Department of Justice Announces Resources for Fight Against Mexican Drug Cartels

= Deputy Attorney General David Ogden announced increased efforts and reallocation of DOJ personnel to combat Mexican drug cartels in the United States and to help Mexican law enforcement battle cartels in their own country. Deputy Attorney General Ogden was joined in announcing a comprehensive response to the situation on the Southwest border by Department of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg.

“For more than a quarter century, U.S. law enforcement agencies have recognized that the best way to fight the most sophisticated and powerful criminal organizations is through intelligence-based investigations to target the greatest threats,” said Deputy Attorney General David Ogden. “The Department’s Mexican Cartel Strategy confronts those cartels as criminal organizations. As we’ve found with other large criminal groups, if you take their money and lock up their leaders, you can loosen their grips on the vast organizations they use to carry out their criminal enterprises. The Department of Justice is committed to taking advantage of all available resources to target the Mexican cartels and to help our Mexican counterparts in their courageous effort to take on these criminal organizations.”

Today the United States announced it will be investing $700 million this year in enhancing Mexican law enforcement and judicial capacity and working closely to coordinate efforts against the cartels. The Department of Justice, through the FBI, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), the Criminal Division and the Office of Justice Programs, will work to investigate and prosecute cartel members for their illegal activities in the United State and with law enforcement colleagues to disrupt illegal flows of weapons and bulk cash to Mexico.

The Mexican Cartel Strategy, led by the Deputy Attorney General, uses federal prosecutor-led task forces that bring together all law enforcement components to identify, disrupt and dismantle the Mexican drug cartels through investigation, prosecution and extradition of their key leaders and facilitators, and seizure and forfeiture of their assets. The Department is increasing its focus on investigations and prosecutions of the southbound smuggling of guns and cash that fuel the violence and corruption and attacking the cartels in Mexico itself, in partnership with the Mexican Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the Secretariat of Public Security (SSP).

DEA, already the largest U.S. drug enforcement presence in Mexico with 11 offices in that country, is placing 16 new positions in its Southwest border field divisions. With this increase, 29 percent of DEA’s domestic agent positions (1,180 agents) are now allocated to its Southwest border field divisions. DEA is also forming four additional Mobile Enforcement Teams (METs) to specifically target Mexican methamphetamine trafficking operations and associated violence, both along the border and in U.S. cities impacted by the cartels.

ATF is increasing its efforts by relocating 100 personnel to the Houston Field Division in the next 45 days as part of a new ATF intelligence-driven effort, known as Gunrunner Impact Teams (GRITs). The teams will focus ATF’s violent crime-fighting and firearms trafficking expertise, along with its regulatory authority and strategic partnerships to combat violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

As part of the Recovery Act funding, ATF received $10 million for Project Gunrunner efforts, aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico, to include hiring 25 new special agents, six industry operations investigators, three intelligence research specialists and three investigative analysts. The funding will establish three permanent field offices, dedicated to firearms trafficking investigations, in McAllen, Texas; El Centro, Calif.; and Las Cruces, N.M (including a satellite office in Roswell, N.M.). Project Gunrunner has resulted in ATF referring more than 1,500 defendants for prosecution involving more than 12,000 weapons.

ATF will also continue its eTrace initiative with Mexican officials, which allows law enforcement agencies to identify trafficking trends of drug trafficking organizations and other criminal organizations funneling guns into Mexico from the United States, as well as to develop investigative leads in order to stop firearms traffickers and straw purchasers (people who knowingly purchase guns for prohibited persons) before they cross the border. In FY08, Mexico submitted more than 7,500 recovered guns for tracing, showing that most originated in Texas, Arizona and California.

The FBI is stepping up its efforts along the Southwest border by creating a Southwest Intelligence Group (SWIG), which will serve as a clearinghouse of all FBI activities involving Mexico. The FBI will also increase its focus on public corruption, kidnappings and extortion relating to Southwest border issues.

Already, the FBI has undertaken successful initiatives in Mexico and Central America, including the Central American Fingerprint Exchange (CAFÉ) initiative. The FBI will continue this initiative, which was developed to collect, store, and integrate biometric data from El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and the Mexican state of Chiapas into a central database accessible to U.S. law enforcement, as well as the Transnational Anti-Gang initiative, which coordinates the sharing of gang intelligence between the U.S. and El Salvador.

USMS has stepped-up its efforts along the Southwest border, deploying 94 additional Deputy U.S. Marshals during the last eight months and sending four additional deputies to Mexico City to assist the Marshals Service Mexico City Foreign Field Office.

USMS is increasing its efforts in the Southwest border region under the Mexico Investigative Liaison Program, a cross-border violent fugitive apprehension initiative where USMS personnel, through daily contact with Mexican law enforcement, provide a rapid international response to law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border in the apprehension of fugitives who commit crimes and flee across the international border.

Twenty-five new Criminal Investigators-Asset Forfeiture Specialists have been placed in USMS asset forfeiture units in the field. The new positions are unique in that they will be solely dedicated to the USMS Asset Forfeiture Division and will support U.S. Attorneys Offices and investigative agencies in investigations of cartels and other large-scale investigations.

In addition, DOJ’s Organized Drug Enforcement Task Forces Program (OCDETF) is adding analyst personnel to its strike force capacity along the Southwest border and the Office of Justice Programs will be investing $30 million in stimulus funding to assist with state and local law enforcement to combat narcotics activity coming through the southern border and in high intensity drug trafficking areas. State and local law enforcement organizations along the border can apply for COPS and Byrne Justice Assistance grants from the $3 billion provided for those programs in the stimulus package.

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DAMMN!!! Six nabbed in drug bust at Rochester apartment

ROCHESTER — An investigation into what police have described as a drug den on Rochester’s Brighton Avenue led to the arrests of six people Saturday — three on drug charges and three on outstanding warrants.

Rochester police assisted by officers from Rochester Township converged on an apartment on the third floor of the Henderson Printing Building at 101 Brighton Ave. around 7:15 p.m.

Inside Apartment 1 they found five people, three of whom were charged with drug crimes.

Rickie Rudd, 53, who lives in the apartment, was charged with possession and possession with intent to deliver cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Richard Hoko, 36, of 605 Reno St., Rochester, was charged with possession of heroin and drug paraphernalia. Frank Cousar, 31, of 200 Lion Lane, Bridgewater, was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.

The three were awaiting arraignment Saturday night.

Police also nabbed Christopher Boulding, 46, of 26 Seventh Ave., Freedom, and Jessica Dugas, 31, who has no known address. Boulding was wanted on a bench warrant issued in Butler County and Dugas on one issued in Beaver County. They are being held in the Beaver County Jail.

While officers were raiding the place, they found Terrence Cox, 41, of Apartment 3 in the same building, who was wanted on an arrest warrant from Bridgewater. Cox was turned over to Bridgewater police.

Rochester Police Officer Frank Mercier said police had received numerous calls about drug activity in the building.

Over the past month, he said, undercover operatives made two cocaine buys in Rudd’s apartment. They also observed numerous known drug users entering and leaving the building.

“This apartment is used as a crack house,” Mercier said. “It’s used by addicts, who go there and do their drugs.”

Mexican Drug Trafficking

Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. In 2008, there were more than 6,200 drug-related murders, more than double the figure from the year before. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration.

The authorities say most of the deaths have resulted from drug cartels fighting rivals. But soldiers and police have also been killed, as well as some innocents.

The upsurge in violence is traced to the end of 2006 when President Felipe Calderon launched a frontal assault on the cartels by deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to take them on. Mr. Calderon has successfully pushed the United States to acknowledge its own responsibility for the violence in Mexico since it is American drug consumers who fuel demand and American guns smuggled into Mexico that are used by the drug gangs.

With the prospect of a quick victory increasingly elusive, a rising chorus of voices on both sides of the border is questioning the cost and the fallout of the assault on the cartels. Mexicans, aghast at the rising body count and the swagger of the drug chieftains, wonder if they are paying too high a price and some have begun openly speaking of decriminalizing drugs to reduce the sizeable profits the gangs receive. Americans, from border state governors to military analysts in Washington, have begun to question whether the spillover violence presents a threat to their own national security -- and, to the outrage of many Mexicans, whether the state itself will crumble under the strain of the war.

While Mr. Calderon dismisses suggestions that Mexico is a failed state, he and his aides have spoken frankly of the cartels' attempts to set up a state within a state, levying taxes, throwing up roadblocks and enforcing their own perverse codes of behavior. The Mexican government has identified 233 "zones of impunity'' across the country, where crime is largely uncontrolled, a figure that is down from 2,204 zones a year ago.

The authorities have made a string of high-profile arrests of drug chieftains recently and have had success seizing large amounts of illegal drugs, guns and money. But the violence remains high and authorities acknowledge that they will never wipe out this multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. The goal now is to turn what is a national security problem into one that can be handled by law enforcement. That alone is a tall order since the cartels have infiltrated governments and police forces throughout Mexico, paying officials to protect their illicit business.

Parolee Who Killed California Police Officers Also a Suspect in Robbery

MODESTO, Calif. — Authorities say the parolee accused of fatally shooting four Oakland police officers last month before being killed in a gunfight with police is a suspect in a home-invasion robbery in Modesto.



Police spokesman Sgt. Brian Findlen said Thursday that investigators believe Lovelle Shawn Mixon was one of two men to commit the robbery in February.


Police arrested the second suspect on Wednesday.

Authorities in Oakland say Mixon shot two motorcycle police officers after a routine traffic stop on March 21. He was killed later that day in a shootout at his sister's apartment that led to the deaths of two other officers.

Boston 'Craigslist' Killing May Be Linked to Attempted Robbery in Rhode Island

WARWICK, R.I. — An exotic dancer who was bound and held at gunpoint at a suburban Providence hotel by a man who answered her Craigslist ad suggested that her ordeal could be linked to a Boston hotel slaying, police said Friday.

A 26-year-old Las Vegas woman who police believe was offering sex for money through the Craigslist posting was attacked at a Holiday Inn Express late Thursday night, Warwick Police Chief Stephen McCartney said. The assailant fled when the victim's husband returned to the room.

Earlier this week, a woman who advertised massage services on Craigslist was shot and killed at a luxury hotel in Boston.

Click here for photos.

McCartney said that after Thursday's attack in Warwick, "the victim apparently made a statement to police that in her opinion, this situation mirror-imaged what happened up in Boston. I think at the point in time our police responded, nobody was thinking about that."

McCartney said he didn't know specifics of the woman's Craigslist ad, but earlier in the day said he had been told she was advertising massage services.


The description of the suspect in Thursday's attack also matches that of a "person of interest" wanted for questioning in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Julissa Brisman of New York City at the Marriott Copley Place in Boston on Tuesday night. And the same person may have been involved in the robbery last week of another Las Vegas woman at the Westin Copley Hotel, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said.

The 29-year-old woman had also advertised massage services on Craigslist, the online classified service.

Police in Warwick, which is about 60 miles south of Boston, describe the suspect as a clean-cut white male, approximately 6-feet tall, 200-pounds, with blond hair, wearing a black coat and blue jeans.

"There are strong similarities here based on the information that we have, particularly the fact that there is an individual who seems to fit the description of the individual in Boston," he said.

In Thursday's attack, the victim's husband briefly chased the assailant out of the room, but then returned to check on his wife, McCartney said. The woman told police she worked as a dancer at The Cadillac Lounge, a Providence strip club.

McCartney said police believe the woman was offering sex for money, but noted that a loophole in Rhode law allows indoor prostitution and said it may be at least partly to blame for what happened.

He described the woman as "shaken up" but not injured. He said police were not sure why the husband was at the hotel and planned to interview him and his wife again.

"That's an area of inquiry," he said. "It certainly is open to some area of speculation."

Boston Police in Boston have said that they believe the victim at the Westin was involved in prostitution but that they are uncertain about Brisman.

Brisman's friends said they didn't know she had advertised massage services online.

Matthew Terhune, 34, a photographer from New York City, said he photographed Brisman last year for head shots she needed for a tanning salon.

He said Brisman told him she had been paid $1,000 to fly out to private parties in Chicago and walk around in a bikini or topless. "But I don't think it went beyond that," Terhune said. "They were just parties where guys wanted to see hot girls."

McCartney said his department is working with Boston police, which have surveillance video of the suspect leaving the hotel. McCartney said his department also has surveillance video from the Warwick hotel, but they did not immediately release it.