity, human costs, damage control, imported crime, and welfare benefits because our politicians are playing games with this?
"I'm taking price per square foot and price per square, you know, per mile, and it's a very simple calculation," Trump said, adding he would build about 1,000 miles of border wall along the 2,000-mile long border, because natural barriers would do the trick without a wall in portions of the border.

This number is a drop in the bucket compared to the figure MSNBC's cable cousin CNBC came up with back in October. Citing various sources and studies, CNBC estimated the actual cost for Trump's border wall -- which it estimated would run roughly 1,300 miles -- could be as high as $16 million per mile, with a total price tag of $15 billion-$25 billion.
Politicians love this figure, I'll bet.
Trump is expected to win New Hampshire primary voting, after finishing second in Iowa caucuses, so it seems appropriate to pick today to release his estimated price of his wall. Trump in the summer launched his presidential campaign off The Wall: "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively," he said controversially, as he announced his candidacy in June, ending decades of flirtation. "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words," he added.
Every time you find an illegal, seize their assets and put them towards the wall. Fees on money sent back to Mexico. Fees to cross the border. Visa fees. Tariffs. Taxes. Just the beginning. I could do it I'll bet.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon recently mocked Trump's pledge to make Mexico pay for the wall, CNN noted today in its coverage of Trump's $8B news.

"Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall, and they need to know that," Calderon has been quoted as saying. "And it's going to be completely useless."
If it's useless then why fear it?
Responded Trump on MSNBC today: "You tell them, 'You're going to pay for it.' ... Mexico makes a fortune. Mexico is going to pay. And I heard [Calderon] said that we will not pay. Guess what? The wall just got higher."

Link

Caribbean-Latin America

Matamoros mayor warns about "grave risks"' in her city

2014-04-01

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

The mayor of the northern Mexican border city of Matamoros is warning residents about extreme risks associated with traveling in the city, according to Mexican news reports.

Leticia Salazar took to Twitter Monday afternoon to warn her constituents about risks from road blocks and presumably shootings in the city. According to a news account which appeared in the online edition of Milenio news daily, four photographs taken Monday afternoon and posted to Twitter showed two roadblocks and students inside a classroom ducking to the floor, presumably to avoid gun fire.

A check of Twitter showed very little in the way of information about the elevated risk in Matamoros, mosly reactions to SeĂąora Salazar's warnings. Two events in the last three days may have been a factor in designating elevated risk.

Friday a hand grenade was detonated in Ciudad Victoria, state capital of Tamaulipas, which did some damage to a metal overhead door at the residence of the father of Alejandro Etienne, mayor of Ciudad Victoria. Later a painted banner, colloquially known as a narcomanta or narcopinta said to be from a local Los Zetas commander in the city appeared, appeared as a warning to the government.

Another incident took place in Brownsville, Texas, directly across the border from Matamoros on Monday when a young woman identified in a ValleyCentral.com English language report as Dayna Velasquez, 21, was allegedly caught with 12 kilograms of cocaine in the vehicle she was driving.

A news account which appeared in the online edition of El Diario de Chihuahua news daily said that a shootout began at noon in San Carlos colony and the spread to other sectors of the city including on Avenida Pedro Cardenas. No reports have emerged as to casualties, which is not unusual in shootouts in Tamaulipas border cities.

Starting in 2010, some of the worse intergang fighting between the Los Zetas cartel and their bitterest rivals, the Gulf Cartel took place in Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo and in Reynosa as shooters fought openly against one another, the fighting of which often produced roadblocks. Much of the violence at the time went unreported because, reportedly local press were under death threats from local drug gangs not to publish news about the activities.

During those years local Twitter users as well as local government officials used Twitter to report gunfights and shootings and shootouts.

With the election of president Enrique Pena Nieto almost two years ago, the government got into the news spiking business by stopping the practice of reporting on individual incidents and compiling series of incidents into one, thereby reducing -- and improving -- crime statistics. According to Tijuana, Baja California based Zetas magazine, only one part of the new anti crime strategy has worked: the statistics have improved, but not the violence, which is as bad as it has ever been.

SeĂąora Salazar has run afoul of Mexico's Secretaria de Gobernacion (SEGOB), or interior minister Miguel Osorio Chong before. Last December she suggested she might call for a curfew in the city after a series of shootouts between rival criminal gangs, which left 13 dead. At the time Osorio Chong said it would be illegal for her to impose a curfew, which may not have been completely true.

Curfews in Mexican localities have been called for or imposed by local government officials because of drug and gang related violence including, reportedly in Piedras Negras in Coahuila state in 2012 and Jimenez in Chihuahua state in late 2013 because of the extreme violence from local drug gang rivalries.

Lately the federal government's anti crime strategy has undergone a transparent shift as former head of Mexico's Comision Nacional de Seguridad, Manuel Mandrgon y Kalb left his post and was replaced by Monte Alejandro Rubido.

According to a news report last week in Milenio, several Mexican senators have noted that the new appointee signals a strategy shift more towards the strategy of former president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa.

It remains to be seen if Calderon's hands off strategy with regard to the press will be followed as well.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War nad national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com

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Caribbean-Latin America

Durango state AG says 10 lawyers are missing

2014-03-11

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Durango state Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE) or attorney general Sonia Yadira de la Garza Fragoso told the press Monday that the number of lawyers missing in Durango was only 10, not 100 to 120, according to news reports.

A news report which appeared in Milenio news daily said that de la Garza Fragoso admitted to the press that while 120 incidents or reports have been received concerning missing lawyers, some of them are minor incidents such as accident investigations, and that the number of actual cases of missing lawyers is 10.

Fiscalia de la Garza Fragoso's denied a report by Durango state Barra de Abogados or bar association president Martha Alicia Gurrola of the number of missing lawyers was as many as 120.

According to a separate news account in Milenio, Señora Alicia Gurrola said that them number of dead or missing was rumored to be as many as 120, but also said that the numbers she had were unclear.

Many of the 10 missing are those who went missing over the previous four years, well before de la Garza Fragoso's term which began in mid 2011. Her term began as the mass graves in Durango, most of them in Durango city began to be uncovered. The final toll of the exhumations was 330. Many of those dead were in other places in Durango state as well as far away at the Durango side of La Laguna, and some of the dead were reported missing as far back as 2007, when Felipe Calderon began his war on the drug cartels..

The news report said that most of the 10 missing lawyers could be amongst the 330 found in Durango in 2011-2012.

Señora Alicia Gurrola lamented in a third Milenio article which was published last Saturday that de la Garza Fragoso had not met with the Barra de Abogados in six months to provide help in security.

The most famous case of a lawyer disappearing in Durango took place in late 2011, when de la Garza Fragoso's predecessor, Ramiro Ortiz Aguirre was kidnapped and murdered in Durango city in March of 2012. At a presentation with the Durango state Chamber of Deputies at the time, de la Garza Fragoso admitted pulling state paid Ortiz Aguirre's security detail only hours before the murder.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com

Link

Caribbean-Latin America

Mexican Army shifts counternarcotics strategy in Chihuahua

2013-10-24

For a map, click here. For a map of Chihuahua state, click here.

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

As shootings and drug and gang related violence continue in southern Chihuahua, commanders with the Mexican Army are announcing their intentions to stay in northern border states, according to Mexican news accounts.

A news account which appeared on the website of Azteca Noticias reported a joint announcement of Chihuahua Governor Cesar Duarte Jaquez and Mexican Army chief General Salvador Cienfuegos that a new army base would be built in Guachochi municipality housing 600 soldiers and their families. No date was given for either beginning or the conclusion of the construction of the army base.

If the number of soldiers to be deployed at the base is accurate the base will be one of the largest non garrison facilities in Mexico. Mexican Army bases which dot the country usually house a company sized element including about 100 effectives with support staff adding even more. The base in Guachochi will house 600 soldiers including support staff, or the equivalent of a rifle battalion.

Guachochi is in the Mexican 42nd Military Zone command area.

The new deployment adds credence to the notion that Mexico's military commanders are concentrating their efforts in the Mexican sierras where law and law enforcement are at premium, leaving the cities and the highway to Mexican civilian security forces.

Earlier in the year Mexico's military commanders made much of the intention of the new national administration of president Enrique Peña Nieto to return the military to the barracks and to have Mexico's police forces take over security duties nationwide.

Sometime last summer, commanders signaled a definitive shift in strategy, by making much of their intentions to remain in areas where drug and gang related violence is the worst.

The most recent announcement by General Cienfuegos was that the Mexican Army would remain also in Nuevo Leon state.

Pena's security strategy of making states take on more security duties was also amplified by dividing the country into five regions and holding numerous meetings between state politicians and their security staff, and Mexico's federal security apparatus. Central to that is to include all national police and militaries under the Secretaria de Gobernacion or interior ministry.

But problems with the strategy in using state resources abound.

Last December as President Peña was taking the reins of power, his Secretaria de Gobernacion, Miguel Osorio Chong continued to push a police certification program requirement begun during the term of the prevous President Felipe Calderon, that all police agents are certified, or they should lose their jobs. The original time period began in 2011, and was extended by the national Chamber of Deputies for a deadline of November 1st, 2013.

But now it appears with barely 75 percent of all state and local police certified nationwide, The deadline has been extended yet another year.

Results in the various state were mixed at best, with two on the six northern border state with percentages of certified police above 80 percent. That was in August. Since that time Nuevo Leon has announced their police certification program completed.

Chihuahua state, where the new military base is expected to be built, as of last August, was in the bottom 10 with just over 51 percent certified. Tamaulipas, easily Mexico's most violent state. was reported dead last with just under 40 percent.

Problems in security continue in Chihuahua state, especially in the southern municipalities.

In El Diario de Juarez Wednesday it was reported that only five municipalities out of 51, have submitted candidates to be approved by the state Chamber of Deputies.

According to Antonio Andreu, President of the Chihuahua state Chamber of Deputies, the five municipalities with police chiefs confirmed by the Chamber of Deputies include Nuevo Casas Grandes, Camargo, Ahumada, Ciudad Juarez and Aquiles Serdan. All are northern or central municipalities.

According to the news story, Chihuahua state's failure in police certifications has led to the large number of municipalities with no confirmed police chiefs. Andrieu said that no deadline exists for confirming new police chiefs, and new police chiefs must be certified.

Chihuahua state went through a mid term election earlier in the summer. Normally by this time all municipalities should have their staff appointed, approved and in place.

Elsewhere in southern Chihuahua, eight unidentified individuals are being investigated as disappeared according to a news account which appeared in the online edition of El Sol de Parral news daily.

Quoting head of the Policia Estatal Unica Division Investigaciones, Pablo Ernesto Rocha, police will begin search operations in Guadalupe y Calvo municipality, focusing in the villages of Corta, Los Charcos and El Vergel. Earlier in the spring and summer, kidnappings and shootings in southern Chihuahua were do bad that young males were refused public transportation for fear of recruiting efforts by local criminal gangs. The latest admission of missing persons by a top state police officials indicates that the violence in the region has not been tempered.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com

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Caribbean-Latin America

SEGOB Osorio Chong to face queries on police certifications

2013-09-24

For a map, click here.

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Mexico's Secretaria de Gobernacion (SEGOB), or interior minister, Miguel Osorio Chong is expected to meet with Mexican national deputies Friday to explain why police certifications are not nearing completion, according to Mexican news accounts.

Earlier in the month, it was learned that only 63 percent of all state and local police nationwide have been certified, despite a looming November 1st deadline.

According to a news report which appeared Saturday in Milenio news daily, Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) coordinator for the Chamber of Deputies Guillermo Anaya said Saturday that legislators expect SEGOB Osorio Chong to explain why the deadline won't be met.

The police certification program, begun under the previous national administration of Felipe Calderon Hinojosa was to be complete by December of 2012, but that deadline was extended to November 1st of this year.

Since December, 2012, Osorio Chong has made it very clear he was aware of the deadline which specifies that all police at all three levels would either be certified or lose their jobs.

The certification program includes tests including psychological, drug and confidence tests which are meant to determine a police agent's suitability to become a police officer.

Results have been mixed. The lion's share of national police have already been certified while many states have lagged behind, some way behind.

For example, the tiny central Mexico state of Colima says 98 percent of its police are certified while the northern border state of Tamaulipas is barely above 40 percent.

Osorion Chong's role in the certification program is read. A large part of the states' and municipalities' security budgets are provided by the national government either as direct funding or as pass-though programs where taxes and fees collected by states and municipalities are returned to the states and municipalities.

According to the Milenio article, the concerns of members of the Chamber of Deputies became apparent when President Enrique Pena Nieto's 2014 economic package failed to address security. The package released three weeks ago addresses a restructuring of federal taxes, including a proposal to scrap the flat tax on businesses and a proposal to goose up the top rates on income taxes. Both of those proposals are likely job killing measures.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com. His latest work of non-fiction, The Wounded Eagle: Volume 2 went on sale September 1st at Amazon.com and Smashwords.com

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