Cartel Tactics Analysis of Nuevo Laredo Cartel Battle, 16 July 2010
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**WARNING** Contains Graphic Images from Police Crime Photos. Not Safe For Work!
These type of overviews are extremely helpful in studying gangs and cartel TTP’s.
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How A Lime Grower Led An Uprising Against One of Mexico’s Bloodiest Cartels
IT WAS WINTER in the pocket of Mexico known as Tierra Caliente, the Hot Land. The sky was cloudless and the sun’s rays were casting flickering reflections off the convoy coming into focus: two behemoth SUVs, one black, one silver, passengers invisible behind tinted windows, a police pickup bringing up the rear. The vehicles kicked up clouds of dust as they pulled to a stop. The doors swung open. Boots, shoes, and sandals connected with the dirt. More than half a dozen well-armed men, and one woman, stepped out.
They weren’t the most imposing gunslingers in the world. Most wore basic navy blue polo shirts with white screen-printed badges on the chest. Some were middle-aged with considerable bellies lapping over their belts. Still, their firepower — mostly AR-15 assault rifles — was considerable. Several wore bulletproof vests strapped with ammunition. One of the men, the fittest of the bunch, dressed in khaki cargo pants with dark wraparound sunglasses and a sidearm strapped to his hip, had the swagger of an American military contractor escorting some important diplomat in a foreign war.
The martial demeanor made sense. Guard duty was exactly what the group was doing. Their cargo stepped out of an armored Chevrolet: a short, stocky man, 60 years old, with a close-cropped gray beard and a white Panama hat. His name was Hipólito Mora Chávez. In 2013, he kicked off an armed citizens’ rebellion against a cult-like drug cartel in his home state of Michoacán, the geographic launching point on Mexico’s Pacific coast for much of the methamphetamine trafficked to the United States.
They called themselves autodefensas, self-defense groups. For a moment, their uprising was Mexico’s biggest story. For some, they symbolized a courageous effort on the part of ordinary citizens to accomplish what the government was unable or unwilling to do, dismantling a notorious criminal organization that had terrorized the Hot Land for years. For others, they were unaccountable vigilantes representing a dangerous slide into anarchic chaos.
Read the Remainder at The Intercept
Officer Noe Juarez’s alleged involvement with the notorious Los Zetas cartel goes back to 2006, according to the Houston Chronicle. Prosecutors claim that a cocaine conspiracy in the Houston area included various safe houses in the Houston area, where drugs were kept before being sent to New York City, Detroit, Maryland, Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana. Los Zetas have a strong market presence in many Texas cities, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Houston.
Juarez, who was fired from the force following his indictment, is accused of having driven one of the drug trafficker’s cars to find out if police were tracking him, as well as sharing photos taken by a police camera hidden outside a house used by the traffickers. [Prosecutors] allege he was part of a conspiracy by helping traffickers get their hands on guns, bulletproof vests and ammunition. He also allegedly allowed them to use his name to buy luxury cars with their cash, and provided them with sensitive information from a classified law-enforcement database.
This is not the first time a Texas-based law enforcement officer has been accused of having ties to cartels and smuggling organizations. In November, Breitbart Texas reported the arrest of Border Patrol Agent Juan Pimentel for allegedly attempting to transport 50 kilograms of cocaine from Arizona to Chicago. Also in November 2015, Breitbart Texas reported the arrest of Border Patrol Agent Joel Luna for his alleged involvement in facilitating the movement of illegal immigrants through Texas and alleged involvement in the beheading of a Honduran national.
According to papers recently filed at the federal courthouse in New Orleans, at least two convicted cocaine traffickers are cooperating with the government to provide information about Juarez’s involvement in the conspiracy. However, Juarez’s attorney, George Murphy Jr., told the Houston Chronicle, “The government’s case is weak in proving that Noe knew these guys were drug dealers.” During an April 2015 hearing, video and audio tapes were made public of Juarez both speaking on the phone with a drug trafficker who was cooperating with authorities, and also meeting in person with a woman who he was supposedly told was a high level Mexican drug trafficker.
Although Juarez was never directly involved in the cocaine smuggling itself, he faces 10 years to life if convicted of conspiring to help distribute cocaine for Los Zetas.
Read the Original Article at Breitbart Texas
Mexican security forces descended on a region in the country’s northwest in October as part of a new phase in the search for fugitive Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
And now there are disturbing new details about that intensifying manhunt.
Guzmán remains free, but a recent report from Vice News details allegations that, in their fierce pursuit of the drug lord, Mexican marines attacked the homes of ranchers in a mountainous and rugged region of Durango state.
“It all happened on October 6,” Gonzalo Peña, a farmer in Tamazula in Durango state, told Vice News. “A little before 8 a.m., we heard the choppers … They arrived shooting, I heard the shots from the choppers.”
“And suddenly they disappeared, and then a plane showed up before me,”Peña told Vice News. “I thought it was going to land, or just circle around. But no. It arrived shooting.”
“I worried about getting killed right there,” he said.
After escaping on July 11, he flew northwest to a ranch in the remote, mountainous area of southwestern Durango state, near the border with Sinaloa.
Many, including a top official with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, suspected that Guzmán returned to Sinaloa after his escape. After Mexican authorities detected efforts to return the drug lord’s daughters’ pet monkey, Boots, to Durango, the manhunt was shifted to the region — a stronghold for the Sinaloa cartel nicknamed the Golden Triangle for its drug production.
Read the Remainder at Business Insider
