Zetas Drug Cartel Allegedly Conducts 'Mexico-Style Attack' near Houston

Angelhair

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Aug 22, 2009
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A multi-agency undercover drug bust in Texas spun out of control Monday afternoon when a civilian working for law enforcement was killed and a police officer injured in what has been described by the local press as a “Mexico-style” attack.

The incident occurred in Texas' Harris County, where parts of Houston are located, when the secret operative disguised as a truck driver delivering a 300 pound package of marijuana was driving through the northwest part of the county to a rendezvous point. Out of nowhere three sport-utility vehicles carrying alleged Zetas drug cartel gunmen cut off the 18-wheeler truck and opened fire on the cab, killing the driver.

"We are not going to tolerate these types of thugs out there using their weapons like the Wild, Wild West," Javier Peña, the new head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Houston Division, told the Houston Chronicle. "We are going after them."

As the gunmen opened fire on the truck, law enforcement officials descended on the scene in an effort to apprehend the shooters. "Officers engaged in gunfire with the suspects. That exchange resulted in the undercover officer being shot in the leg and the death of the occupant in the 18-wheeler," a press release from Harris County Sheriffs Office stated.

So far four suspects, all believed to be Mexican, have been arrested and charged with murder.

While the men - Eric De Luna, 23; Fernando Tavera, 19; Ricardo Ramírez, 35 and Rolando Resendiz, 34 – have all allegedly admitted to an affiliation with the violent Mexico-based Zetas cartel, U.S. authorities are still puzzled as to why the group would authorize such a brazen attack on U.S. soil for 300 pounds of marijuana.

"If it was a straight assassination, there were points in this controlled delivery where he would have just been a sitting duck," a law-enforcement source speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Chronicle. "Pretty brazen to kill a man over 300 pounds of grass.”

The Zetas are one of the most violent and powerful cartels operating in Mexico today. The former paramilitary-wing of the Gulf cartel is considered to be one of two dominant cartels in Mexico, along with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel.

The group is believed to be responsible for the attack on a casino in Monterrey earlier this year that left 52 people dead.

The sheriff’s deputy who was hit in the knee with a bullet during the attack is expected to be in the hospital through Thursday night, but will make a full recovery. Authorities are keeping quiet about who shot the sheriff’s deputy as the incident is still under investigation.

They also did not release any information about the driver who was killed.

"Everybody is surprised at the brazenness," Peña said, according to the Chronicle. "We haven't seen this type of violence, which concerns us."

Read more: Zetas Drug Cartel Allegedly Conducts 'Mexico-Style Attack' near Houston | Fox News Latino
 
OMG!

The government furiously pumped money into educating the Anchor Babies and now they're getting preferential job treatment as the new minority. They’re going to be in charge of everything that has to do with immigration. Lord Save us all!
 
This is GOOD NEWS.

How bad does it have to get for our weak kneed government to do something about the border? Well, certainly NOT this bad. It will have to get worse. Maybe having heads rolling around Houston bars and bodies hanging from lamp posts. That might be bad enough.

This was a highjacking of an 18 wheeler. It would NEVER happen if this was a shipment of LEGAL marijuana. We better hurry up and legalize drugs so this kind of crime NEVER happens again.
We better hurry up and legalize drugs so this becomes a daily occurrence.

Nothing can get better or even change until the consequences of actions are experienced. That's why these kinds of consequences are good.
 
We can work a deal out with Mexico their government loves our money and will do anything to keep it coming. We already have enforcement in Mexico training the Mexicans and helping with investigations.


What we need to do is put the U.S. military on the Mexican side of the border. Along the entire Mexican side of the border to control the drug cartel violence and to keep them from bringing drugs over the border and stop the illegal alien border crossers.


The U.S. military could be trained to be border patrol agents once they return from the Middle East and other places. Those trained agents can work the United States side of the border.

When we have enough trained Border Patrol agents then we can bring the troops back from Mexico to either go into civilian life or become Border Patrol Enforcement.

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The Posse Comitatus Act is the United States federal law (18 U.S.C.§ 1385) that was passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction. Its intent (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) was to limit the powers of local governments and law enforcement agencies from using federal military personnel to enforce the laws of the land. Contrary to popular belief, the Act does not prohibit members of the Army from exercising state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order"; it simply requires that any orders to do so must originate with the United States Constitution or Act of Congress.

The statute only directly addresses the US Army (and is understood to equally apply to the US Air Force as a "derivative" of the US Army). It does not refer to, and thus does not implicitly apply to nor restrict units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States. The Navy and Marine Corps are prohibited by a Department of Defense directive, (self-regulation,) not by the Act itself.[1][2] Although it is a military force,[3] the U.S. Coast Guard, which now operates under the Department of Homeland Security, is also not covered by the Posse Comitatus Act.
As of December 3 2011, the Posse Comitatus Act is under threat of repeal from the National Defense Authorization Act.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

----


The




Posse Comitatus
Act of 1878






20 Stat. L., 145

June 18, 1878

CHAP. 263 - An act making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, and for other purposes.

SEC. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.
10 U.S.C. (United States Code) 375
Sec. 375. Restriction on direct participation by military personnel:

The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.
18 U.S.C. 1385
Sec. 1385. Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of
Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to
execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
Editor's Note: The only exemption has to do with nuclear materials (18 U.S.C. 831 (e)
 
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Close the Southern border OR get ready for MAD MAX Road Warrior Style! It will be kill or be killed, Fight back or die no one goes unscathed. They eat children but only when they're hungry!
 
Mexico crackin' down on drugs, Britain goin' soft...
:eusa_eh:
Mexico strikes Sinaloa cartel as Cabrera Sarabria shot
23 January 2012 : Ten of the detained were paraded in front of journalists, another suspect is in hospital.
The Mexican security forces have arrested 11 alleged members of the country's most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa cartel. They said those detained worked for Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the most wanted man in Mexico. They were arrested during a helicopter raid on a ranch in the north-western state of Durango on Friday. During the raid, elite troops killed the regional leader of the gang, Luis Alberto Cabrera Sarabria. The security forces said his death was a severe blow to the Sinaloa cartel's operations in Durango and Chihuahua.

Mr Cabrera Sarabria is accused of having controlled much of the drug trafficking in the two northern states. Defence spokesman Gen Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said the security forces located the ranch where Mr Cabrera Sarabria was staying last week. A special operations team moved in on Friday and were fired on, Gen Trevilla Trejo said. He said that Mr Cabrera Sarabria managed to escape along with his bodyguard, hiding in a cave in a mountainous area near the ranch.

'Family business'

Mr Cabrera Sarabria was killed in a firefight as the special operations team moved in on the cave, the general said. Three members of the security forces were injured in the operation. At the ranch, soldiers found more than a dozen long-range weapons and more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as armoured cars and communication equipment. Gen Trevilla Trejo said Mr Cabrera Sarabria had been personally chosen to head the Sinaloa cartel's operations in the region by its leader Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

He was appointed only last month, after the arrest of the previous regional leader, Luis Alberto Cabrera Sarabria's brother, Felipe. The Sinaloa cartel controls much of the flow of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States via air, land and sea, and is believed to have links in as many as 50 countries. Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman was jailed in 1993 but escaped his maximum-security prison in a laundry basket eight years later, embarrassing and eluding the authorities ever since.

BBC News - Mexico strikes Sinaloa cartel as Cabrera Sarabria shot

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Drugs mule sentences cut in new sentencing guidelines
23 January 2012 : Large scale drug producers face longer sentences under the new guidelines
People who smuggle drugs will face more lenient sentences if they have been exploited, under new guidelines. The change in approach on "drug mules" is in the first comprehensive rules on drugs offences from the Sentencing Council for England and Wales. The council said judges should distinguish between those who have been exploited by gangs and criminals heavily involved in the drugs trade. But it said large-scale drugs producers should expect longer jail terms.

The council's role is to provide judges and magistrates with a set of broad guidelines so that sentencing is more consistent across England and Wales. Last year the council carried out research into 12 women convicted of drug mule offences, all of whom received sentences of between 15 months and 15 years. The majority of the women said they did not know that they had been carrying drugs when they arrived in the UK, although some admitted being suspicious. In most cases they had carried the drugs for someone they trusted or feared what would happen if they did not do so.

Under the new guideline, which comes into force on 27 February, the starting point for sentencing drug mules guilty of carrying crack, heroin and cocaine will be six years, before judges take into account aggravating and mitigating factors. Those found guilty of a much higher level of involvement in the drugs trade will face longer sentences. Those coerced into smuggling small amounts of Class C drugs, such as ketamine, could be given a community order. The councils said there would be no change in sentences for the key offences of possession and supply, but dealers who provide drugs to under-18s should receive longer sentences. Class A drug street dealers should expect a starting point of four and a half years.

Lord Justice Hughes, deputy chairman of the Sentencing Council, said: "Drug offending has to be taken seriously. Drug abuse underlies a huge volume of acquisitive and violent crime and dealing can blight communities. "Offending and offenders vary widely so we have developed this guideline to ensure there is effective guidance for sentencers and clear information for victims, witnesses and the public on how drug offenders are sentenced. "This guideline reinforces current sentencing practice. Drug dealers can expect substantial jail sentences." The guidelines, which applies to magistrates and the crown courts, covers the most common drugs offences - importing, production, supply, possession and allowing a premises to be used for these offences.

Chief Constable Tim Hollis, in charge of drugs policy for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "The Council has clearly given a good deal of consideration to the new guidelines and has produced a document which provides the police and our criminal justice partners with consistent guidance yet still provides the courts with flexibility to deal with each case on its own merits where appropriate." Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust campaign group, said in the light of the guidelines it "calls on the government to review the sentences of all those who have been trafficked into acting as drug mules and are currently languishing for long years in British jails".

BBC News - Drugs mule sentences cut in new sentencing guidelines
 
Well obviously we need a Police State to keep us all safe!


WRONG! We need to close the damn Southern border and put the military on it and make sure no one crosses the border without PERMISSION!

The president removed most of the National Guard troops from the border. But my question is who controls the National Guard when not participating in federal crap. The governor does and seems to me if we had three governors with some nuts, we would have the National Guard from Texas, New Mexico and Arizona securing the border. They would need no further incentive other than the fact they would be protecting their families and the families of their friends. Do you think they would be motivated to secure it, not yes, but hell yes. Arizona has made some dramatic changes and choices to secure their part, but we need to have all 3 committed to securing it no matter what the cost.
 
That's Oklahoma, Arizona, California and now Texas. Obama's border policy is working exactly as he intended.
 
'THEY ARE HERE' and nobody gives a damn! Especially our present administration! They are too damn busy giving and doing for everybody else and to hell with the americans AND the United States!
 
Another one bites the dust...
:clap2:
Mexico officials: Aide to Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman killed in gunfight
Monday, January 23,`12 — Mexican officials say members of an army special forces unit fatally shot a high-ranking aide to the country’s most-wanted drug dealer in a gunfight in the northern state of Durango.
Army spokesman Gen. Ricardo Trevilla said Monday Luis Alberto Cabrera Sarabia was responsible for the operations of Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel in Durango and part of the neighboring state of Chihuahua.

The army says Sarabia is know as “The Architect,” and was named to the role after the December arrest of his brother Felipe Cabrera Sarabia, or “The Engineer.”

Sinaloa gunmen traded fire with troops during the operation to arrest Luis Cabrera Sarabia on Friday. One of the gunmen was slain and 11 others were captured. Four soldiers were hurt in the gunfight.

Source
 
And you really think it was army special forces from Mexico??? The joke is on YOU! I will bet my last dollar that those 'army special forces' are non other than U.S. Army Special Forces!!
 
That would constitute an American invasion of the mexican nation. I don't discount it, but I doubt it.
 
Zetas mayhem continues...
:eek:
Police in Mexico find 18 mutilated, headless bodies
Fri, May 11, 2012 - TIT FOR TAT: An arrested woman told the police that the killings were ‘the repercussion’ for 23 killings on Friday last week, apparently the work of drug gangs
Police found the dismembered, decapitated bodies of 18 people in two abandoned vehicles in western Mexico on Wednesday in an apparent revenge killing between powerful drug gangs. Police initially counted 12 bodies dumped in the car on a road between Mexico’s second city of Guadalajara and the lakeside city of Chapala, known for its large US expatriate community. An anonymous call alerted police to the abandoned vehicles and the bodies were taken to forensic services in Guadalajara, a police official said. Jalisco State Attorney General Tomas Coronado Olmos called an urgent meeting with the state governor and said the killings appeared to have been in revenge for 23 killings on Friday last week in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

An arrested woman said that the killings were “the repercussion for what happened in Tamaulipas,” Coronado Olmos said. The woman said she belonged to a local gang called Milenio, linked to the brutal Zetas drug gang. Police found 23 bodies last Friday in the city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on the US border, including nine hanging from a bridge and 14 others that had been decapitated. Suspected drug gang violence has flared in some areas in the past week, with more than 60 deaths in massacres or fighting with security forces.

Authorities blame many of the deaths on clashes between the Zetas — a gang set up by ex-commandos that deserted in the 1990s — and groups allied to the Sinaloa Federation of Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The latest killings echoed a brutal episode in November last year when police found 26 bodies dumped inside three vehicles in Guadalajara. Based on messages left behind, authorities believe those killings were an attack by the Zetas on the Sinaloa gang. Shortly beforehand, police found 17 burned bodies in two cars in Culiacan, capital of northwestern Sinaloa State, fiefdom of the eponymous gang.

More than 50,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive on the nation’s drug gangs on taking office in December 2006. The Mexican government on Wednesday announced a new deployment of troops and federal police, this time to the central state of Morelia, near the capital. Mexican Secretary of the Interior Alejandro Poire said the eighth such operation was necessary in the area known for the tourist city of Cuernavaca, because of “criminal incidents which require stronger attention.” Violence in the state, including attacks on the main highway between Mexico City and the resort city of Acapulco, has soared in recent years.

Police in Mexico find 18 mutilated, headless bodies - Taipei Times
 
Los Zetas hirin' ex-U.S. military as hit men...
:eek:
Mexican Cartels Hiring US Soldiers As Hit Men
August 01, 2013 > Mexican cartels are recruiting hit men from the U.S. military, offering big money to highly-trained soldiers to carry out contract killings and potentially share their skills with gangsters south of the border, according to law enforcement experts.
The involvement of three American soldiers in separate incidents, including a 2009 murder that led to last week’s life sentence for a former Army private, underscore a problem the U.S. military has fought hard to address. "We have seen examples over the past few years where American servicemen are becoming involved in this type of activity," said Fred Burton, vice president for STRATFOR Global Intelligence. "It is quite worrisome to have individuals with specialized military training and combat experience being associated with the cartels." The life sentence handed down in El Paso District court July 25 to an Army private hired by the Juarez Cartel to be the triggerman in a 2009 hit in this border city is the most recent case.

Michael Apodaca, 22, was a private first-class stationed at nearby Fort Bliss Army Base and was attached to the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade when he was recruited and paid $5,000 by the Juarez Cartel to shoot and kill Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana, a cartel member who had been outed as an informant for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Apodaca, who was the triggerman in the May 15, 2009, hit, was sentenced in El Paso District Court July 25. Last September, Kevin Corley, 29, a former active-duty Army first lieutenant from Fort Carson in Colorado, pleaded guilty in federal court in Laredo, Texas, to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire for the Los Zetas Cartel after being arrested in a sting operation. Ironically, that cartel was itself founded by Special Forces deserters from the Mexican Army.

armyhitmen.jpg

Former Army Pfc. Michael Apodaca (l.) and ex-Lt. Kevin Corley both pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire charges, crimes committed while they were on active duty.

Arrested with Corley in connection with the case was former Army Sgt. Samuel Walker, 28. He was convicted of committing a murder-for-hire in November 2012 and sentenced to 15 years in prison June 21. Walker served in Afghanistan with Corley’s 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division platoon between 2010-2011. Shortly after their return, they made contact with the undercover DEA agent they thought was a member of Los Zetas. According to his plea agreement, Corley was introduced to undercover agents posing as members of Los Zetas cartel in September 2011; he admitted to being an active-duty officer in the U.S. Army responsible for training soldiers. He told his contact he could provide tactical training for members of the cartel and purchase weapons for them. In later meetings, Corley discussed stealing weapons from military posts and military tactics. On Dec. 23, 2011, he agreed to perform a contract killing for the cartel in exchange for $50,000 and cocaine.

Burton said some soldiers become corrupted by gangs after joining, while others are gang members who enlist specifically for the training they can get. “There has been a persistent gang problem in the military for the past six to eight years,” Burton said, adding that cartels greatly value trained soldiers from the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala as sicarios – hit men. More recently, the May 22 murder of Juan Guerrero-Chapa, 43, a former lawyer for the Gulf Cartel, in a mall parking lot in an affluent suburb of Fort Worth has raised concerns due to the military precision with which it was carried out. "Obviously, the nature of this homicide, the way it was carried out indicates –– and I said indicates –– an organization that is trained to do this type of activity," Southlake Police Chief Stephen Mylett said following the attack. "When you're dealing with individuals that operate on such a professional level, certainly caution forces me to have to lean toward that this is an organized criminal activity act.” While Mylett acknowledged the murder was a “targeted affair conducted by professional killers,” he would not confirm or deny suspicions that current or previous military was involved. “The case is still being investigated,” Mylett said.

Read more: Mexican cartels hiring US soldiers as hit men | Fox News

See also:

Report: Inmates control all 24 prisons in Honduras
Aug 2,`13 -- Honduras' 24 prisons are controlled by inmates because the state has abandoned its role in rehabilitating people convicted of crimes, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said in a report released Friday.
The commission said the prisons are so poorly guarded that the inmates could escape if they wanted to, especially in the prison in the city of San Pedro Sula. "Prisoners do not escape because they prefer not to upset this balance," the former director of the San Pedro Sula prison told the commission. Another prison official told the commission that prison authorities there have no power to change the situation. One consequence of the state abandoning the prisons is the rise of so-called systems of "self-governance" that are headed by inmates known as "coordinators," the commission said.

The coordinators are picked by the inmates and set rules for the prison, including disciplinary measures, it said. Most of the complaints by inmates are against the coordinators for physically assaulting them, something that happens "in full view of prison guards," according to the commission. "The administration of the prisons in Honduras currently suffers from severe structural deficiencies which have led to its collapse," the commission said. "These deficiencies have been consistently pointed out by all the international human rights agencies having competence in the matter, but to date, no substantial changes have been made."

Official corruption and overcrowding have exacerbated the critical situation, prison officials have acknowledged. They say much of the overcrowding is due to failures in the judicial system to try prisoners. About half of all inmates are awaiting trial. The government says there are 12,263 people incarcerated in Honduras even though its prisons can only hold 8,120 inmates. In Honduras, there is a Lord-of-the-Flies system that is mimicked through the nation allowing inmates to run businesses behind bars, while officials turn a blind eye in exchange for a cut of the profits they say is spent on prison needs.

This culture virtually guarantees that even in the glare of international scrutiny over a fire that killed 361 prisoners at the Comayagua prison last year, little stands to change. The commission recommended in the report presented to President Porfirio Lobo in Tegucigalpa that the government focus not only on the construction of new jails and improving existing ones, but also on adopting "genuine public policies much broader in scope." "It is essential that States' criminal policies not be merely repressive, but should also be preventive in nature, with policies and programs for crime prevention," the commission said. Last year, the government allocates a budget of $19.3 million to the prison system, 83 percent of that money went to pay the salaries of prison staff.

Source
 
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