(Los Angeles Times) The reputed head of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel is threatening a more aggressive stance against competitors and law enforcement north of the border, instructing associates to use deadly force, if needed, to protect increasingly contested trafficking operations, authorities said.
Such a move by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted fugitive, would mark a turn from the cartel’s previous position of largely avoiding violent confrontations in the U.S. — either with law enforcement officers or rival traffickers.
Police and federal agents in Arizona said they had recently received at least two law enforcement alerts focused on Guzman’s reported orders that his smugglers should “use their weapons to defend their loads at all costs.”
People in America like to use marijuana. Mexican entrepreneurs have succeeded in bringing that marijuana to America through the use of violence. American and Mexican governments retaliate with more violence in Mexico. The Mexican entrepreneurs then retaliate with more violence, this time in America. Then America will retaliate with even more violence.
No matter how many people are killed and how much violence we create, however, one thing never changes: People in America like to use marijuana. If we succeed in reducing the Mexican entrepreneurs’ ability to bring it in to America, it will just become more expensive and growing and selling it in America will become more lucrative.
But we won’t succeed. We can’t keep marijuana out of our SuperMax federal penitentiaries; how exactly will we seal up a 2,000-mile border with Mexico? There is only one way to stop the violence and that is by legalizing the business. When’s the last time bootleggers had a shootout with federal agents over a truckload of whiskey?
So far, the contrast has been stark — near-daily violence in Mexican border towns with relative tranquillity on the U.S. side, according to data and interviews with law enforcement officials in the region.
For example, Ciudad Juarez had 100 times as many homicides in the 14 months ending in February as neighboring El Paso, which is roughly half its size. In 2008, Nogales in Mexico’s Sonora state had 40 times as many homicides as Nogales, Ariz., which is roughly one-ninth as populous.
Deeper into the United States, narcotics agents say they have seen little evidence of spillover from Mexican drug war violence beyond an increase in ransom kidnappings related to collection of drug debts.
But near the Mexico-Arizona border, Robert W. Gilbert, chief patrol agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Tucson sector, said confrontations between law enforcement and suspected traffickers — and among traffickers themselves — had grown more violent.
A shootout occurred several weeks ago when one group allegedly tried to hijack another’s load of drugs on one of the main roads leading north to Phoenix. Two of the suspected traffickers were wounded.
When authorities stopped a vehicle in Douglas, Ariz., several weeks ago, traffickers on the Mexican side of the border “laid down suppressive fire” to stop U.S. officials from advancing, enabling the vehicle to make it back across the border with a load of marijuana intact, one Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said in an interview.
Doesn’t anybody read an American history book anymore?
During the height of prohibition and the never-ending competition between gangster rivals Al “Scarface” Capone and George “Bugs” Moran, bloody warfare was nothing new to the authorities of Chicago. However, investigators on the scene found the Valentine’s Day Massacre to be somewhat puzzling. The victims were mobsters, with an endless supply of weapons and well known capability for brutality. Why would they turn their backs and face the wall for anyone without putting up a fight? That was one of many questions to be answered.
Another question came about after an eyewitness gave her account of what happened on that night in 1929. She lived directly across the street and had a perfect view of the garage. She claimed to have seen two uniformed policemen exit the garage while escorting two plain clothed men who held their hands up in the air, as if they were under arrest. Of course, this comforted the shaken woman, thinking that the loud gun fire that she had just heard had been resolved and the parties responsible were being taken into custody. However, the Chicago police had no record of any such activity at 2122 Clark Street until they arrived on the scene to find the horrifying blood bath.
When it comes to suspects, a murder mystery can run the gamut of possibilities. In the case of The Valentine’s Day Massacre, the person with the most motive was not difficult to come by. Although he claimed to be in Florida at the time of the murders, Al Capone was, without hesitation, the one and only suspect in this infamous crime. Thanks to prohibition, Capone had become the crime czar of Chicago, running gambling, prostitution and bootlegging rackets while continuously expanding his territories by getting rid of rival gangs. Capone’s fortune was estimated at $60,000,000. That kind of money gave Al Capone one of the oldest and most common motives in murder mystery history. He had to take down “Bugs” Moran at any cost. But as one of the leading gangsters in Chicago, Moran was not an easy person to get rid of. So in order to get rid of Moran, Capone chose to start at the bottom and get rid of Moran’s outfit, leaving him defenseless.
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