Mexican officers charged in Felix probe

AP on Yahoo ^ | 8/19/06 | Ioan Grillo - ap

[NormsRevenge]

MEXICO CITY - Mexican prosecutors announced Saturday that they have charged two policemen with protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang, whose alleged kingpin was recently arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Large numbers of Mexican police officers are believed to have helped the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix gang move tons of Colombian cocaine and Mexican marijuana to the United States, but few officials have been charged.

Officers Jorge Alberto Perez and Salvador Cebreros face organized crime charges and also are being investigated for involvement in the killing of four of their colleagues, who were shot dead in July, the attorney general's office said in a statement. They are being held by federal authorities in Baja California.

Both Perez and Cebreros work for the police department of Rosarito, about 15 miles south of the U.S. border at San Diego.

"They received money from members of the Arellano Felix criminal organization in exchange for giving them protection," the attorney general's office said in the statement.

Local police and prosecutors said Saturday evening that they did not know whether the arrested officers had lawyers or other representatives.

The Coast Guard captured Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, 36, when he was fishing in international waters Monday. On Friday, he pleaded not guilty in San Diego to racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to import and distribute controlled substances and money laundering.

Known in Mexico as "El Tigrillo," or "Little Tiger," Arellano Felix is accused of taking over the Tijuana clan almost by default in 2002 when the gang lost two of his older brothers: Benjamin, who was jailed, and Ramon, who was killed.

The Arellano Felix gang emerged as a drug powerhouse in the 1980s in Tijuana but its influence has waned lately as a new generation of gangsters in a cartel known as the Federacion rose to prominence.

[NormsRevenge]

This image provide by the Department of Justice shows drug kingpin, Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, in DEA custody as he arrives in San Diego Thursday Aug. 17, 2006. Arellano Felix pleaded not guilty to federal charges of moving tons of cocaine and marijuana along the California-Mexico border.(AP Photo/Department of Justice)

[NormsRevenge]

The U.S. Coast Guard ship Monsoon, foreground, returns to San Diego Bay in front the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006 in San Diego. The crew of the Monsoon detained suspected drug cartel leader Francisco Javier Arellano Felix and others in a fishing boat in the waters off of Baja California. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)

[onyx]

Large numbers of Mexican police officers are believed to have helped the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix gang move tons of Colombian cocaine and Mexican marijuana to the United States, but few officials have been charged.

Nah, really? Mexican cops on the take?

[NormsRevenge]

Members of a special police unit stand guard outside a Mexico City police station, where two children from the family of Javier Arellano Felix, leader of one of Mexico's most feared drug cartels, are being held August 18, 2006. Mexico will ask the United States to extradite Arellano Felix, who was arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard this week, along with 10 other people believed to be part of his organisation, the attorney general's office said on Thursday. REUTERS/Henry Romero (MEXICO)

[HiTech RedNeck]

Known in Mexico as "El Tigrillo," or "Little Tiger," Arellano Felix

Felix, the wonderful cat.

[freepatriot32]

well if you legalise drugs there would be no trafficing and no corrupt cops helping the cartels its a win win for everyone invlolved the mexicans would have more cops on the street not in jail and the american people would hgave freedom and liberty and the full protection of every one of the first ten amendments who could argue that that would be for the best other the small less inrusive government republicans ?

Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here

[NormsRevenge]

I know,, shocking revelation about Mexican cops on the take and in on the killing, huh? lol

I hope he had a valid fishing license.

Too bad they didn't just use him as bait.. but even low life scumbags like him have rights, yaknow..

[onyx]

Honest Mexican cops have to be a minority. I mean that seriously too.

[mugs99]

"Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds – cannabis (marijuana), poppies (heroin), coca (cocaine) – or dirt-cheap pharmaceuticals and “precursors,” used, for instance, in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Yet today, marijuana is worth as much as gold, heroin more than uranium, cocaine somewhere in between. It is the United States' prohibition of these drugs that has spawned an ever-expanding international industry of torture, murder and corruption. In other words, we are the source of Mexico's “drug problem.”

The remedy is as obvious as it is urgent: legalization.
Regulated legalization of all drugs – with stiffened penalties for driving impaired or furnishing to kids – would bring an immediate halt to the violence. How? By (1) dramatically reducing the costs of these drugs, (2) shifting massive enforcement resources to prevention and treatment, and (3) driving drug dealers out of business: no product, no profit, no incentive."...Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police chief.
.

[Bangupjob]

Apparently there were enough of them to ensure that Javier got busted. As for the puny underlings, they are easy to take down and roll up once the head is off the snake. Let's hope every dirty cop in Mexico gets busted.

[winston2]

Let's hope every dirty cop in Mexico gets busted.

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Let's be real.

So you make it tougher for Mexicans to smuggle cannabis to U.S.

The Mexicans come over our border and grow it here - then live in a house better than yours. Why is this possible? Because your federal government takes billions of your tax dollars and runs programs that effectively create a price support system on marijuana.

There is an ever increasing demand here for cannabis because people son's of Vice Presidents to plow hands like it.

The old scare tactics the fed.s used for decades have been exposed for the lies that they always were. Among the population of the U.S. - most citizens know at least one family member who uses cannabis - and doesn't rat them out to the police. How in the world can a nation enforce laws under those circumstances?