If Mexican drug violence reaches Victoria, Rusty Fleming can say, "I told you so." Fleming, a Dallas-area filmmaker, spent three years in Mexico and on the border to document a new era of narco-terrorism. He, like many law enforcement experts, say this unsettling war creeps north on U.S. highways. His film, "Drug Wars: Silver or Lead," offers an inside look at the brutal Gulf Cartel, Mexican drug war and violent spillover into Texas. Fleming, 45, agreed to premiere his film in Victoria. [continues 370 words]
Officials hope the newly implemented tactic will help tackle an intersection's long-standing problems with crime. In an effort to keep repeat criminals away from East Rundberg Lane and Interstate 35, an area of North Austin that has been a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes and a source of neighbors' complaints, Austin police and Travis County district attorney's officials have teamed up to start using "stay-away orders" in the area. While their criminal cases are pending and they're out on bail, suspected drug offenders with stay-away orders aren't allowed in the area. Violating the order could land them back in jail, and their behavior would be considered in assessing their sentences. [continues 351 words]
The year was 1915, and a Mexican revolutionary named Doroteo Arango, aka Francisco "Pancho" Villa, was launching raids along the Mexico-U.S. border, killing Americans in the hopes of drawing the U.S. into a larger confrontation with Mexico. In response, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson ordered the deployment of troops to Texas and New Mexico to guard the border. Brigadier Gen. John J. Pershing was sent to Fort Bliss to guard the border from Arizona to just southeast of El Paso. [continues 511 words]
Adam Reavis says that if he had stayed in his native Houston, he would be dead now or locked up for life. Instead, after two trips to prison — for theft and burglary— Reavis came to Austin in the early 1990s and into the jurisdiction of Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle. Earle, who is retiring at the end of the month after 31 years in office, had just begun his latest in a series of programs designed to attack the causes of crime. When Reavis was arrested for attempting to steal speakers from a car near the City of Bee Cave in 1992, a panel of law enforcement officials convened under the program took a long look at his life. They recommended that instead of another prison term, he get probation and intensive treatment for his drug and alcohol addictions. [continues 1884 words]
MEXICO CITY - Even as accused mob boss Osiel Cardenas awaits a federal trial in Houston next year, the criminal army he allegedly commanded with deadly resolve rampages across this country. Cardenas, 41, has been imprisoned for six years - four in Mexico and two in the United States. He faces federal charges of leading a drug syndicate, trafficking cocaine and marijuana, laundering money and threatening the lives of U.S. agents. Though weakened by a crackdown, Cardenas' Gulf Cartel and the gang of assassins it spawned, the Zetas, remain powerful and widely feared. [continues 968 words]
Re: "Drug demand fuels violence" by Alfred C. Schram, Monday Letters. American drug appetite does not fuel Mexican violence. American drug laws fund Mexican (and American) violence. Legal marijuana should be no more expensive than tea bags ($1 per ounce) or ground coffee ($0.35 per ounce). Illegal marijuana goes for more than $100 per ounce. If we really want to stop the violence in both Mexico and the U.S., we will end drug prohibition and reduce demand for drugs the way we have reduced demand for cigarettes -- by education. Buford C. Terrell Stafford [end]
EL PASO -- With the homicide toll in Juárez surpassing the 1,500 mark, authorities there are left to face what border experts are calling the biggest Mexican dilemma -- ending the bloody street war between drug cartels, controlling thugs who have gone wild and preventing police corruption. "The last time Mexico had so much turmoil and death was around the turn of the 20th century, and there was a revolution about to happen," said David Shirk, the director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. "It is going to take something with as much impact as that to get the problem solved." [continues 1082 words]
The extensive drug-related violence that has turned Juarez and other Chihuahua state communities into war zones has largely stopped at the border, but the effects of the drug trade stretch far beyond the banks of the Rio Grande. El Paso, though spared the brazen killings taking place in Mexico, has felt the power of the multibillion-dollar illicit drug trade and has become a major hub for the distribution of drugs headed to markets throughout the United States, officials said. [continues 966 words]
The Kilgore Independent School District Board of Trustees and Jody Clements, superintendent, are looking at a new drug policy for the district. Clements said he spoke with the board Tuesday night at their regularly scheduled board meeting about establishing a policy on drug testing for extracurricular activities. "Almost all school districts now have this type of policy in place," said Clements. The new policy will require all students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities - this means sports, Ag. Club, cheerleading, any activity approved or sponsored by the school - will have to take an initial drug test. [continues 398 words]
Another Houston ISD teacher was arrested today on suspicion of marijuana possession as part of the school district's ongoing searches of employee parking lots. The employee, whose name was not released, is a teaching assistant in the special education department at Harper Alternative School. The employee is at least the third arrested since HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra announced last week that the district planned to send drug-sniffing dogs to all employee parking lots in coming weeks. Saavedra's decision came after about 15 employees had been arrested after police said they had marijuana or prescription drugs in their cars at school. Most of the early arrests were prompted by anonymous tips to Houston Independent School District police. On Thursday, two employees were arrested on marijuana possession charges after police swept the parking lot at HISD's central administration building. Searches of 14 schools on Friday resulted in no arrests. [end]
EL PASO - A campaign to reduce the overall transportation of illicit contraband in commercial vehicles in Texas and New Mexico called "Texas Hold'em" is in full swing in west Texas and New Mexico. The collaborative initiative, described as a crackdown on commercial truckers who are convicted of smuggling drugs or humans, is proving to be an effective deterrent to smuggling activity in the region, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release. El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Victor M. Manjarrez, Jr. said, "The goal of this operation is not to target truckers, but instead to discourage those who may use the trucking industry to exploit and traffic illegal contraband through commercial avenues." [continues 279 words]
Safeguard Those Who Reveal Mexican Cartels' Evil As much as we hate to admit this, the leaders of Mexico's drug cartels know what they're doing. By targeting the people who tell the rest of Mexico - and the world, including those of us in North Texas - about their deadly ways, the cartel's honchos know they are silencing the storytellers. And by silencing them, they decrease the chance that people will know the depth of the cartels' corruption. Sadly, this is precisely what's happening. The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York reports that 21 journalists have been slain in Mexico since 2000. That includes Armando Rodriguez, killed last month in Ciudad Juárez. [continues 263 words]
The Escalating Cartel Violence In Mexico Rivals The Death Tolls In Iraq, Says David Danelo On Nov. 3, the day before Americans elected Barack Obama president, drug cartel henchmen murdered 58 people in Mexico. It was the highest number killed in one day since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006. By comparison, on average 26 people - Americans and Iraqis combined - died daily in Iraq in 2008. Mexico's casualty list on Nov. 3 included a man beheaded in Ciudad Juárez whose bloody corpse was suspended along an overpass for hours. No one had the courage to remove the body until dark. [continues 570 words]
McALLEN -- U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley seized 188 percent more marijuana the first week of December this year compared to the same period last year, according to figures from the agency. Agents seized more than 20,600 pounds of marijuana throughout the Valley from Dec. 1 to Dec. 8. The largest seizure was more than 3,600 pounds and had an estimated street value of $16.5 million. The drugs were found inside a trailer at the checkpoint near Falfurrias. [continues 188 words]
EL PASO - It is a simple Christmas wish. Peace for three days in Juarez, Dec. 24-26. No shootings. No killings. No executions. In a bloody year in which Juarez was submerged in a war between drug cartels and a crime wave with more than 1,500 homicides, an anonymous e-mail floating in the borderland is asking for "a truce for Christmas in Juarez." The e-mail in Spanish is addressed to "narcos, capos, agents, hit men, the press, those affected by violence, friends and others," and narrates a conversation between a young boy and his uncle. The boy wishes Santa Claus and el ninito Jesus to end the violence after the boy witnesses his father's death. [continues 169 words]
The simple truth about needle exchange programs is that they save lives and save money. Numerous research studies and practical experience with such programs around the nation demonstrate the savings. The same studies and practical experience also refute the primary rationale for opposing needle exchange programs - the notion that they increase intravenous drug abuse. That's the buzz saw advocates of safe, cost-effective needle exchange ran into during the last legislative session. By a margin of 22-7, the Texas Senate passed a measure that would have given local health departments the authority to create programs aimed at reducing the spread of HIV and hepatitis. [continues 252 words]
Gary "Rusty" Fleming is the author of a book on drug-trafficking titled "Drug Wars: Narco-Warfare in the 21st Century," and creator of the companion docudrama "Drug Wars: Silver or Lead" set to premiere Tuesday (Dec. 15) at the Plaza Theatre. It is evident from the book and film that Fleming wants to inform a yet mostly uninformed American public about the escalating levels of violence associated with warring drug cartels in Mexico. Most people have a notion of what's going on from occasional headlines in U.S. national newspapers, short sporadic newscasts on network television, and even Hollywood movies like "No Country for Old Men." Most of the ongoing coverage is done by local media. [continues 487 words]
Recent Arrests Have Some Calling On HISD, Others To Revisit Stance On Pre-Employment Screening For many job applicants, whether the work involves driving trucks or answering phones, passing a drug test is a given. That's not the case for Texas public school teachers. The state does not require teachers to take drug tests before being hired, and local school districts aren't mandating the tests on their own. Officials with several districts - including the Houston Independent School District, San Antonio ISD and Alief ISD - cited cost as one major reason they skip pre-employment drug screens for teachers. But with the recent drug arrests of more than a dozen HISD employees, some advocates are calling on districts to revisit their hiring practices. [continues 790 words]
It's either good living or good hiding that is keeping Southeast Texas teachers and students out of the drug spotlight. A series of teacher drug arrests in the Houston Independent School District prompted its superintendent, Abelardo Saavedra, to call for drug dogs to visit all campus employee parking lots in the coming weeks, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday. But, Southeast Texas school officials say they have had few drug-related incidents involving employees, rendering drug testing and drug searches unwarranted. [continues 573 words]
Move Comes After More Teachers Arrested On Drug Charges The Houston school district plans to dispatch drug-detecting dogs to every campus in coming weeks in search of illegal narcotics in employee parking lots. The move, which Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra announced Monday, follows a recent string of teacher drug arrests, many prompted by anonymous tips, in the state's largest school district. Since October, Houston Independent School District police have arrested a dozen employees - mostly teachers - accused of having marijuana in their cars at school and three employees accused of possessing prescription drugs without documentation, according to updated data from the district. Two employees were arrested twice, and an assistant principal has been charged with growing marijuana at home. [continues 675 words]
Inside Texas
