McALLEN -- The ongoing debate regarding immigration reform has once again brought the topic of border security to the forefront. In South Texas, the area that has seen a sharp increase in drug trafficking runs from treacherous waters of the Rio Grande to the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints in Falfurrias and Sarita, the last law enforcement waypoint along the roads leading from the Texas-Mexico border to inland metropolitan areas. In those areas, drug smugglers tied to Mexican drug cartels work ingenious ways of moving their drugs to their destinations without detection by law enforcement. [continues 1140 words]
ALAMO - Tears came down the face of Alma Estrada as she recalled the call she received two years ago telling her that gunmen had kidnapped her brother. His fate remains a mystery. Estrada, a lifelong Alamo resident, shared the story of her brother, Roberto Banda, 40, who worked as a road builder in Soto La Marina, Tamps., before his disappearance. Tales of desperation like Estrada's were shared by the various members of the Caravan for Peace movement, which made a stop Thursday afternoon in the Rio Grande Valley along its way to Washington, D.C. [continues 745 words]
ALAMO - A movement looking to end Mexico's drug war is set to arrive here in an effort to raise awareness to that country's rising death toll. On Thursday, Javier Sicilia's Caravan for Peace is scheduled to make a pit stop in Alamo for a day of events and personal testimonies related to Mexico's ongoing cartel violence, which has produced more than 60,000 deaths and 10,000 disappearances. Group organizers claim that drug prohibition has failed. The war on drugs has produced painful consequences in both Mexico and the United States, leaving a trail of death, pain and corruption in its path, the group's news release states. [continues 288 words]
The high walls of Alexander Estates, an affluent development nestled near this border city's country club and golf course, were supposed to keep the narcotics world at bay. But when federal agents raided the stately home of a downtown perfume salesman in January, it reinforced a notion that is feared by Texas leaders: The drug war spillover from Mexico is much broader than shootouts and kidnappings -- it is cloaked in the seemingly routine business transactions of the border economy. Neighbors stood, mouths agape, as federal agents seized loads of cash from the home of Vikram Datta, a polite family man who acquaintances said was so concerned with the quality of Laredo schools that he moved his teenage daughters back to their native New York. Federal agents leveled an accusation that shocked other residents: that Datta, 51, was a major player in the Black Market Peso Exchange, a decades-old system of laundering drug money and reinvesting it back into the economy. [continues 1383 words]
McALLEN - A former Hidalgo County sheriff's deputy faces federal charges that he conspired to possess and distribute pot bundles while on the job. Heriberto Diaz, a former burglary investigator, was indicted by grand jurors last week in U.S. District Court in McAllen. Documents detailing the charges were filed Friday in federal court. Diaz's former partner, Omar Salazar, pleaded guilty last month in federal court to the conspiracy charge. Both men also face state charges in the corruption case. [continues 243 words]
NEAR DONNA -- A U.S. Border Patrol agent spotted the men as they approached the floodway levee under the moonlight early Friday morning. She focused an infrared telescope on the figures, tracking seven men as they marched north near Farm-to-Market Road 493 about 2:15 a.m. Friday, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in McAllen. Each person carried a large bundle with about 35 pounds of marijuana strapped to their backs. The agent quietly kept the LORIS scope focused on the figures for nearly two hours. [continues 1117 words]
A dozen suspected Zetas drug cartel members and a Mexican marine died in a battle Sunday on an island surrounded by Falcon Lake, within sight of the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said. The Mexican naval secretariat confirmed the shootout at a Zeta encampment on an island on the reservoir used by the Zetas to stage marijuana loads to be transported by boat into the United States. The island is located less than two miles northeast of Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, Tamps., across the border from Falcon Dam. [continues 616 words]
Many Expected to Stay Home on Sept. 16 REYNOSA - The latest casualty of Mexico's drug violence isn't a cartel hit man, an elected official, a cop, a soldier or even an innocent bystander. No, that body being carted away on a stretcher is the freedom and festivity one would typically expect as a nation celebrates the bicentennial of its independence from its erstwhile colonial master. After several months of escalating drug violence, some Mexican cities have moved their bicentennial celebrations to earlier, ostensibly safer, times or have beefed up security - even in the absence of any specific threat. Other cities have cancelled independence celebrations altogether. [continues 944 words]
McALLEN -- Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino got his start fighting the drug war in 1974, buying street-level heroin as an undercover police investigator in Austin. The war on drugs was young then. Just four years before, President Richard Nixon launched a new battle against drug abuse in the United States. Throughout his career, Trevino worked with various local, state and federal drug task forces before he took the helm as Hidalgo County's top cop in 2005. * Drug war stories on TheMonitor.com [continues 1226 words]
McALLEN -- An exhaustive 10-hour day of testimony provided no clear agreement on whether drug violence had "spilled," "bled" or otherwise seeped across the Texas-Mexico border. But as one Pharr resident told a joint panel of state lawmakers Thursday: No matter what words are used to describe it, the ongoing drug war in Mexico is having daily impact on those living in the Rio Grande Valley. Patricia Martinez, a licensed drug counselor, beseeched legislators during a hearing at the McAllen Convention Center to help her efforts to locate her 20-year-old son, a U.S. citizen who was kidnapped from a Reynosa restaurant last year. [continues 773 words]
Members of Congress representing areas along the border with Mexico are asking for an emergency disbursement of at least $500 million in federal funds to fight narcotics and organized crime along the frontier. Nine U.S. representatives from border states - a group that includes the entire Rio Grande Valley delegation - sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to include immediate funding for border security in an emergency supplemental spending package. The letter asks for an Appropriations Committee bill to include money for improving communications capabilities in remote areas of the border, supplementing a program that aids local law enforcement's efforts to prevent spillover violence and putting more federal agents along the border and at the nation's land ports. [continues 566 words]
MISSION - Police Chief Leo Longoria said his city and the surrounding area has experienced a "bleed-over of violence" coming from Mexico. His community remains secure, he said, but he still would welcome National Guard troops to the city, as Gov. Rick Perry has requested from the federal government for communities along the border. Above all, Longoria said residents should remain vigilant and aware of their surroundings. "I don't believe we have a uncontrollable spillover," he said. "What we have is a bleed-over of violence." [continues 696 words]
McALLEN -- The frequency and size of marijuana seizures in the Rio Grande Valley continues to grow significantly compared to last year, the U.S. Border Patrol announced this week. During the week of May 11 to May 17, for example, the agency's Rio Grande Valley sector confiscated more than nine tons of marijuana compared to 3.8 tons during the same time period in 2008. Agents conducted 60 seizures that week, according to a Border Patrol news release. Officials attributed the 71 percent increase in narcotics seizures to increased manpower and a better infrastructure to prevent drug smuggling. [continues 197 words]
I remember being worried about living so close to Mexico when I first moved to the Rio Grande Valley. Mexico seemed like an untamed, violent and dangerous place to a guy from Ohio who considered Taco Bell to be Mexican food. In the northern part of the United States, it always seemed to me like anything made in Mexico or even associated with Mexico was looked down upon. There were maybe one or two Latino families among the sea of white faces in my suburban Ohio town, and no one spoke fluent Spanish outside of Spanish class. Needless to say, my exposure to anything Hispanic before I moved to the Valley was extremely limited. [continues 775 words]
Teen Smugglers May Provide Loophole For Criminals The two boys tried to smuggle 44 pounds of marijuana into the United States. Soon after the authorities caught them, they were released - free of any criminal charges - to reunite with their families and return to their home country. On Dec. 9, officers at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge stopped a northbound 2000 Ford Explorer driven by one of the two boys - both 16 years old and Mexican nationals - and found five packages stuffed with pot inside one of the SUV's tires. [continues 571 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]
Temptation Of Corruption Also Lurks Within Legal Profession Joel Carcano Jr. stands apart from his 12 co-defendants in an ongoing federal case against one of Texas' most violent prison gangs. A college-educated paralegal for a McAllen law firm, he appears out of place when lined up with the tattooed gang members, convicted felons and other associates named in the same nine-count indictment. The others stand accused of a slew of murders, drug smuggling attempts and kidnappings over the past eight years - all undertaken to protect the Texas Syndicate's criminal interests in the Rio Grande Valley. [continues 1149 words]
Local schools have been displaying banners and red ribbons in observance of Red Ribbon Week. The National Family Partnership organized the first nationwide Red Ribbon Campaign in honor of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who was tortured and killed in 1985 while investigating drug trafficking in Mexico. To honor his memory and his fight against illegal drugs, his friends and family wore red badges made of red satin. From there, coalitions of caring parents adopted red ribbons as their symbol to reduce the demand for drugs in their communities. [continues 274 words]
Recent U.S. efforts to disrupt drug smuggling routes through the Rio Grande Valley have prompted threats of retaliation against authorities on this side of the river, according to an FBI intelligence report. Vowing to maintain control over valuable trafficking corridors such as those in Reynosa, Matamoros and Miguel Aleman, the Gulf Cartel and its paramilitary enforcement wing, Los Zetas, have begun stockpiling weapons, reaching out to Texas gangs and issuing orders to "confront U.S. law enforcement agencies to zealously protect their criminal interests," the report states. [continues 823 words]
For South Texas Vendors of the Ceremonial Drug, Business Is Dwindling A sign in front of Mauro Morales' Rio Grande City home announces his business for everyone to see. "Peyote Dealer," it proclaims in large block letters. Each day, drivers passing by slow down for double takes and some even pull over, get out and snap photos. Who can blame them?, Morales asks with a mischievous grin. He is, after all, part of a dwindling fraternity. The slight, 65-year-old Rio Grande City man is one of only three people in the United States - all in Starr and Webb counties - -authorized to harvest and sell the psychedelic cactus. [continues 1010 words]
REYNOSA -- Once mobbed with a mix of American teenagers, roaming mariachis and cowboy hat-clad locals headed to the dance halls, Zona Rosa, the city's nightlife district, is eerily quiet these days. In the early evening, many of the restaurants and bars are shuttered, and those that remain open make do on a smattering of customers, nursing beers quietly in the corner. "After 10 p.m. there's nobody out in the city," Patricia Duran, the manager of Mr. Bomb Bar and Pool, said in Spanish. [continues 571 words]
To the editor: There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket legalization. Switzerland's heroin maintenance program has been shown to reduce disease, death and crime among chronic users. Addicts would not be sharing needles if not for zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean syringes, nor would they be committing crimes if not for artificially inflated black market prices. Providing addicts with standardized doses in a clinical setting eliminates many of the problems associated with heroin use. Heroin maintenance pilot projects are under way in Canada, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. If expanded, prescription heroin maintenance would deprive organized crime of a core client base. This would render illegal heroin-trafficking unprofitable and spare future generations addiction. [continues 135 words]
It May Be Time To Get Rid Of Drug Laws -- Or At Least Change Them. If the drug-war violence that erupted this week across the border in Rio Bravo and in Reynosa leaves you apprehensive, your head is probably in the right place. It is a very scary situation akin to the Capone-era gangland wars in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, which left scores of bad guys and innocent bystanders dead and injured. Although we would like to think not, there is a distinct possibility - -- because of the extreme mobility of the cross-border illicit drug trade and its practitioners -- that more of this violence could spread to the U.S. side. We say "more" because if you think it isn't already happening here, you're deluding yourself. Many of the stories we have covered regarding home invasions, burned bodies found in cars, corpses discovered here and there around the Valley and instances in which U.S. Border Patrol officers have been fired on from across the Rio Grande have been associated with cross-border drug trafficking. [continues 529 words]
How Committing More Resources to Mexico's Drug War Will Only Make the Problem Worse President Bush confirmed last week, at the U.S.-Canada-Mexico "summit" meeting, that the U.S. is planning a "robust" aid package to help Mexico combat the illegal drug trade. There is little question that Mexico is experiencing a tragic wave of violence as various drug cartels battle among themselves and with the federales. But throwing more resources into enforcement will make matters worse. The administration was at pains to say that the proposed aid to Mexico was not at all like the "Plan Colombia" program that has seen $800 million to $1.3 billion sent to Colombia every year since 1998, when the Clinton administration started it. No wonder. After all that money was spent, the number of acres under coca cultivation in Colombia actually has risen in recent years, and the street price of cocaine in the United States has declined, which is exactly the opposite of what the plan was supposed to accomplish. [continues 269 words]
GARCENO - Police seized more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana worth about $2.5 million after raiding a stash house here. No one was arrested at the home east of Roma and a mile north of Highway 83. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and county drug task force agents found 321 bundles of marijuana that weighed 4,243 pounds, according to a statement from ICE. Agents also found trash bags with drug wrapping materials. [end]
McALLEN -- Three former Rio Grande City police officers were sentenced Wednesday to several years in prison for taking money from an undercover officer to protect drug shipments. Victor Benitez, Eddie Alvarez and Melissa Martinez were sentenced to 87, 41 and 51 months in prison, respectively. The three pleaded guilty in April 2006 in U.S. District Court to accepting money from an undercover FBI agent to protect cocaine shipments. The remaining conspiracy charges were dropped as part of their plea agreement. [continues 110 words]
McALLEN -- With more than $40 million in state grants already spent since 2005 on securing the Texas-Mexico border, Gov. Rick Perry is asking for more. But experts say convincing state legislators to go along with the plan will involve political maneuvering that has already blurred the line between immigration enforcement and combating border crime. During his State of the State address Tuesday, Perry repeated calls for an additional $100 million to bolster border security efforts. The speech came a week after the end of Operation Wrangler, the latest in a string of law enforcement initiatives that have targeted drug and human traffickers. [continues 555 words]
Patients at a south Reynosa drug rehab center sometimes walk up onto the roof to look out over the city before their evening meeting. On clear evenings, they can see the bright lights of the city center, the maquilas where many of them used to work and the Rio Grande winding its way to the east. Jose Alfredo Martinez, a thin, 36-year-old father of two struggling with a crack addiction, is one of those patients. He can almost see his home neighborhood on the southern banks of the river. There, only 100 yards from the United States, narcotics designated for shipment to New York and Houston are selling like never before, causing an epidemic of drug addiction. [continues 1350 words]
SAN JUAN -- Police seized $5,800 in cash during a stash house raid two weeks ago. A few months before, they acquired a 2003 maroon GMC pick-up truck after pulling over an accused cocaine dealer. Cash, cars, even computers aE& like many police departments in the area, San Juan is realizing the benefits of fighting the drug trafficking industry through cash and property seizures. "A lot of the times it's a car not worth a lot, but to deter these guys we decided we're going to use every opportunity to seize what we can," said San Juan Police Chief Tony Garza. [continues 328 words]
McALLEN - Almost 5,000 Rio Grande Valley high schoolers will begin the new school year at campuses rated "persistently dangerous" by the state education agency. Jimmy Carter High School in the La Joya school district and Todd Ninth Grade campus and Donna High School in the Donna district received the "dangerous" designation this year from the Texas Education Association. The three campuses are among just five statewide to be rated as such. This is Todd's second year on the TEA list. [continues 522 words]
To the editor: No legitimate business shoots the competition. No legitimate business would sell drugs to children or recruit them to sell to their peers. This happened during alcohol prohibition and it is happening today. Once again, prohibition creates more danger to the user and society. The White House continues to ignore the lessons of the "noble experiment" and truth has been suppressed about the medicinal use of cannabis, giving drug prohibition a very sinister aspect. Like flagellant priests, overzealous drug warriors draw blood daily from their brothers for their medicinal and recreational drug use. Don't let them carry this nation one step further down this depraved path! [continues 141 words]
Decriminalization Would Be More Effective Than Drug Eradication There is an old saying: "There are none so blind as those who will not see," which comes to mind when we see news reports about expanding the international drug war. Two stories from Colombia last week support that belief. The first was a United Nations report that noted that despite record-setting eradication measures in 2005, the country's coca production increased 8 percent. A day later, Colombian Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt said that despite the U.N. report, the aerial spraying campaign is working and should be stepped up. [continues 463 words]
To the editor: This response is regarding the article on May 7, "Drug law would have been misused, locals say." I was concerned to hear that small amounts of drugs would become legal in Mexico. Living so near to Mexico, and with a lot of us teens having such easy access to Mexico and its clubs, it would have become worse than it already is. Here in the U.S., the possession of drugs is illegal yet we have a lot of people who use them and have them with them. Now, people who had no chance of possessing drugs were going to have them available around the corner. Thankfully for everybody, President Vicente Fox saw the consequences it would bring rather than the good things it could cause. I'm so happy to hear the bill did not pass. I hope they will never again think about something like that, that would cause so much destruction, mainly to the adolescents who would have tried to run to Mexico in order to feed their necessity. Hidalgo [end]
McALLEN -- Economically depressed areas and their similarly poor police departments benefit most from High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. The HIDTA program not only disrupts drug trafficking organizations, but it gets money to the law enforcement agencies that need it most. "In the smaller police departments, they don't have adequate resources to attack and destroy," said Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra. "They have enough problems with the local crime, the domestic violence and the burglary. If they join (HIDTA), the assets go back to them. If they help us, we help them by asset sharing." [continues 364 words]
To the editor: This is in response to the article "Drug law would have been misused, locals say," on May 7. I strongly believe it caused great controversy to propose the legalization of drugs in Mexico. As we all know, week after week, many minors go to Mexico in search of nonstop partying and drinking. Everyone knows the usual party scene in Mexico. It is chaotic. And with the use of drugs, who knows what it would be. Even though many would claim to use drugs responsibly, the consequences can be very dangerous and even deadly. [continues 68 words]
To the editor: Regarding, "Drug law would have been misused, locals say," on May 7: Vicente Fox was right by voiding this law because it wouldn't decrease the crime rate. There would still be crime, and maybe the same rate. The law only would have created more chaos in Mexico, especially in the northern states that create the boundary between the U.S.A. and Mexico. Therefore, more American people would go and take advantage of the weak system of Mexico, as teenagers already do with alcohol because the legal age over there to drink is 18 and here it's 21. If this law had passed, it would have created chaos on the streets. People would appear intoxicated on streets and this would only give a bad or worse image of Mexico. It is almost stupid. Funny that the Congress voted for it. Antonio Garcia, Pharr [end]
It would not have made a huge difference in the most unfortunate aspects of the war on drugs. But it would have been a nice gesture. If Mexican president Vicente Fox had decided to sign a bill legalizing personal possession of small amounts of drugs now prohibited, while keeping sales and trafficking illegal, the violence and crime associated with the drug trade under prohibition would have remained in place. But resources directed at putting low-level users in jail could have been directed elsewhere. And the move could have sparked a serious conversation about the wisdom of zero-tolerance prohibition as an approach to the fact that certain drugs have harmful effects. [continues 99 words]
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for reasons that are far from clear, chose to enter the debate over medical marijuana with a thoroughly unscientific aE" one might even say anti-scientific aE" blanket denial that marijuana has any medical value at all. Specifically, the grandiosely titled "Inter-Agency Advisory Regarding Claims That Smoked Marijuana Is a Medicine" referenced a "past examination" that "concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use." [continues 382 words]
McALLEN -- Accused members of a family run drug-trafficking organization appeared before a federal magistrate Monday, pleading not guilty to nine felony charges in connection with transporting cocaine and marijuana across the Rio Grande. The men -- [Names redacted], all of Mission -- were arrested Wednesday and are charged with a nine-count sealed federal indictment alleging they participated in a smuggling ring that ran drugs across the river south of Mission. The brothers appeared with their defense attorneys in front of U.S. Magistrate Peter Ormsby as federal prosecutors requested that the men be held without bond until their June 6 trial, set in U.S. District Judge Randy 's court. [continues 498 words]
McALLEN - The head of what prosecutors are calling the "Meza Drug Trafficking Organization" was a former city police officer who left his job in 1992. Francisco Meza-Rojas, 41, was a McAllen police officer for a "few years," police spokesman Sgt. Joel Morales confirmed. This is the second brother in an almost 10-year-old Drug Enforcement Administration investigation to be linked to a local police department. Jesus Lorenzo Meza, a 32-year-old Edinburg police officer, was arrested while on duty at 4 a.m. Wednesday at the city jail there. [continues 413 words]
EDINBURG -- The local police officer who was arrested earlier this week as part of a federal drug sting is the youngest brother in a major family drug operation that dates back at least a decade, several sources said Thursday. Edinburg police officer Jesus Lorenzo Meza, 32, is the youngest of five. The second oldest, [Name redacted], 41, is the head of the "Meza Drug Trafficking Organization," an operation the U.S. District Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas says worked years smuggling drugs from Mexico to an area south of Mission, between Granjeno and Penitas. [continues 485 words]
Amen, Andres Martinez! Leaders responsible for current quagmire will have to answer to a higher power for their crimes against humanity. It's time to end the terror by changing our intrusive, big-bully policies, both foreign and domestic. The monetary costs are staggering and the human suffering unconscionable. War is a tool governments use to make us more docile, more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. Prohibition triggers violence and crime, plus it destroys families. There are an estimated 9 million American children orphaned because of the drug war. [continues 161 words]
To the editor: In H.L. Mencken's Minority Report, he states that "most people want security in this world, not liberty," and it appears that he may be right. But these words remind me of the words Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for temporal safety deserve neither to be safe or free." People criticize others for their "blind hate for our president and national security during wartime in American history" as did Charlie Cardenas in the Jan. 29, 2006, edition of The Monitor. This "War on Terror" is not a war. It is equivalent to the "War on Drugs." You kill some cartels and other, more violent cartels will replace them. The same applies to the "War on Terror": the more people the U.S. kills, the more martyrs are created to fuel the cause. Guns don't bring peace; the civility of man to think, reason, and apply these to the political front as the weapon of choice will bring peace. If anyone desires a place of security, and not freedom, try China. I hear they have a great system as such running well over there. [continues 95 words]
To the editor: In 1963, when Dr. King delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech, we had about 200,000 total prisoners. Today, largely because of our war on drugs policies, the United States has more than 2.2 million prisoners. It's obvious that the so-called war on drugs is actually a war on (politically selected) people - and black people are those politically selected people. Even though blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate, blacks are 13 times more likely to go to jail or prison for a so-called drug crime. [continues 57 words]
It is something of a mystery why federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided HopeNet, a medical cannabis dispensary said to serve about 30 patients a day in San Francisco, on Dec. 20. It followed a series of raids in San Diego on Dec. 12 that closed 13 cannabis dispensaries. No arrests were made in any of the raids, but some patients are concerned that these raids are a prelude to a major effort to close down cannabis clubs statewide. But we could wait quite a while for another shoe to drop. [continues 396 words]
EDINBURG -- Sexual assault nurse examiner Janie Cantu-Cabrera vividly remembers when police came to her four to five years ago with two teenaged sisters who had been drugged at a Pharr hotel party and then raped, possibly repeatedly. The younger sister, who was 13 at the time, told the nurse that all she could recall was being trapped inside a bathtub while several faces hovered above her. Standing in the door frame was her older sister, 18, just watching. The older sister, Cantu-Cabrera said, told the nurse that all she could remember from the previous night was seeing her sibling in the shower. Both of the girls reported feeling "funny" in the genital area. [continues 665 words]
To the editor: It was simple for me, as a retired police officer, to predict the rise in smuggling methedrine across the Rio Grande. The DEA estimates that 60 to 80 percent of meth now is imported from Mexico. Law enforcement efforts continue to be as effective as a mosquito on an elephant. As legal drugs kill at a ratio of 55:1 over illegal drugs, someone explain why my profession is chasing drug users. Shouldn't doctors chase drug users? Howard J. Wooldridge, Member, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Dallas [end]
Detective Robert Alvarez, who heads a two-man gang intelligence unit at the Edinburg Police Department, says Mexican drug cartels use local gangs, which are heavily made up of male juveniles and young adults, to move their drugs. But a number of people -- businessmen, teachers, truck drivers -- also peddle illegal substances to supplement their incomes. The cartels are designed so local drug traffickers don't know who the people in the supply chain are, Alvarez said. That way, if one group of runners is busted by the police, they can't rat out the rest. [continues 525 words]
To the editor: I agree with the headline of Kenneth J. Virkus' letter on Nov. 17, "Prohibition has never worked." However, tobacco products are not prohibited. They are regulated, controlled and taxed. The government does not say that adult citizens may not buy or use tobacco products, instead they say when and where tobacco may be purchased and used. That is regulation -- not prohibition. Speaking of regulation, why should recreational and self-medicating drugs remain completely unregulated, untaxed and controlled by criminals? [continues 61 words]
Guerrero Refused Blood Test; Claims Illness Elicited Behavior McALLEN -- Hidalgo County District Clerk Omar Guerrero was arrested Wednesday by McAllen police who said he reeked of burnt marijuana, had bloodshot eyes and appeared disheveled when he showed up at a crime scene they were working. Guerrero, who is seeking re-election, now faces charges of marijuana possession and driving while intoxicated. According to police records, officers received a phone call Wednesday morning about a driver asleep in a vehicle a€" not Guerreroa€™s a€" that was parked in the middle of the 700 block of West Bluebird Avenue. [continues 488 words]
