The drug cartels threaten to remake the U.S. in Mexico’s image

June 14, 7:25 AMNorfolk Crime ExaminerDave Gibson

Previous Next

11 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Norfolk Crime Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

 

Despite the lack of concern on the part of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, as well as the inaction from President Obama, the drug cartels which now control much of Mexico, now have major operations within the United States. If our government continues their current strategy, the entire U.S. will soon become a war zone.

In November 2008, three Mexican gang members disguised as police officers burst into a Las Vegas home, hogtied a woman and her boyfriend, and kidnapped the woman’s 6 year old son Cole Puffinburger.

Apparently, the boy’s grandfather Fred Tinnenmeyer, owed the cartel several thousand dollars. The little boy was released three days later.

Shortly after the kidnapping, Tinnenmeyer was arrested by federal authorities. The kidnappers are still at large.

In August 2008, Reuters reported on an American businesswoman identified only as “Veronica,“ who had been kidnapped a few months earlier. As she was exiting her car in California, two men forced her into the passenger seat at gunpoint, then shoved her teenage daughter into the back seat and took the pair to Mexico.

The kidnappers drove through the border checkpoint in San Diego, bringing the mother and daughter to Tijuana. The two were held captive for a month until their family paid the ransom of $100,000.

Veronica said of her experience: “We got an automatic green light to go through Mexican customs and then we were blindfolded and taken to a house in Tijuana. They held a pistol to my stomach all the time we were in the car.”

Mexican intelligence officials claim that Veronica is only one of about 30 Americans abducted in southern California and taken to Tijuana since last November.

Mexican officials have been aware of the growing number U.S. abductions for some time. Baja California State Attorney General Rommel Moreno recently told Reuters news agency: “Transnational kidnappings are a new way of operating for these criminal groups, mainly in California, and so we are seeking collaboration with the United States.”

In 2007, a chilling incident took place in Pearsall, Texas, just outside of San Antonio. A tow-truck driver was kidnapped and taken back to Mexico by enforcers working for drug traffickers.

Apparently, the traffickers were angry at the loss of drug proceeds they had hidden away in a spare tire of a car which had been towed from an accident on Interstate 35, the main road from San Antonio to the city of Laredo.

In April 2008, a federal grand jury indicted the five assailants for the kidnapping.

Prosecutors claim that the men were offered $15,000 to bring the tow-truck driver to Mexico. They lured the driver to Frio County Regional Park in Pearsall after phoning in a fake request for a tow, they then abducted and brought him across the border to Piedras Negras. The indictment describes the driver being “tortured and interrogated about the missing spare tire” for a week.

The driver’s boss was phoned by the kidnappers and told that if he did not return their money, that they would “cut the head off of the driver.”

In 2002, members of Mexico’s Arellano Felix crime organization set up shop in the San Diego area, and began a kidnapping and extortion operation. Fearing reprisals, their victims failed to report the incidents to police, and went undetected for years. During that time, the gang used their profits to purchase weapons, police uniforms, badges, even police lights for their vehicles.

In 2007, Los Palillos were finally busted by local and federal law enforcement.

Police claim that the group, known as Los Palillos (the Toothpicks), murdered at least a dozen people, committed 20 kidnappings and transported huge amounts of methamphetamine to Kansas City, Mo., to help finance their organization’s ongoing war with the Tijuana Cartel in Tijuana, all of course, from San Diego County.

In August 2008, the FBI’s San Diego field office admitted that they were currently investigating the kidnapping of 16 U.S. residents who were held in Tijuana between October 2007 and May 2008, including many of whom were abducted in San Diego.

According to the Phoenix Police Department, as of mid November, there had been 266 kidnappings and 300 home invasions during 2008. However, police estimated the actual numbers to be closer to three times as high as the reported figures. Many victims fail to report such crimes, out of fear from further retribution from the notoriously violent cartels.

Phoenix Police Lt. Lori Burgett told CBS News: “It wasn’t uncommon to have a new kidnapping case coming into our offices on a daily basis.”

An April 5, 2009 Charlotte Observer article (“Charlotte emerges as hub for potent heroin”) described the growing heroin industry in North Carolina which is being run by local cells of cartel members.

Since 2005, large heroin seizures have grown in Charlotte by and incredible 233 percent, from 214 grams to 714. A single dose is usually one 10th of a gram.

The Drug Enforcement Administration reports that during 2008, heroin seizures across North Carolina increased by 77 percent over the previous year.

The Mexican cartels are sending massive amounts of heroin into North Carolina which is produced from opium from poppy fields throughout western Mexico. With Charlotte now as the main distribution center for Mexico’s black tar heroin, the drug is more than plentiful inside the city, and the cost is a mere $12.50 a dose.

That tremendous supply streaming into Charlotte, is actually fueling a rapidly growing demand and is having a devastating effect on many of the city’s residents.

The McCleod Addictive Disease Center in Charlotte reports that they now see 15 to 20 new patients everyday, seeking treatment for heroin addiction. The center’s program manager Ronnie Bradley says that in 2008, that number was only seven to eight.

Charlotte Police Captain Mike Adams told the Charlotte Observer that heroin addiction among the city’s youth population is becoming a major problem. Capt. Adams said: “A lot of what we deal with is teens is high school.”

On April 11, 2008, the U.S. Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center released a situation report, illustrating just how widespread the activities of Mexican drug cartels have become throughout the U.S.

The sobering assessment read: ”Mexican DTO’s (Drug Trafficking Organizations) are the most pervasive organizational threat to the United States. They are active in every region of the country and dominate the illicit drug trade in every area except the Northeast.

Mexican DTO’s are expanding their operations in the Northeast and have developed cooperative relationships with DTO’s in that area in order to gain a larger share of the Northeastern drug market.”

According to the 2008 report, Mexican drug traffickers were operating in 195 U.S. cities. In 129 of those cities, law enforcement determined that those traffickers are directly affiliated with one or more of the four major Mexican drug cartels.

The Justice Department report identified 82 U.S. cities with trafficking operations directed by the Federation Cartel; 43 cities with operations being directed by the Gulf Coast Cartel; 44 cities with operations being directed by the Juarez Cartel; and finally, operations in 20 cities under the control of the Tijuana Cartel.

The Justice Department recently reported that the Mexican drug cartels now operate in 230 U.S. cities.

What follows is a small sampling of the American cities in the report, and the identified cartels operating within those cities:

Phoenix, AZ…Federation, Juarez

Tucson, AZ…Federation, Juarez

Little Rock, AK…Federation

Los Angeles, CA…Federation, Tijuana

San Diego, CA…Federation, Tijuana

Colorado Springs, CO…Federation, Juarez

Jacksonville, FL…Gulf Coast

Orlando, FL…Federation, Gulf Coast

Atlanta, GA…Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez

Chicago, IL…Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez

Fort Wayne, IN…Federation

Wichita, KS…Juarez

Shreveport, LA…Federation

Boston, MA…Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez, Tijuana

Hattiesburg, MS…Federation

Omaha, NE…Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez, Tijuana

Buffalo, NY…Gulf Coast

New York City, NY…federation, Gulf Coast, Tijuana

Charlotte, NC…Federation, Juarez

Raleigh, NC…Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez

Akron, OH…Federation

Cleveland, OH…Federation, Tijuana

Tulsa, OK…Federation

Philadelphia, PA…Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez, Tijuana

Providence, RI…Federation

Sioux Falls, SD…Gulf Coast, Tijuana

El Paso, TX…Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez

Fort Worth, TX…Federation, Gulf Coast

Waco, TX…Juarez

Arlington, VA…Federation

Rock Springs, WY…Juarez

Incidentally, the Justice Department report listed a total of 30 cities in Texas where cartel operations have been identified.

If the U.S. federal government does not soon take seriously, this threat from the drug cartels, it will not be 230 of our cities in which they operate, it will be all of them, in towns both large and small. This country will become unrecognizable.

If these criminal organizations are largely ignored, as they continue to exploit a largely unprotected border, it will become a problem only the military can solve, the police will simply be out manned. Urban warfare will no longer be a harsh reality for our troops serving in Iraq, it will become the environment in which we all live.

Currently, the drug cartels are still opening new markets in this country and establishing themselves in our cities. However, once those cities have been saturated to the point where the demand no longer exceeds the supply, the same violence responsible more than 7,000 deaths in Mexico will begin in this country.

The four major cartels will begin to battle one another for control of U.S. cities and regions, the same way they are killing each other over territory in Mexico. Reporters will no longer have to travel to the deadly city of Juarez to see the bodies of civilians, police officers, and criminals alike stacked like firewood--they will simply have to walk out of their studio door in Cleveland, or Orlando, or Tucson.

Swift and harsh action must be taken immediately against the leadership of the drug cartels of Mexico, as well as against the foot soldiers now establishing their unholy business in the U.S., or life in both nations will become permanently untenable.