Uvalle's cousin, Ricky Martinez, 20, of Pharr, who has a tattoo of a tear below his left eye, stood...
A tear tattoo? Isn't that an MS-13 trademark indicating that the bearer has killed someone? And Pharr is in Texas...
What the hey?
Posted on 07/25/2005 10:22:34 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — One of five police slain here since last Sunday lay in a casket below a fresh layer of dirt as a small crowd of family, but no uniformed officers, gathered under a white tent, umbrellas or no shade at all.
Except for a woman who cried "Oh, my God," and the constant, melting bawl of the officer's oldest son near the end of the service, it was a quiet burial following another violent death.
Someone attacked officer Ricardo Uvalle Escobedo, 33, as he drove to work early Tuesday on a typically busy street. He stopped and tried to run, but was cut down by at least a dozen bullets from an assailant brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle, according to a news report.
"The reality is, officers are being hunted," said Juan Antonio Jara Benavides, interim supervisor of the local state of Tamaulipas attorney general's office.
Uvalle, like his colleagues, had been forbidden to function as a police officer since at least one officer shot a federal agent June 11 in the wake of the killing of the police chief.
A short roll-call ceremony at the Police Department, where the dead officer's name is yelled out before a hearse takes the casket to a graveyard, is one of the few duties city cops can do anymore. Many play cards, dominos, or just wait out their shift in the shade with empty holsters. They can't stray away from their precincts as the investigation into possible ties to organized crime continues.
Several kidnap victims who recently were rescued from two houses here have told authorities that municipal police officers were involved in their abductions.
The brazen shooting of Uvalle was part of a particularly bloody week in this city across the Rio Grande from Laredo that's plagued by drug violence blamed on rival gangs. As of Saturday, the death toll was 99.
Uvalle was hit in the head, arms, abdomen and chest. No one has been arrested in the incident, or in the other 12 police killings so far this year.
Police are killed so often that many of their colleagues have lost count of the casualties and their chief doesn't attend every funeral.
Officials have said many city cops work as lookouts for the Gulf Cartel, which is alleged to control the lucrative drug smuggling routes into South Texas.
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman of the Sinaloa Cartel and his allies are vying for the turf, which is believed to be part of the reason for the police deaths.
An editorial cartoon this week in the daily newspaper El Mañana pictured a cop waving a white flag from within the eye of a hurricane.
"The truth is we are scared ... whose turn is it?" a police supervisor playing dominoes said Thursday night with three other department veterans. They all asked that their names not be printed.
Most of the city officers recently killed were hit on their way to or coming from work, unarmed. A state ministerial police investigator, Jose Noel Vives, 34, was gunned down in his truck last Sunday.
He was among dozens of state investigators transferred off the border region in June as part of a restructuring plan for public security.
Officials said he was here visiting family.
None of the police shooting cases have been solved, partly because witnesses are too scared to come forward, said Java of the attorney general's office.
"They don't help us because they don't want problems — 'I didn't see anything,'" he said, voicing a common refrain.
Though federal and state authorities are patrolling the streets during the ongoing Police Department probe, robberies and assaults have increased 40 to 50 percent, he said. The killings continue.
A stack of paper with information on six homicide victims lay on Java's desk Friday, including a 20-year-old woman who was shot, torched and dumped in the brush.
"Sometimes it's one a day, or two," he said. "Then it will be quiet, but then maybe three bodies turn up."
U.S. State Department officials recently proposed a plan to Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernández Flores and Mayor Daniel Treviño Peña to help restructure the city Police Department, which doesn't investigate crime, but is charged with preventing it.
Nuevo Laredo-based U.S. Consul Michael Yoder said the proposal suggests hiring one or two U.S. consultants who are non-government employees with law enforcement training throughout Latin America to help reorganize the department.
"It's just an attempt to help," Yoder said of the proposal that is pending approval by the Mexican government.
Meanwhile, a State Department travel advisory warns Americans to take caution when traveling to the border region, specifically in Nuevo Laredo. The advisory is set to expire July 29 and it's uncertain if it will remain, Yoder said.
The consensus among a small group of gravediggers and groundskeepers at the cemetery where Uvalle lay is that those who are shot are involved with organized crime.
"They don't deserve this, but if they are involved they have to know the price is death," said Juan Ramírez Rodriguez, 37.
Uvalle's cousin, Ricky Martinez, 20, of Pharr, who has a tattoo of a tear below his left eye, stood at a distance from the funeral.
"He's got a family. He's got four kids," he said. "It's a sad tragedy and it ain't gonna stop. Think about it. All these cops dying.
"It ain't gonna stop. It ain't gonna stop."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- jbogan@express-news.net
Ummmm, where? Mexican side of the border or US side?
i wonder if it will ever be clear the relative roles of the NL police, the cartels, and the federal government (mexican) in this apparently serious turf battle.
Ummmm, where? Mexican side of the border or US side?
-----
How can you ask such a ridiculous question -- THERE IS NO BORDER!!!
Mexican. I used to do LEO work in West Teas and Juarez and Peidra Negras are sh__ holes.
NL ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
Uvalle's cousin, Ricky Martinez, 20, of Pharr, who has a tattoo of a tear below his left eye, stood...
A tear tattoo? Isn't that an MS-13 trademark indicating that the bearer has killed someone? And Pharr is in Texas...
What the hey?
Tear tattoo for a kill near the eye has been a gang tattoo for decades, way before MS-13. Might go all the way back to MS 3.1 first edition.
I see...I'm so ignorant! Thanks for the education.
They are in the midst of a major power struggle with the cartel. The locals and Feds down there can and have been corupted by the cash the cartels offer. Killing the MexFed wasn't a smart thing to do, so the locals have to not only watch the cartel people, but the Feds.
Mexico City will send in troops before long to calm it all down and get the money from the cartel flowing again.
I'm not sure, but those tatts have been around for years. I think it signifies a dead homie. I've seen young women sporting them as well.
Hang 'em High!
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Be Ever Vigilant!
Minutemen Patriots ~ Bump!
I know you may think it's a lesson in futility but this step must be taken and as often as possible. It takes a lot of kicking and screaming now days to get anyone to notice.
Please send these messages and make sure they hear you loud and clear. We will not stand idly by while our nation is held hostage because of their inability to secure our borders.
Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no stinkin' badges!
Be positive!
I try... I really do. Here's a positive comment... NAFTA, CAFTA and the FTAA will all stimulate our economy and make everyone rich! Ok, at least that's what they want you to believe.
You know honestly I think "W" wants to let more immigrants in so he will have excuses to beef up the FBI, CIA, et al and make government bigger so he can keep us safe. Aw heck, he doesn't care. Why should he? He's the president for God's sake. He doesn't have to worry about illegal immigrants threatening him.
The significance or meaning of that particular tattoo varies with time and from place to place. Originally each tear drop represented a murder committed. More recently it has been used to represent the family or gang members who have died while a prisoner is locked up. It's more a prison tattoo than something that's gang-specific (though there's obviously lots of overlap).
No idea what it signifies in todays world...
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