Federal police participate this week in the Mexico City funeral for 12 fellow officers whose bodies were found in a heap in the western state of Michoacan. The La Familia drug gang is suspected of killing them.

Forces hiked to counter drug gang in Mexican state
Mexico is to deploy 5,500 security personnel to the western state of Michoacan, where a series of recent attacks has killed 16 police officers. The La Familia drug gang is suspected in the slayings.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-michoacan17-2009jul17,0,7678146.story

From the Los Angeles Times

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Forces hiked to counter drug gang in Mexican state
Mexico is to deploy 5,500 security personnel to the western state of Michoacan, where a series of recent attacks has killed 16 police officers. The La Familia drug gang is suspected in the slayings.

By Ken Ellingwood

July 17, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — Mexican authorities announced plans Thursday to send 5,500 police officers and military personnel to the western state of Michoacan to confront a violent crime syndicate offering some of the fiercest resistance President Felipe Calderon's government has faced since launching its war on drugs 2 1/2 years ago.

About 1,000 extra police officers were deployed Thursday before officials outlined the broader buildup. The move, which included providing helicopters and other equipment, represented a show of resolve in Calderon's home state, a major drug-trafficking corridor where 16 police officers have been killed recently in well-coordinated attacks. Following the assaults, police have patrolled in convoys and curtailed nighttime operations as a way to avoid further casualties.

One Mexican pundit said the recent aggressiveness by the drug-trafficking group La Familia was the equivalent of the surprise 1968 Tet offensive by communist forces in the Vietnam War.

Michoacan is a key front in the drug war. The federal government's move to deploy more forces there, which reportedly included shifting officers from violence-ridden Ciudad Juarez, would bolster the 300 officers already assigned to Michoacan. The government said the buildup would consist of 2,500 soldiers, 1,500 federal police and 1,500 naval personnel.

The gang's gunmen are believed responsible for more than a dozen attacks against federal police, including the slayings of 12 off-duty officers Monday whose bodies were dumped in a ghastly heap near the state's Pacific coast. Attackers have sprayed gunfire and hurled grenades at police installations throughout Michoacan and shot at officers in the field.

The recent string of attacks began Saturday, after Mexican forces captured Arnoldo Rueda Medina, who allegedly served as the right-hand man for the group's founder, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, known as "El Mas Loco," or "The Craziest One."

The Calderon administration appears serious about pursuing La Familia, said Stephen Meiners, a Latin America analyst at Stratfor, a global- intelligence firm in Austin, Texas. The group has fast become one of Mexico's most formidable crime syndicates.

"The number of attacks and ability to coordinate them . . . is a reflection of La Familia's organizational capabilities," Meiners said. "Part of what [Calderon is] trying to do is assure the Mexican population that things are under control."

But the increase of forces in Michoacan appeared to show the strains on Mexico's drug-war capabilities.

The border city of Ciudad Juarez had received hundreds of new officers in March amid soaring killings.

The beefed-up deployment in Michoacan came after a bizarre exchange between Mexican officials and a man who claimed to be Servando Gomez Martinez, the gang's reputed operations chief.

The man called a Michoacan television phone-in show Wednesday and urged the government to reach an accord with La Familia, which he said had been unfairly targeted by police.

During a meandering explanation of the group's beliefs, the caller professed respect for Calderon and the Mexican military. But he accused federal police of going easy on other drug gangs and rounding up innocent people, including relatives of La Familia members.

A teenager identified as a nephew of Gomez Martinez was arrested this week in the central state of Guanajuato on suspicion of killing a federal officer.

"They are attacking our families," the caller complained. "We want to reach consensus, we want to reach a national pact."

A few hours later, the nation's interior minister, Fernando Gomez Mont, called a news conference to publicly reject the offer, even though officials said they were not sure whether the caller was the person he claimed to be.

"The federal government neither talks nor makes agreements, nor will ever negotiate with any criminal organization," Gomez Mont declared. "It fights against all criminal groups equally."

He warned that the government crackdown would continue. Senators from Mexico's main political parties joined Thursday in rejecting deals with drug traffickers.

Drug traffickers once worked relatively unfettered in Mexico through unofficial arrangements with the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ran government at all levels before losing to Calderon's party in 2000. Pacts were a favored tactic of the PRI as a way to resolve competing political and social interests, avoid turmoil and maintain its grip.

But democratic change in Mexico, which opened politics to other parties, has muddied the rules for drug traffickers and contributed to more conflicts and violence, analysts say.

Calderon, a conservative, declared war on organized crime soon after taking office in December 2006. He has sent 45,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police into trafficking hot spots.

The effort has yielded a number of high-profile arrests and big seizures of drugs and guns. But the escalating death toll -- now at more than 11,000 --frightens many Mexicans, and polls show most people think the government is losing.

The effort has also laid bare the extent of corruption by police and other public officials.

As part of the investigation into the attacks against police in Michoacan, federal authorities said this week that they were seeking the arrest of Julio Cesar Godoy.

Godoy, a lawyer and the half brother of state Gov. Leonel Godoy, is suspected of helping provide protection for La Familia. He was elected to Congress last week.

In a speech Thursday, Calderon sought to reassure Mexicans of the government's goals.

"We want a Mexico without fear, we want a free Mexico," Calderon said.

"We know that one day Mexico will be free, one day Mexico will be the safe country we yearn for."

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

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The federal police officers found slain in Michoacan state, 11 men and one woman, had been tortured and shot.

12 slain in Mexico were federal police officers
Eleven men and one woman were found tortured and fatally shot Monday in Michoacan state. The drug cartel La Familia is blamed for the attack and several others in recent days.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-michoacan15-2009jul15,0,6105278.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
12 slain in Mexico were federal police officers
Eleven men and one woman were found tortured and fatally shot Monday in Michoacan state. The drug cartel La Familia is blamed for the attack and several others in recent days.
By Ken Ellingwood

July 15, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — Marking a gruesome new setback in the war on drug gangs, Mexican authorities said Tuesday that 12 people found tortured and fatally shot in the western state of Michoacan a night earlier were federal police officers.

Officials said the slayings were the work of La Familia, a Michoacan-based trafficking group that has carried out at least 10 attacks against federal police in the state since Saturday, when authorities captured an alleged leader of the group.

Monte Alejandro Rubido, a senior federal security official, said the 11 men and one woman were off duty when they were ambushed.

He said the killers left a message with the heap of bodies that threatened federal police.

Elsewhere, he said, authorities came upon two posters warning that police faced death if "they didn't leave or line up" with La Familia, a cult-like gang that U.S. officials say has fast become one of Mexico's strongest trafficking groups.

"The La Familia Michoacan cartel is known for its violence," Rubido said at a news conference.

"We shouldn't be surprised by this type of reaction," he said.

The officers' killings represent the government's worst loss of life in a single event since President Felipe Calderon declared an army-led crackdown against drug traffickers soon after taking office in December 2006. Eight federal police officers died in a shootout in the northwestern state of Sinaloa in May 2008.

Eight soldiers were found decapitated in Guerrero state, adjacent to Michoacan, in December.

The influence of drug gangs has seeped into politics in Michoacan, a scenic belt of forested mountains and coastline that is Calderon's home state. Federal authorities arrested 30 state and local officials for suspected drug ties in May.

Rubido alleged that the same La Familia cell involved in the attacks on the officers includes a newly elected congressman who is the half brother of Leonel Godoy, the leftist Michoacan governor, and another man who ran as a Green Party candidate for Congress.

Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, met with Gov. Godoy on Tuesday in what was described as a work session.

The violence in Michoacan erupted after the arrest Saturday of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, who authorities say is a ranking operative in La Familia and a close aide to its founder, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez.

Gunmen carried out half a dozen attacks against federal forces around the state Saturday, killing five officers.

A federal officer also was killed Monday night when gunmen fired on a convoy of federal police heading toward the port city of Lazaro Cardenas. At least six officers were wounded, according to Mexican media reports.

Calderon says government pressure has pushed drug trafficking groups to lash out at authorities and one another. More than 11,000 people have died since the crackdown began.

"We cannot, we should not, we will not take one step backward in this matter," Calderon said Tuesday.

Mexicans seem skeptical. In a new poll, more than half of respondents said they believe the government is losing the war. Only 28% said it is winning, according to the survey, published Tuesday in the daily Milenio newspaper.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.

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Troops patrol Ciudad Juarez, where 1,600 people were slain in 2008. The police chief quit in February after receiving threats and the same month, the governor survived an ambush.

Calderon's drug offensive stirs 'wasp nest'
The 2 1/2-year offensive has uncovered deep corruption and sparked violent gang wars, presenting a stark reality: The longer and harder the war is fought, the more complex and daunting it becomes.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-drugwar13-2009jul13,0,1796109.story
From the Los Angeles Times

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Calderon's drug offensive stirs 'wasp nest'
The 2 1/2-year offensive has uncovered deep corruption and sparked violent gang wars, presenting a stark reality: The longer and harder the war is fought, the more complex and daunting it becomes.

By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson

July 13, 2009

Reporting from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Mexico City -- In the baddest precinct of Mexico's most violent city, Jose Manuel Resendiz is the law.

The army officer packs two pistols and a semiautomatic rifle as he patrols the Delicias district of Ciudad Juarez, the bullet-scarred border city that is the emblem of Mexico's drug-war mayhem.

Riding in a Ford pickup with five gun-toting soldiers, he pulls over suspicious-looking cars, sets up impromptu roadblocks to search for drugs and weapons, and tends to the nuisance calls that make up a cop's life: robberies, street fights, fender benders.

"I am an army lieutenant colonel," Resendiz said. "But now we're all police."

Ciudad Juarez resembles a city under military occupation as President Felipe Calderon ratchets up his war against drug traffickers.

Calderon launched the military offensive 10 days after assuming office in December 2006, saying it was necessary to restore government authority in parts of the country. Today, 2 1/2 years later, Calderon and Mexico face a stark reality: The longer and harder the war is prosecuted, the more complex and daunting it becomes.

The offensive has exposed corruption so widespread that key institutions, from police forces to city halls, appear rotten to the core. And a battered society has grown increasingly worried about the effects of the massive military deployment on its democracy.

A cascade of setbacks -- prison breakouts, kidnappings of federal officials, killing of priests -- has led to questions about whether Calderon was prepared for the breadth and depth of the problem.

By disrupting the cartels' operations, the offensive intensified turf struggles among the traffickers. About 11,000 people, some of them bystanders, have died in the violence.

"They hit a wasp nest, and the wasps are stinging," said Jose Luis Pineyro, an expert on national security at Mexico City's Autonomous Metropolitan University. "There definitely wasn't a well-structured plan to know what kind of threat they were confronting."

Government forces have scored victories, almost all credited to the military: They've arrested more than 66,000 suspects, seized tons of cocaine and marijuana, and intercepted guns, grenades, airplanes -- even drug-laden, submarine-like vessels.

But every success is offset quickly by a fresh surge in violence, sometimes in unexpected places such as the tourist magnet of Acapulco. No state has been spared bloodshed or scandal. To date, the government has not gone after major money-laundering operations, the fuel that keeps the cartels going, and none of the current leaders of the main cartels has been captured.

"It's very hard to stop this trend," a senior military official in Ciudad Juarez said, speaking of the unyielding bloodshed. "We are fighting an enemy we don't know and don't see and only feel their results."

The drug gangs appear as strong and as vicious as ever as they fight not just for smuggling routes but for shares of the growing domestic market. Mexican cartels are now the dominant force in an industry once led by Colombians.

More than 45,000 troops have been deployed in these 2 1/2 years to hot spots across the nation. It's not just boots on the ground: Army generals and colonels have taken command of law enforcement in seven states and, from Juarez to Tijuana to Cancun, have supplanted civilian authority.

Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million, remains the test case, embodying the reach of Calderon's strategy and its risks. The military buildup in Juarez came after months of extraordinary violence. About 1,600 people were killed last year, including more than 200 in November alone.

In February, the police chief quit after several officers were shot dead and signs appeared threatening that more would be killed unless he stepped down. Other posters threatened the life of Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz. The governor of the state, Chihuahua, was ambushed in the state capital. (He survived, but his bodyguard was killed.)

Juarez officials appealed for federal help, and in March, Calderon's government sent 5,000 troops and 1,900 federal police officers -- adding to the 2,500 soldiers and police already there.

Reliance on army

A retired general, Julian Rivera Breton, was appointed public safety chief, and an active-duty colonel, Alfonso Cristobal Garcia Melgar, was installed as police director. In all, 30 current or former military officers now hold supervisory roles in the police department.

At the height of the violence, in February, there were 10 or more killings a day. The number has dropped to an average of four to eight a day, and bank robberies and car thefts are also down, authorities say. Still, the homicide rate for the first six months of 2009 is higher than it was last year, according to media tallies. Kidnapping and extortion remain rampant.

Hit men in Juarez, who used to ambush enemies with AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles fired from fancy SUVs, have had to change their tactics. These days, most killings are done with pistols, and the getaway car is often a beat-up Honda. But the bloodshed goes on.

"The killings we're seeing right now are young people that are trying to get started in a life of crime," said Reyes, the mayor. "The whole change in the city has created circumstances that are much more favorable for us to get everything under control."

The military presence in Juarez is striking. Police pickups and military trucks packed with troops are everywhere. Soldiers answer 911 calls, arrest drunken drivers and respond to shootings. Factory warehouses have been converted into makeshift encampments, full of colorful, store-bought dome tents.

In November, killers were able to break into the police radio frequency and play narcocorrido music as a sign an officer had been killed, or was about to be. Now, officials are developing a secure radio system.

Mistrust of police had been so high that residents were reluctant to call 911 out of fear that their names would be leaked to gangsters. Now, Reyes said, a hotline is being established to route calls to a center in an undisclosed Latin American country.

Graft-ridden police

Reyes said the military deployment is a temporary measure to give city officials time to clean up the police force. "We all knew there was police corruption," he said, but "nobody knew how deep it was." He plans to nearly double the size of the force, to 3,000 by the end of the year, and to use a strict vetting process.

Calderon's administration says troops are likely to remain deployed throughout Mexico for the rest of his tenure, which ends in 2012, because it is believed it will take that long to purge and retrain the police.

"This fight is not viable without the army," said Monte Alejandro Rubido, a senior security official in Calderon's government. "What has surprised us is how quickly the business of street sales, and the violence from it, grew and spread, in areas where there had not been trouble from organized crime. Corruption and intimidation, that's how they penetrated."

Troops were dispatched in February this year to the northern border state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico's wealthiest and long a symbol of relative stability. Traffickers quickly mobilized low-level dealers and their families to protest the military presence and to create the impression that the traffickers had a broad social base. Monterrey, the capital, and other cities were paralyzed for days.

Then the army started arresting police in Monterrey and other Nuevo Leon municipalities. In early June, troops backed by federal agents rounded up dozens of police officers and several commanders. When the police got wind of what was happening, they challenged the troops and tried to block roads.

As punishment, the federal authorities ordered the police to turn in their rifles. A day later, they confiscated their cellphones, suspecting the cops were using them to pass intelligence to traffickers.

A politician from the Monterrey area's richest district was caught on tape describing the power of the drug lords. Mauricio Fernandez is heard saying that the area was relatively peaceful because the Beltran Leyva cartel wanted it that way.

"Their families live here," he said. "You don't think it's the police [that maintain order], do you?"

In the central state of Zacatecas in May, prison guards were caught on videotape watching unperturbed as 53 traffickers, gunmen and other inmates casually walked out of a maximum-security jail.

In Calderon's home state, Michoacan, army and federal agents swept into city halls and police stations in May, arresting 10 mayors and 17 other officials accused of aiding an especially violent cartel called La Familia ("The Family"). Traffickers in Michoacan, who specialize in methamphetamine, choose candidates for elections and force residents to pay tribute to the cartel rather than taxes.

The army's role has expanded to such an extent that this month troops staged raids in the capital, Mexico City. Soldiers can enter homes and businesses without warrants and detain people without charges.

Critics worry that this could undermine the country's fragile democracy. Others fear that the military, one of Mexico's most respected institutions, will fall prey to the corruption that has corroded so many police departments. Ten army officers were arrested in June for allegedly passing information to fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Army abuses cited

Activists say soldiers trained for combat, not police work, have run amok at times.

Margarita Rosales, a laundry worker in Juarez, said her son, Javier, 21, was found dead in April after he and a friend were seized by soldiers and federal police after a night of drinking. His body bore marks of a severe beating, she said. Rosales said the friend told her that Javier, an X-ray technician, was singled out because he was heavily tattooed.

"He didn't sell drugs. He wasn't involved in that kind of thing," she said. "If they had found kilos of drugs, kilos of cocaine -- but why? There is no reason why."

Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, human rights ombudsman for the state of Chihuahua, said his office has received 200 complaints of abuse by the military, including allegations of suspects being tortured to extract information, wrongful detention and seven killings. Nationwide, complaints against the army tripled between 2007 and 2009.

Army officials say hitmen are dressing in military-style garb to abduct rivals. Soldiers in the Juarez area recently arrested 25 armed men, most of whom were wearing army-type uniforms.

Enrique Torres, spokesman for the joint military-civilian operation in Ciudad Juarez, said the government takes allegations of abuse seriously and will prosecute offenders in military courts. He said the army in Juarez was investigating 126 reports of abuse.

For all the improvements in Ciudad Juarez cited by the mayor, many residents are unconvinced that much has changed.

"There are still a lot of killings," said Magda Duran, a 45-year-old factory worker. She stood on the porch of her home in the city's ramshackle Delicias section as soldiers and police searched houses, including hers, for the victim of a reported kidnapping.

"They scare me," Duran said of the troops. "They intimidate me."

On this evening, a squad of 16 soldiers and police from Lt. Col. Resendiz's precinct prowled in a pair of pickups past darkened beer joints and concrete shanties that hunker behind gates made of bedsprings and freight pallets. In grass-less yards, children grinned and waved. The soldiers waved back. Grown-ups stared, but none waved.

The rolling army patrol was summoned to a bleak neighborhood called Rancho Anapra. In the waning desert light, a man lay lifeless in the dusty street. He had been shot four times, in full view of a dozen houses.

Residents regarded the arriving troops with bored expressions, amid a cacophony of barking dogs.

There were many bystanders, but few witnesses. "Puro mirón," grumbled a military police officer. "All just onlookers. We could ask them, but nobody will know anything. Nobody saw anything."

The scene encapsulates one of the government's biggest challenges in the drug war: overcoming the deep mistrust of ordinary Mexicans. "Only when something happens -- that's when they come," said one of the bystanders, Laura Valdivia, 36, who works in a factory that makes fake Christmas trees.

Other than his name, Daniel Chavez, and age, 35, no one seemed to have much to say about the victim, whose torso was a spider's web of tattoos.

The crowd slowly evaporated. In darkness, the body was hauled away and the soldiers clambered back onto the pickups, knowing as little as when they arrived.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

wilkinson@latimes.com

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York, Maine, is a family resort town with a rich history. The drug death of a local teen shocked the affluent community. “It’s just unbelievable what we’ve seen,” a local police chief said.

The coast of Maine is a long way from Mexico, but to drug cartels it's an emerging market for heroin and cocaine.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-maine10-2009jul10,0,1600575.story

From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE
Small-town cops in coastal Maine face a big problem
The coast of Maine is a long way from Mexico, but to drug cartels it's an emerging market for heroin and cocaine. Just ask the band of detectives on the front lines.
By Scott Kraft

July 10, 2009

Reporting from York, Maine — The obituary in the York Weekly was heartbreaking.

Just 17, Bethany Fritz was a high school senior hoping to study art at the University of Maine. She lived in an affluent coastal community of tidal pools, winding roads and thick stands of maple and oak. She loved her family and friends, her two cats and her dog, Farleigh.

Unmentioned was her cause of death: an overdose of heroin.

"We were completely flabbergasted that someone could get heroin here," said Sarah Lachance, one of Bethany's older sisters. "We thought heroin was something only junkies in the city did."

New England may be thousands of miles from the producers and brutal drug enterprises of Mexico and Colombia. But a busy pipeline from Mexico resolutely moves heroin and cocaine to emerging markets as far away as coastal Maine, where more and more addicts fill courtrooms, jail cells, treatment facilities and morgues.

"It's just unbelievable what we've seen here," said Edward Strong, police chief in nearby Kittery. "I can remember when people around here didn't know what the word 'heroin' meant. Now, it's everywhere -- cheaper, more available and demand is high."

When Bethany died in 2004, York's small police department didn't have a full-time narcotics investigator. Tom Cryan, the detective assigned to the case, acknowledged, "I wasn't getting anywhere."

Then he got an offer of help from Steve Hamel, the full-time narcotics detective in Kittery, another tiny coastal community one exit south on Interstate 95. Hamel already was working closely with a narcotics officer in the next town down the coast, Portsmouth, N.H.

Detectives from the three departments banded together to trace the source of the heroin and, eventually, helped send Bethany's boyfriend and his supplier to prison.

Now, the detectives have created an unofficial partnership, impishly dubbing themselves the Seacoast Narcotics Interdiction Force, or SNIF. Although their home cities have a combined population of only 40,000, they've shut down several local heroin and cocaine rings and racked up dozens of arrests in three states.

But, Hamel said, "you could have 30 guys at every police department doing drug enforcement and you still couldn't keep up."

Most days, southern Maine's preeminent narcotics officer looks like a suburban father on his way to the hardware store: bluejeans, work boots and a New England Patriots cap shading a sunburned face.

The son of a New Hampshire state trooper, Hamel has spent most of his 21-year career working undercover, investigating biker gangs and drugs. At 47, he actually is a suburban father who coaches and referees high school and college basketball and runs a landscaping business on the side.

Hamel's counterpart across the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire is Stephen Arnold, a stocky 45-year-old father of four with a round, bearded face, a thick brogue and a fondness for baseball hats and Marlboro Lights.

Rounding out SNIF are two detectives from York, the Beverly Hills of the coastal burgs. Cryan, 44, father of a teenage boy, has been investigating crimes in York for two decades. His colleague Mark Clifford, 40, is a former golf pro who came out of a patrolman's uniform several years ago as York's first full-time narcotics detective.

The members of SNIF all answer to their own chiefs, but they function as an independent unit on the ground. Keeping in contact by cellphone, text message and two-way radio, they share information and informants and take turns making undercover buys and running surveillance.

They also work with the Drug Enforcement Administration and follow cases where they lead, roaming three states and towns as far south as Lawrence, Mass., the source for most of the narcotics in New Hampshire and Maine. In Lawrence, the drug trade is run by Dominican dealers with ties to Mexican cartels.

SNIF's efforts have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in confiscated homes, cars and cash, which is divvied up among the departments to help fund drug enforcement efforts.

Along the way, Hamel and Arnold have been teaching their York colleagues the dangerous art of undercover drug work.

"No one teaches you to be a street narc in the academy," Hamel said. "And most guys look at the work and say, 'Not for me, dude.' "

As they waited for an informant to arrange an undercover buy recently, the veterans teased Clifford about a York heroin addict he had turned into an informant a few months earlier -- an informant who was robbing banks to feed his habit even as he helped the police.

Both York detectives have picked up valuable lessons along the way, including the importance of a plausible cover identity.

"If you're 130 pounds soaking wet and have smooth hands, like Cliff here, you can't pretend to be a bricklayer," Hamel said. "You have to look the part."

One reason the overdose death of Bethany Fritz was such a shock was the setting: York is a family resort town with a rich, 350-year-old history, located just over an hour's drive north of Boston.

"It really opened our eyes," Cryan said, "and made us realize we had issues."

Before that, police in Maine had been primarily concerned with OxyContin, a highly addictive prescription painkiller. Now cocaine and heroin have emerged as major problems, and the cause is a combination of supply and demand.

"People who get hooked on it create their own demand, soliciting customers so they can pay for their habit," said Strong, the Kittery police chief.

In 2007, for example, SNIF detectives uncovered a cocaine ring operated by Leslie Smith, who did body work at a Kittery garage. Smith, 44, and three friends were making daily trips to Lawrence for cocaine, using some of it themselves and selling the rest in Kittery and Portsmouth at a 300% markup.

The detectives, working with a DEA-led task force in Lawrence, arrested Smith and his friends. They also got his source, a Dominican dealer in Massachusetts, after Hamel made several undercover buys. All are in federal prison.

In the last year, though, heroin has flooded Maine and New Hampshire as OxyContin addicts turn to heroin. A bag of heroin costs about $5 on the street here today, compared with $50 for an OxyContin tablet.

"Heroin arrests are up 100% from just three years ago," Hamel said. "And I can't remember the last junkie I busted for heroin who didn't say he started with OxyContin. And why not? They can get a hit of heroin for less than a six-pack of beer."

At Counseling Services Inc., an addiction treatment facility in Maine, Medical Director Dr. Patrick Maidman said the number of people seeking help for addiction to opiates such as OxyContin and heroin had been overwhelming.

"We're not able to manage the volume of people looking for help," he said.

It was five years ago that Bethany spent her last night at her best friend Amanda Corey's house, a New England colonial nestled in woods near I-95 and a sign that reads: "Welcome to Maine. The Way Life Should Be."

Amanda tried for several hours to wake her friend that morning and finally called an ambulance in the early afternoon. Bethany never regained consciousness and died later that day.

"If you had asked me back then how many teenagers were using heroin, I'd have said very few and I couldn't name one," Cryan said. "Today, I can name 20."

The detectives traced the heroin to Scott Fisher, Bethany's 20-year-old boyfriend. Hamel began making undercover buys from Fisher and eventually arrested him.

Fisher, now serving a 12-year federal prison term in Allenwood, Pa., recalls that time with sadness.

"I wish I had made different choices," he said in a telephone interview from prison. Heroin and cocaine "were so easy to obtain. It was just always easy. And it seemed like everyone was using."

Bethany's family saw him as a victim. "Scott was just a kid who got caught up in this whole thing," said Lachance, Bethany's sister. "It was a tragedy not only for our family but for him."

The SNIF detectives also tracked down Fisher's source, Juan Delacruz, an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic who worked in Lawrence as a drug runner. Delacruz is serving an eight-year sentence. The drug boss, a man known by the street name King Louie, returned to the Dominican Republic, authorities said.

For the SNIF detectives, that was the first battle in an escalating war.

Hamel unlocked the Kittery police evidence locker recently, revealing piles of yellow envelopes stuffed with heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, chalky "re-rock" cocaine and tablets of OxyContin and other prescription drugs.

Each envelope represented a recent arrest -- the fruits of a small band of detectives on a mission.

scott.kraft@latimes.com

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Bentley driver's slaying in L.A. might have cartel link This 2005 Bentley Continental GT was riddled with bullets Dec. 12 on the 101 Freeway in L.A. after a chase that began near Olvera Street. The driver died later.

Bentley driver's slaying in L.A. might have cartel link

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

ht

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bentley3-2009jul03,0,5751053.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Bentley driver's slaying in L.A. might have cartel link
The LAPD is investigating whether a shooting on the 101 Freeway near downtown in December may have stemmed from an Arellano Felix drug rivalry. The luxury car was riddled with bullets.
By Paul Pringle and Richard Winton

July 3, 2009

The shooting last December was as mysterious as it was brazen: On a downtown stretch of the 101 Freeway, a storm of bullets riddled a $100,000 Bentley, showering the lanes with shell casings and glass, and leaving the driver mortally wounded.

And then, for month after month, there was nothing -- no arrests, no suspects publicly identified, no possible motive given.

But the speculation had been unavoidable. The audacity of the attack and the glaring mismatch between the ultra-luxury car and the young Latino victim of little apparent means suggested a Mexican-style narcotics hit, the type that has killed several thousand people in the drug wars south of the border.

Now, court records obtained by The Times show that police are investigating whether the predawn shooting was indeed tied to the Mexican dope trade. It would be an unusually bold display of cartel-related violence in the L.A. region.

One suspect was charged with murder Thursday.

A search warrant affidavit filed by a Los Angeles Police Department detective says investigators learned that the dead man, 25-year-old Jose Luis Macias, might have been selling drugs here for the notorious Arellano Felix cartel. The document says a friend of his since childhood may have had him gunned down to take over the local business.

The affidavit describes a Wild West pursuit of Macias that began with shots fired near the historic Olvera Street plaza, blocks from the Civic Center and LAPD headquarters, before it spilled onto the southbound 101. Like Macias, the suspects, identified as laborers, at one time or another drove cars beyond their outward pay levels -- a Hummer and a Cadillac Escalade, the affidavit says.

Earlier this week, the LAPD arrested Michael Angel Aleman, 34, who has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and shooting into an occupied vehicle. Described in the affidavit as a former gang member, he is being held in lieu of $1.38-million bail.

The affidavit quotes an officer alleging that a second man, Eddie Escobedo, also known as Eddie Hernandez, wanted Macias killed.

"He said that Macias was dealing drugs" for the cartel, the document says. "He further stated that a power struggle erupted between the two because Eddie Escobedo wanted to be the 'shot caller.' "

Escobedo's whereabouts could not be determined.

Another man the affidavit names in connection with the case, Sabino Cabral, 26, is in custody on suspicion of lesser offenses and has not been charged in the killing.

Cabral, who was previously arrested in Arizona for allegedly transporting more than 200 kilos of marijuana and possessing a rifle, is believed to have had a 9-millimeter pistol that was used in the Olvera Street shooting, the affidavit says. The affidavit says it is the detective's "belief that Sabino Cabral was present, if not involved in the murder."

The document identifies two other men in connection with the investigation, describing them as bodyguards for Escobedo.

LAPD officials Thursday declined to discuss the probe. "There are people we need to talk to," said Robbery-Homicide Lt. Greg Strenk.

After The Times inquired about the case, the district attorney's office released a statement Thursday confirming that charges had been filed against Aleman. The statement called Macias a car salesman, but did not elaborate and made no reference to the cartel.

The court documents contain tipster accounts of two men with handguns first opening fire on the silver 2005 Bentley Continental GT near Olvera Street, about 3 a.m. Dec. 12, as Macias drove away from a celebration of the festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The assailants stepped in front of the car at Cesar Chavez Avenue and Alameda Street and started shooting. Macias sped off, made a frantic U-turn and headed toward the freeway, where he was shot minutes later, the affidavit says.

Macias suffered multiple head wounds, as rounds punctured the Bentley from back to front, according to the statement. He died in the hospital two days later.

The fact that investigators have remained mum since then -- tips had come in almost immediately -- is not unusual considering the life-and-death sensitivity of cases that could involve cartels or their partners in the United States, experts say. In Mexico, the drug organizations have routinely threatened and killed witnesses, authorities say.

In recent years, the death and imprisonment of key leaders have weakened the Arellano Felix cartel, but it remains a fierce combatant for drug smuggling routes from Tijuana into Southern California and across the United States, law enforcement officials say.

Orlando Lopez, a special agent in charge in California's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, said the cartel brings cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into the state and acts as a wholesaler for drug-dealing street gangs. "They're very active," he said. "They have members on both sides of the border."

The documents in the Macias case do not refer specifically to any cartel chieftains. Nor do they state the cartel directly sanctioned the shooting.

But the detective's affidavit, citing an officer's account, says "Eddie placed a 'green light' on victim Macias," vernacular for approving a killing.

The Macias probe has stretched from a party supply store to a card club to Cabral's home on 2nd Street in Boyle Heights. Last week, the police seized a .45-caliber handgun, ammunition and several cellphones from the home, the affidavit says. Cabral was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and other traffic violations, police records show.

He has also been convicted of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle, according to court records.

In the 1990s, Aleman was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon, and later of voluntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to eight years in prison, prosecutors said.

According to the affidavit, Montebello police also have arrested Aleman on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, although the circumstances are not described. The document says the Montebello Police Department arrested Cabral as well, but no details were provided.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com
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Vancouver police on the anti-gang task force handcuff a patron outside a club in the city's Gastown district. Authorities trace the violence to the recent government crackdown on cocaine traffickers in Mexico, which has squeezed profit margins for cocaine north of the U.S. border.
More photos >>>

Drug war on another border: Canada
Mexico's crackdown puts the squeeze on cocaine dealers in British Columbia. Up here, as the violence grows, bodies pile up.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vancouver-gangs30-2009jun30,0,961295.story
From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE
Drug war on another border: Canada
Mexico's crackdown puts the squeeze on cocaine dealers in British Columbia. Up here, as the violence grows, bodies pile up.
By Kim Murphy

June 30, 2009

Reporting from Abbotsford, Canada — The latest mayhem started at the end of March, when 21-year-old Sean Murphy, a popular former high school hockey player, drove into a withering blast of gunfire near Bateman Park. He was probably dead before his car coasted to a stop in the weeds.

That same night, Ryan Richards, 19, abruptly left a friend's house after getting a cellphone call. His body was found the next morning behind a rural produce store. The stab wounds on his hands told the tale of a furious fight for his life. The undertaker apologized to his family for not being able to conceal them.

The bodies of two local high school seniors, Dilsher Gill, 17, and Joseph Randay, 18, were found May 1 in their car on a remote road just outside this normally quiet town of 134,000 near Vancouver. The boys had been seen driving away with an armed man the night before.

This crisp region of polished high-rises, emerald spruce, azure waterways and feel-good vibes finds itself in the midst of a gang war that has killed at least 18 young people this year.

Drug dealers are gunning down women (one in a car with her 4-year-old son in the back seat), high school students with no gang allegiances and, especially, one another, in broad daylight in and around the city that will host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

It got so bad this spring that police erected concrete barriers outside the homes of two gangsters to slow down potential drive-by assassins.

"Let's get serious. There is a gang war, and it's brutal. What we have seen are new rules of engagement for the gangsters," Vancouver's chief police constable, Jim Chu, told reporters in March.

Authorities trace the violence to the recent government crackdown on cocaine traffickers in Mexico, which has squeezed profit margins for cocaine north of the U.S. border.

Canada's outlaw retailers are fighting to the death over market share, police say, a situation exacerbated by personal vendettas and power vacuums left by the arrests of gang leaders.

"The war in Mexico directly impacts on the drug trade in Canada. . . . There's a complete disruption of the flow of cocaine into Canada, and we are seeing the result," said Pat Fogarty, operations officer for the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, British Columbia's main law enforcement agency targeting organized crime.

The province became an important player in the Mexican cocaine marketplace in part by bartering its powerful home-grown marijuana, "B.C. Bud," which helps fuel what is estimated to be a $6.3-billion-a-year industry.

Canadian drug organizations now use planes, helicopters and, in one case, a tunnel to move drugs. They have equipped trucks with secret panels and devices to avoid detection by X-rays and drug-sniffing dogs.

The Lower Mainland has become a playground for young up-and-coming gangsters, who speed around town in armor-plated Cadillac Escalades, Porsche SUVs and BMW sedans.



The worst violence can be traced to the verdant Fraser Valley southeast of Vancouver, where the Red Scorpions gang has been at war with a multi-ethnic criminal organization called the United Nations.

The founder of the U.N. is Clayton Roueche, 33, son of a scrap metal dealer from Chilliwack, population 80,000.

Authorities believe Roueche was going to attend a wedding and meet trafficking associates in Mexico in May 2008 when authorities there turned him away. He was flown to Dallas, where U.S. agents arrested him on a drug indictment out of Seattle. He pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy and money-laundering charges and faces as many as 30 years in prison.

Two months later, the man he allegedly was going to meet in Mexico was shot to death in a Guadalajara restaurant, along with another U.N. associate.

The U.N. adopted its name in honor of the variety of nationalities it encompasses, including Iraqis, Chinese and Guatemalans. It is known for its Asian mystic-themed motto of "Honor-Loyalty-Respect," created by Roueche, who has a passion for martial arts and Buddhism.

The cemetery in Chilliwack is dominated by the graves of two former U.N. members, flanked by a pair of 5-foot-tall granite monuments inscribed with the same "U.N." monogram found on the gang's packets of cocaine. The phrase "Warrior of the United Nations" is engraved in Chinese characters. At the foot of the graves, a pair of stone Chinese foo lions stands guard.

The carnage between the U.N. and the Red Scorpions is believed to stem from the fatal shootings of six men in an apartment in the comfortable suburb of Surrey in 2007.

Five associates of the Red Scorpions have been arrested in the case. One pleaded guilty and was sentenced in April to life in prison.

Dozens of other slayings followed, many of them retribution killings and commercial disputes between the U.N. and three Abbotsford men associated with the Red Scorpions: the Bacon brothers.

Jonathan Bacon, 28, and his brothers, Jarrod, 26, and Jamie, 23, are the rock stars of the Fraser Valley underworld, their exploits and the efforts of the police to keep them alive documented regularly in the media.

Jamie Bacon, who was charged in April in one of the Surrey Six slayings, survived a mid-afternoon shooting at an Abbotsford intersection Jan. 20, when a gunman fired as many as eight bullets into his Mercedes.

Jonathan Bacon was shot and wounded in the driveway of his parents' home in Abbotsford in 2006.

Not surprisingly, the Bacons have changed residences several times, and their car has armored plating and bulletproof windows. They kept an arsenal for protection: As part of a plea bargain for an associate in 2007, Jonathan Bacon delivered to police 114 sticks of dynamite, a grenade, seven handguns, two shotguns, a rifle and an Uzi submachine gun.

With so many people apparently eager to kill a Bacon brother, police took the unusual step this year of warning citizens to avoid the family or risk being caught in the crossfire.

That is what happened to Jonathan Barber, 24, who ran a custom stereo business in Abbotsford. One night in May, Barber picked up a Porsche Cayenne SUV belonging to one of the Bacon brothers to install a new audio system. A gunman opened fire, killing Barber and injuring his 17-year-old girlfriend.

"Young people in the past used to have a fight in the schoolyard. In a park or something. But now everyone seems to have a gun," Barber's father, Michael, said one recent afternoon. "There used to be a code in gangs: Don't touch the women, don't touch the children. But no one is safe anymore. No one is safe in our city."

Mathea Angelica Sturm, a 17-year-old student at W.J. Mouat Secondary School, started a Facebook page recently to memorialize the young people who have died in Abbotsford and Chilliwack. The names quickly numbered in the dozens.

Among them were Dilsher Gill and Joseph Randay, the two teenagers found dead in their car in May. Both were seniors at Mouat.

"You see it in movies and stuff, but you never think it's going to happen in your town," Sturm said. "Especially in Abbotsford. It was a pretty peaceful town, and then all of a sudden, it was like a big swoop of something came in."

Her mother, Wendy, said: "It kills me that every week my child comes home in agony, in tears, that she lost another friend. And to have the three most notorious gangsters [the Bacon brothers] living in our own town? My other daughter is terrified to go to her own high school reunion because she went to school with one of them."

Police, the mayor and the school board chairman recently issued a letter warning parents and students that even the slightest involvement in drugs or gangs can be dangerous. Neither Gill nor Randay was a known gang member, friends say.

Ryan Richards, the 19-year-old whose body was found behind the produce shop, got involved with the Red Scorpions only because he couldn't get financial aid for college, according to his mother, Wendy, who was hospitalized after her son's death and still breaks down in sobs.

"He said he wanted out," she said.

"He told another kid, 'Don't do it. It's not a very good life. I'm getting out of it,' " Wendy Richards said one recent afternoon, sitting on the front porch and hugging her knees.

Richards said she believes her son was a low-level salesman who may have come under suspicion within the Scorpions. He had been taken into custody a few weeks before his death, and his cellphones were confiscated.

"They might have thought that he ratted them out," said her boyfriend, Ken Peters. "So they sent somebody out. Somebody who has no remorse."



On a Friday night in the Lower Mainland, two teams from the integrated gang task force patrol the restaurants, clubs and bars where gang members drink, spar and sometimes kill.

With the Winter Olympics only a year away, officials in British Columbia have made it clear that the gang problem must end. Money has poured in for new officers. Legislation is being proposed to expand surveillance capability, toughen sentences, crack down on firearms smuggled in from the U.S., and outlaw armored cars and flak jackets.

There have been successes: In May, police arrested eight senior U.N. members, including the new reported leader, Iraqi immigrant Barzan Tilli-Choli, 27, on charges of conspiracy to kill the Bacons.

A month earlier, Vancouver police announced a series of arrests that they said had "functionally dismantled" the notorious Sanghera crime group, whose conflict with other gangs in southeast Vancouver had led to nearly 100 shootings in the last few years.

"We targeted them for whatever kind of offenses we could get them for, from minor charges like causing a disturbance to attempted murder. We ended up incarcerating literally the whole group, and the result of that has been a decrease in shootings," said Mike Porteous, who led Project Rebellion, the gang sweep that netted the Sanghera group.

"I call it death by a thousand cuts," said Cpl. A.C.J. Coons, head of the four-vehicle gang patrol on the Friday night shift.

Coons and his partner, Constable Michael Clark, execute sharp U-turns when they see a suspicious Escalade or BMW and start checking IDs. They prowl the bars, scrutinizing driver's licenses and ordering known gang members to leave under laws similar to U.S. gang injunctions.

The bouncer at the Canvas Lounge in central Vancouver's Gastown district reports that one of the Skeena Boys (named for the apartment project in east Vancouver where the gang originated) challenged him when he wouldn't let him in. The man grabbed his hip, as if signaling he would have a gun when he returned, the bouncer said.

Coons and Clark head off on foot to corner the young man, who is wearing rhinestone earrings and a T-shirt with a jeweled tiger. He and two companions smirk and stare at the sidewalk; they insist they were simply looking for someplace else to drink.

"In some ways, we've lost this generation of gangsters, they're so immersed in the gang world," said Sgt. Keiron McConnell, standing nearby in the red-and-blue glare of the police lights. "About the only thing we can do is incarcerate them."

kim.murphy@latimes.com

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