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An escalating turf fight between warring drug cartels in Mexico is spreading into the United States with federal officials warning that deadly shootouts and ambushes along the southwestern border pose a serious threat to both U.S. law enforcement and American citizens, according to a confidential multi-agency government report.

The men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol guarding the Southern land border come into constant contact with drug and human smugglers, criminals and migrants. Every so often, they even encounter Mexican military personnel making unauthorized incursions across the border into the United States. The most recent Mexican military incursion occurred last week on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation in Arizona. According to reports, the Mexican soldiers crossed the border in a military vehicle and held a Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before escaping back to Mexico. While the agent who was temporarily detained by the Mexican soldiers was...

MEXICO CITY — Assassins gunned down a senior police official in the border city of Ciudad Juarez early Saturday as Mexico's gangsters pressed their counteroffensive against the country's security forces. Municipal Police Chief Juan Antonio Roman was shot about 2 a.m. in front of his house on the outskirts of the city, which is across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Another of Roman's police commanders was shot shortly before he was killed. Roman's was one of more than 100 deaths, including those of at least 20 police officers, attributed to organized crime last week across Mexico. Among those killed...

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VALINDA - County officials Wednesday sealed a dilapidated home, which had underground tunnels and fortified rooms that might have housed illegal immigrants. Authorities cited several building code violations for the home's closure, including insufficient plumbing, exposed electrical wires and gas lines, windows that were not up to code and illegal structures. A Los Angeles County nuisance and abatement team - comprised of officials from the sheriff's, fire, public works and health departments - red-tagged the home as unliveable last week. More than a handful of people were evicted from the residence. Six months ago, several children were taken into custody...

Violence spikes in Mexico By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 18, 7:01 PM ET Rosalba Padilla thought the first shots were nothing but construction in her quiet, upper-class Tijuana neighborhood. It wasn't until she looked out her window and saw a sea of police that she realized the noise was gunfire. Down the street, at the Preschool of Happiness, director Gloria Rico activated the school's alarm, prompting police to rush into the building, their guns drawn. Rico said the children were terrified by the chaos. "Some were crying, one vomited and another wet his pants," she said Friday,...

Shooting outside downtown restaurant left 6 dead, 3 wounded RIO BRAVO — The Mexican army cordoned off Rio Bravo early Friday, one day after a shooting outside a downtown restaurant left three hospitalized and six dead, including prominent political figure Juan Antonio Guajardo Anzalduá. Soldiers searched vehicles leaving and entering the city, which sits in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas across the Rio Grande from Donna(Texas). Some residents of the city said the incident has frightened them, and the residents fear violence in the city could escalate. “We are afraid. We are very scared,” one Rio Bravo woman said in...

ABRAM -- A man who shot at a U.S. Border Patrol agent this weekend remains at large, federal authorities said Sunday. No injuries were reported in the Saturday attack, the details of which are still under investigation, local FBI spokesman Jorge Cisneros said. The incident occurred in the small border community of Abram, near Penitas, where an agent attempted to pull over a suspected smuggler around 10 a.m. The man attacked the agent, who fired at least two shots in self-defense. At some point during the stop, the alleged smuggler fired back but missed the agent. How many shots were...

HIDALGO COUNTY, Texas — Texas border sheriffs who won repeated praise from Gov. Rick Perry during his re-election bid for their front-line battles against violent crime now say they feel like they're on the back burner. Only a small portion of about $110 million approved by lawmakers this year for border security will go directly to border counties for day-to-day operations. Instead, about $93 million is going to state police and state-run operations, the big winners being the Texas Department of Public Safety and the governor's Department of Emergency Management. There are no guarantees that any additional law enforcement officers...

HIDALGO — The U.S. Border Patrol turned over a fugitive believed to have ties to a powerful Mexican paramilitary group to agents in that country Thursday, federal authorities said. Miguel Angel Hernandez Barrón was wanted for deserting the army and separate gun charges, said Reynosa-based Judge Ayala Santos, with the Instituto Nacional de Migración, a federal immigration court. Hernandez Barrón is believed to be the brother of Victor Manuel Hernandez Barrón, a top member of the Zetas and the purported personal bodyguard of alleged Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas, authorities said. Federal agents detained Miguel Hernandez Barrón on Wednesday in...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican police rearrested a former governor Thursday as he was released from prison with the intent of extraditing him to the United States to face cocaine-trafficking charges. Mario Villanueva, 58, who governed the Yucatan Peninsula state that includes the resorts of Cancun and the Riviera Maya from 1993 until 1999, was arrested at dawn, moments after finishing a six-year sentence here for money laundering. He faces federal charges in New York of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle as much as 200 tons of cocaine into the United States while governor of Quintana Roo state. Much...

ORO VALLEY, Ariz. - A power struggle between drug cartels in northern Mexico is "an outright war" and its bleed-over into Arizona is a major concern, law enforcement officials attending an annual Arizona-Sonora police conference say. Three weeks ago, some 50 gunmen arrived in a convoy in Cananea in northern Sonora and killed seven people, including five police officers, before Army troops and police pursued them, killing 16 according to Mexican authorities. The shootings have remained a prime topic of discussion among lawmen on both sides of the border, including at the 23rd conference of Policia International Sonora-Arizona meeting here...

Mexican soldiers jailed in killings ASSOCIATED PRESS June 6, 2007 MEXICO CITY – Nineteen Mexican soldiers have been sent to a military prison after troops allegedly killed two women and three children whose vehicle didn't stop at an army checkpoint, the Defense Ministry said yesterday. Advertisement The family was traveling to a funeral in a van Friday when it was ordered to stop at a checkpoint near the village of La Joya in Sinaloa state, local media said. When the van failed to stop, soldiers reportedly opened fire. Police identified the dead as Alicia Esparza Parra, 17; Griselda Galaviz Barraza,...

NUEVO LAREDO — Nearly 200 additional soldiers and AFI agents descended on the Sister City on Sunday, barely two days after four men — including a federal highway patrol officer — were found executed with warnings from one drug cartel to another.Neither the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (known as AFI, an agency similar to the United States’ FBI), nor the federal Defense Department would provide information about the operation, but new checkpoints were seen in various parts of the city. Witnesses saw military vehicles rumbling into the city Sunday afternoon as they crossed the 26-kilometer marker of the National Highway....

Can a new film help derail the current push for amnesty for illegal aliens? Chris Burgard’s new movie “Border” is so good that it could dramatically affect the public debate. But because you can’t expect the major media to cover this shocking and poignant film, the challenge will be to make sure millions of Americans get a chance to see it. It tells the story of a war—a war just as important, if not more so, than the one in Iraq. On April 23, 2007, as part of the Hold Their Feet to the Fire rally of 2007, an event...

Work is under way on the construction of a security wall that will surround a parking lot used by Cameron County state district judges and the district attorney. County workers on Monday used a backhoe to break up the concrete in the parking lot at the Cameron County Courthouse on Harrison Street as they readied it for rebar. The construction will take from 60 to 90 days depending on the weather, said County Administrator Pete Sepulveda Jr. Although the estimated cost of the wall is $240,000, Sepulveda anticipates it will be “much less than that” because the work is being...

MEXICO CITY — Federal police said Friday they have arrested two drug smugglers who strained Mexico's relations with the United States by disguising themselves as Mexican soldiers and confronting Texas sheriff's deputies and state police. Oscar Alonso Candelaria Escajeda and Ivan Gandara Trejo, were detained Thursday in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, according to a news release from the federal public security secretary. It said that the two disguised themselves as Mexican soldiers and crossed the Rio Grande into Hudspeth County, Texas, in January 2006. Texas state police and sheriff's deputies spotted three vehicles, including...

WASHINGTON — A conference of U.S. circuit court judges is recommending that Congress approve three permanent judgeships along the Texas-Mexico border to handle an increase in immigration and drug trafficking cases. The Judicial Conference is asking for 38 new permanent jurists nationwide, and 14 temporary positions to alleviate a backlog of cases. Ten of the permanent judgeships would go to Southwest border states, where immigration and drug trafficking cases exceed 50 percent of all criminal filings. The Judicial Conference also recommends four permanent and one temporary judgeship in Arizona, and one permanent and one temporary judgeship in New Mexico. "The...

ACAPULCO, Mexico — A video purportedly showing the beheading of a drug cartel hit man appeared on video-sharing Web site YouTube, and its makers called on Mexicans to kill more members of the gang. The video appeared as the rival Gulf and Sinaloa gangs wage a bloody battle for trafficking routes and President Felipe Calderon is taking on organized crime with thousands of troops sent to drug-plagued areas. "Do something for your country, kill a Zeta!" read a written message opening the five-minute video posted Friday. The Zetas are believed to be ex-army operatives serving as hit men for the...

MEXICO CITY — Nearly 500 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars so far this year, according to media reports here, despite a crackdown on the illicit trade by President Felipe Calderon. The dead include dozens of police officers, the daughter of a retired Army general, and a suspected cartel hit man in the northern city of Monterrey left with a knife sticking out of his chest and a message to local officials affixed to his body. "Attorney General: Don't be a fool," the note said. It accused local officials of protecting Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa...

A bank robbery at the IBC at Wal-Mart South Saturday night ended with the suspects shooting a police car, then racing to El Portal where they escaped into the brush along the Rio Grand and swam to the Mexican shore carrying bags of cash.Tow trucks pulled out a dark-colored Toyota Tundra out of the river late Saturday while a Border Patrol helicopter, Webb County Sheriff’s deputies, Texas Rangers, and other law enforcement officials oversaw the scene. When the car was pulled out it was surrounded by law enforcement officers in full protective gear. Police say at least two men with...

MONTERREY, Mexico — In another assault suggesting that organized criminals have declared war on area law enforcement, two police officers were killed by gunmen late Wednesday in an industrial suburb near here. Ramiro Calvillo Hernandez and Martha Delia Guillén Moreno, both in their early 30s, were ambushed while attending to a stranded motorist. The killings brought to three the number of officers killed on duty in the Monterrey area in the past 10 days. The incident happened just hours after President Felipe Calderón, speaking at a factory inauguration in the same part of town, said his government "is doing everything...

BISBEE — The State Department on Wednesday confirmed receipt of a diplomatic note from the Mexican government protesting the shooting death of an illegal border crosser near Naco, but said it was withholding response pending the outcome of an investigation. “It’s something that I understand the FBI is conducting an investigation into and obviously, we’d leave it to them and to the Border Patrol to determine what, if any, response is appropriate based on that investigation,” Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey said after being asked about the note at a daily press briefing. The note, presented by the Mexican Embassy in...

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Mexican drug gangs are armed with assault weapons bought at gun shows in the United States and smuggled across the border, a report says. AK-47s and similar weapons have shown up in greater numbers since the U.S. Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, the Arizona Republic reported. "There is a direct relationship between the flow of these weapons and the explosion of violence," Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexican deputy attorney general for organized crime, said. At a gun show in Tucson, sellers told the Republic that as private individuals they do not have to...

McALLEN — The voice on the phone demanded that a large sum of money be wired to a Mexican bank account number. There was no name attached to the voice, but its owner had clearly done his research. “Basically, he said he was a professional hitman and he knew who our family was and where we lived,” said a relative of the prominent McAllen businessman who had picked up the phone. The family has asked to remain anonymous out of concern for their safety. “Unless he was paid within three hours, one of the family members would be ‘picked up,’...

NUEVO LAREDO – Unknown attackers ambushed two officers in the Mexican Army Intelligence Service in the southwest part of the city, killing a captain and injuring a colonel, officials said Thursday.The attack occurred near 7 p.m. Wednesday night as the two Army officers were driving on the highway to the airport near its intersection with Avenida Dr. Mier. Civil authorities identified the deceased as Capt. Agustín Moisés Salazar, but did not give the officer’s hometown. Meanwhile, the injured colonel was taken to a military hospital in Mexico City. His name was not released. A rare official report of the attack...

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales toured the World Trade Bridge on Wednesday, announcing a new effort to fight drug traffickers on the border.“We’re concerned about violence in Mexico spilling into the U.S.,” Gonzales said. Gonzales announced $300,000 would be spent on a new federal drug taskforce that would fight drug cartels. Cuellar said the money is a good start, but we need to do more, like adding federal prosecutors to handle the border’s busy drug and immigration dockets. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said he asked Gonzales in September to visit because of recent increases in border violence, and he...

In a story that should have rang alarm bells in every newsroom across the nation, armed Mexican entered the United States and attacked unarmed National Guard troops working at a border patrol post near the US-Mexican border. The troops had to retreat to safety. Not surprisingly, the news story received scant coverage by the mainstream news media and hardly a mention on the Fox News Channel. It's a story that should outrage all Americans including President George W. Bush. Unfortunately, President Bush and his Administration did not even comment on this vicious attack on unarmed US troops as well as...

LAREDO — In the face of the impunity under which Mexican drug cartels operate along the border, police here secured an arrest warrant for Miguel Treviño Morales, identified as a high-ranking regional Gulf Cartel leader, in connection with a 2006 double homicide. A police official confirmed Treviño was a wanted man after his name appeared in a probable cause affidavit for another defendant in the same case. Juan "Cordless" Ramos, 24, was arrested Tuesday in Laredo in connection with the April 2, 2006, shooting deaths of Jesus Maria Resendez, 36, and his nephew Mariano Resendez, 15, just inside the city...

REYNOSA, Mexico — A popular regional entertainer, whose lyrics about love and drug trafficking were backed by blaring horns, was killed in gangland style with two colleagues here Saturday, about a 100 yards from the stage he had just performed on at an annual fair. Unknown assailants unleashed a barrage of gunfire into two sides of the 2007 black Suburban the victims were leaving in around 3 a.m., causing passers-by to run for cover in this large city across the border from McAllen, police said. Valentin Elizalde, a "banda" singer in his mid-20s from the western state of Sinaloa, his...

CORPUS CHRISTI - A former Corpus Christi police officer has strong words of caution for anyone planning a holiday trip to Mexico. Retired Corpus Christi police Sergeant O.V. Morales and his wife were the victims of a violent carjacking last week in Nuevo Laredo. The federal government continues to warn travelers about the dangers along the border and the warning is for good reason. Morales is constantly helping others to protect themselves. Now, he's doing that by sharing a story from across the border. The black belt was driving to a wedding in Monterrey last Wednesday night. When he and...

Border Patrol agents, “trapped” between two layers of border fencing could be sitting ducks for Mexican drug smugglers and coyotes, warns T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. A 700-mile double-layer fence approved for construction along the U.S.-Mexico border, including a Brownsville-to-Laredo stretch, makes patrolling agents vulnerable to attacks. “The agents get trapped,” Bonner said, adding that the gates to exit the fence corridor are about a quarter-mile apart. “You can see where the gates are. It’s very clear. The smugglers know that there is no exit for our agents.” The agency does not keep statistics on incidents...

MONTERREY, Mexico - A lawyer who defended four alleged drug traffickers was shot to death Wednesday, a day after he announced he was leaving the case for lack of payment. Carlos Martínez Gracia was shot seven times and died instantly around 8:30 a.m. local time as he arrived at his downtown office, police said. Witnesses told reporters a lone gunman shot Martínez Gracia at least five times. According to Agencia Reforma, an autopsy performed on Martínez Gracia revealed that he died of at seven bullet wounds, including two shots to the head. Martínez Gracia's body was found face down next...

After all the discussion about immigration this year, what Congress finally seems to have accomplished is to authorize a big double-layer fence with a road down the middle for Border Patrol agents to monitor. If that's what it comes down to, that's a shame. Illegal immigration is a broad issue that deserves a more serious approach than constructing what is likely to amount to little more than an expensive and ineffective symbol. The border between the United States and Mexico is about 2,000 miles long. A 700-mile fence would cover less than one-third of that distance - and it might...

Valley leaders express disappointment following vote HARLINGEN - "Horrible," "wrong," "crazy" and "extremely disappointing" were just a few of the words some local residents used about Congress' approval of a border fence. The Senate on Friday authorized 700 miles of new fencing on the southern border. One of its longest spans would stretch 200 miles from Brownsville to Laredo. The fence bill was passed by the House two weeks ago, and with the Senate's authorization Friday, the measure is now on its way to President Bush. "It's like when East Germany built a wall between West Berlin and East Berlin,"...

NUEVO LAREDO — For all the beefed-up enforcement along the border, the militia-like group of drug cartel enforcers known as the Zetas appears stronger than ever, a result of better training, successful recruiting in Central America and continued desertions from the Mexican military, U.S. intelligence officials say.The Zetas have again become entrenched in Nuevo Laredo, and they practically control the movement of people through an intricate web of spies, checkpoints and skillful use of technology, provoking an extraordinary cross-border human exodus, U.S. and Mexican authorities say. Last year, U.S. and Mexican authorities reported that the number of Zetas was falling...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — For some time now, this city's gunfire has found its echo in silence. Even the border city's freewheeling and competitive news media — until this year the noisy barometers of an ongoing struggle between two drug cartels — have abandoned their traditional role. A Dangerous Beat At crime scenes, local cops threaten to take reporters' notes, film. State police do not issue news releases or comment on gunbattles or suspected drug-related crimes. The attorney general's office will not comment on crime. Cartels have threatened reporters directly if they write critical stories. Some journalists spy for the...

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president-elect says murder and mayhem fueled by drug smuggling have overwhelmed the governments of the nation’s capital and key states across the country. Felipe Calderón said the wave of bloodshed knows no politics; it is ravaging state governments controlled by each of Mexico’s three major parties. He singled out Mexico City, the northern states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, the southern state of Guerrero and his home state of Michoacan, as being especially hard-hit. “It seems to me that drug violence has overwhelmed the governments of the PAN, the PRI and the PRD,” Calderón said in a...

Mayor Raul Salinas praised the Laredo Police Department for a quick arrest in response to gunmen running through a Target Greatland on Monday night, but as of Tuesday evening, no details had been released.Two men were taken into custody at the scene, but city officials remain tight-lipped on the specifics, and Monday night police would not confirm an arrest had been made. At a news conference Tuesday morning, Police Chief Agustin Dovalina III said details were still sketchy and he would not divulge specifics so as not to jeopardize the investigation. “I am very proud to boast about the fact...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — A wild, 30-minute shootout reportedly involving bazookas and a grenade invaded the streets of an upscale neighborhood here, though details were few. Mexican and U.S. sources familiar with the incident Friday night said three people were killed and four injured, but neither local nor federal officials would give an official version of events. No newspaper in Nuevo Laredo printed an article about the incident, which according to sources involved a bazooka, a grenade and assault rifles. News of it was published only in the newspaper El Norte of Monterrey and the Web site EnLineaDirecta.info. El Norte...

WASHINGTON — Much of the 700-mile fence that the Senate began considering Wednesday would be built along the Texas-Mexico border, with one of the largest sections stretching 200 miles from Laredo to Brownsville.The fence was declared a step toward border security by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who previously supported a comprehensive Senate bill that gave a shot at citizenship to the 11 million to 12 million people living in the country illegally. The new proposal met resistance from some of the state’s members in Congress and border officials. “I oppose the wall,” said Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas, who spent...

Mexico City, Sep 18 (EFE).- Mexico said Monday that a recent U.S. complaint about surging violence along countries' shared border "was not well-considered" and it had taken great effort to convince Washington that security in the region is a shared responsibility. Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez thus presented the government's reaction to a statement issued last Thursday by U.S. Ambassador Antonio Garza, who said that growing crime in Mexico was affecting bilateral relations and complained about corruptikon in some of the Mexican security forces. Derbez told radio program "Enfoque" that "on occasion, statements come out (from U.S. officials) that...

Jeffers MacArthur DodgeCordially Invites You to the Los Angeles Premiere ofSee the Trailer Thursday August 31, 2006The AMC Theater Burbank Town Center 8 .Reception* 5:30pm andMovie 7:30pm *The Reception is a cash bar and Romano'sserves great Italian Food, so arrive hungry. Romano's Macaroni Grill Restaurant102 E. Magnolia Blvd. Burbank, CA 91502-1715 (818) 729-9405. Producers VIP Dinner Party 9:00pm (First 5 Only)   For more info about this movie premierecall (310)841-0676 or Email: BorderWar@VoteDodge.comFundraiser to Elect Jeffers Dodge 2006 #1282661

The head of the Border Patrol said Wednesday he doesn’t want members of the Minuteman Project working near his agents when they come to the Laredo area next month.The civilian group, which reports illegal immigrants to immigration authorities, is expected to start patrolling the border in the Laredo area on Sept. 11 and continue through Nov. 7. Acting Chief Patrol Agent Reynaldo Garza of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Laredo Sector said he can’t prevent the civilians from coming to Laredo, but said they won’t be allowed to interfere with official business. John Cristian Esquivel, deputy chief, said the...

EL PASO — An annual Border Security Conference here didn't attract the crowds of a Star Trek convention or the attention that a medical convention might, but maybe it should have. The more than 100 participants from the private and public sectors discussed ways to secure our country's borders, citing specific examples and models, a topic of importance at the national level. The third annual conference, with the theme "Security through regional, national and international cooperation," was hosted jointly by the University of Texas at El Paso and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso. Underscoring the importance of the conference, two...

NUEVO LAREDO — After a respite of nearly two weeks in the violence that has plagued the Sister City, the head of the local emergency headquarters disappeared under ominous circumstances and a man was found dead in an apparently unrelated incident. C-4 chief José Luis Jácome Moreno, 60, was heading to work Tuesday morning when he was picked up by unknown men at the bus stop near his home in the Infonavit neighborhood, officials said. The panic button on his police radio was punched at about 6:20 a.m., alerting C-4 as well as other law enforcement agencies of an officer...

RIO BRAVO — Empty cocaine packages littered the tall grass like candy wrappers along the bank of the Rio Grande in El Cenizo, a small but growing city 15 miles southeast of Laredo. On closer inspection, each of the 30 or so packages revealed layers — foil, plastic kitchen wrap and brown packing tape. Two large flour sacks were discarded nearby, each with a car seatbelt ingeniously tied diagonally across it for no-hassle transporting. The drugs were long gone, their wrappings not just evidence of a successful crime but another artifact in an outdoor museum of discarded clothes, inner tubes...

Officers outgunned by criminals from Mexico, he testifies MISSION - Drug and smuggling gangs controlling Mexican border territory are proving an increasingly violent and sophisticated threat to Texas border law enforcement, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzales told a state Senate committee Wednesday. "The weapons we possess are like water guns compared to what they have," Gonzales said. "They're trying to scare us away from the border." Gonzales, representing the Texas Border Sheriffs' Coalition, was one of more than a dozen witnesses to testify before the Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security. The panel was in South Texas for a hearing...

REYNOSA - Mexican police are scrambling to solve three unrelated murders in three days that include a decapitated woman and two gunmen tied to drug traffickers who may have fled to the United States. Police found the latest victim, a decapitated woman, early Thursday morning. The body was lying in the middle of Calle Rio Sabinas, near the corner of the road to Rivareña, said Leonel Lozano Gutierrez, head of the Tamaulipas police in Reynosa. A truck ran over what appeared to be a pile of trash at 1 a.m., Gutierrez said. It was the woman's body covered in a...

NUEVO LAREDO — Another group of officers from the Special Police of Tamaulipas arrived here Friday night.Known as PET, their purpose is to deal with robberies and similar crimes. The 60 officers were sent by the Tamaulipas state governor to supplement local police efforts. Crime statistics in Nuevo Laredo have shown an increase in robberies, thus the response to send these officers from the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. Besides the 60 officers, the crime-fighting effort includes two automobiles, 10 pick-up trucks and one armored car. The group had not started work as of the weekend. A municipal police officer, who...