Bit by Bit, a Mexican Police Force Is Eradicated

New York Times ^ | January 11, 2011 | Randal C. Archibold

[Cardhu]

Guadalupe, Mexico — Her uncle, the mayor who gave her the job nobody else wanted, warned her to keep a low profile, to not make too much of being the last remaining police officer in a town where the rest of the force had quit or been killed.

But in pictures for local newspapers, Érika Gándara, 28, seemed to relish the role, brandishing a semiautomatic rifle and wearing a purple hoodie instead of a uniform. A patch covered an eye swollen from a bee sting.

“I am the only police in this town, the authority,” she told reporters.

Then, two days before Christmas, a group of armed men took her from her home, residents say, and she has not been seen since.

It was an ominous punctuation mark on the wave of terror that has turned this cotton farming town near Texas into a frightened outpost of the drug war. Nearly half of its 9,000 residents have fled, local officials say, leaving block after block of scorched homes and businesses and, now, not one regular police officer.

Far from big, infamous cities like Ciudad Juárez, one of the most violent places in the Americas, the war with organized crime can batter small towns just as hard, if with less notice.

The cotton towns south of Juárez sit in territory disputed by at least two major drug trafficking groups, according to government and private security reports, leading to deadly power struggles. But the lack of adequately trained police officers, a longstanding crisis that the government has sought to address with little resolution, allows criminal groups to have their way.

“Small cities and towns are really highly impacted,” said Daniel M. Sabet, a visiting professor at Georgetown University who studies policing in Mexico. “They offer strongholds organized crime can hold and control.”

[Cardhu]

"Some towns consider themselves so vulnerable that they have gone out of their way not to antagonize criminals. Believing that those involved in organized crime would be less inclined to harm women — and because fewer men are willing to take the job — local officials have appointed a handful of women in the past year to senior police ranks in small cities and towns here in Chihuahua, the country’s most violent state."

[jessduntno]

Policía? Lo que la policía?

[KoRn]

Our military is going to end up having to go through that damn shithole and cut out the ‘dead wood’. If we don’t, our country might eventually go down with it.

Our sad devotion to this failed prohibition isn’t helping anything on either side of the border....

[hoosierham]

Americans who buy and use illegal drugs pay the killers of Mexican police.

We ought to either legalize drug use or make it a capital offense.The system of the past thirty years only benefits the criminals.

[SeeSharp]

Or we could just legalize marijuana and put the border cartels out of business overnight.

[UCFRoadWarrior]

As long as we have Commie Free Traders supporting NAFTA, the North American Union....and continued Open Borders/Illegal Alienism with Mexico....the USA will soon be like the third world latrine pit called Mexico.

Close the border, deport the illegals, end NAFTA, North Amer Union.... any support of these things is just aiding the Mexican drug cartels

[Cardhu]

Our sad devotion to this failed prohibition isn’t helping anything on either side of the border

I agree with you on that the WOD is a disaster.

[BooBoo1000]

Says quite a bit about the moral character of the Mexican Men in that area..

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Another city destroyed by the NYTimes and their incitement of drug violence.

[piytar]

“We ought to either legalize drug use or make it a capital offense.”

EXACTLY!!!

[clee1]

Hell... they pay me enough and provide me with my choice in weaponry/equipment, I’ll take that job.

[Cardhu]

What would the ball park figure be of “enough”?

[clee1]

I’d do it for say.... $200K/yr + expenses. I’d also want an APC and military weapons/equipment. ALSO, the authority to shoot first and ask questions later. Tell ya what, I’d either die spectacularly, of the druggies would go elsewhere.

[Judges Gone Wild]

The Mexican government needs to literally wage war on the drug cartels and gun these people down. That’s how law enforcement here took out Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie & Clyde. The cartels are already waging total war on civilization in Mexico.

[Ajnin]

Or we could just legalize marijuana and put the border cartels out of business overnight.

Wouldn't happen.

[Judges Gone Wild]

How has NAFTA contributed to the lawlessness in Mexico? Mexico has gotten as bad as Colombia in the ‘80s.

[dsc]

“Or we could just legalize marijuana and put the border cartels out of business overnight.”

So, if we legalize marijuana, they will stop smuggling heroin, cocaine, guns, and captives for the sex trade?

[agere_contra]

Free Traders don’t support illegal immigration, neither do they support trade in illegal drugs.

You’ve been told this before: but you refuse to listen.

[seemoAR]

What WOD? We should not try to fight a war with both hands tied behind our backs. Do you mean the fiasco that is being used to arm our civilian SWAT teams against us?

[jmacusa]

Mexico, where is your shame? For all their big mouths and meddling in our affairs,subverting our laws, trying to flood our country with their human refuse, Mexicans just don’t want to fix their country. Their refusal to do so will mean the end of ours. God gave Mexicans the land they live in and they despoiled God’s gift. Damn the all to Hell.