Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

U.S. Arms Exports to Mexico Mostly to Blame for Violence

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US arms, exported legally, are behind many violent crimes in Mexico (CHARTS)

 

Mexican military and police authorities are still at war with the country’s drug trafficking organizations. And the fight still isn’t going well. Since 2006, the conflict has generated as many as 164,345 civilian deaths. Experts are still unable to agree if murders are going up or down.

More Mexicans have died violently over the past decade than Afghan or Iraqi civilians over the same period, combined. High-powered weaponry, along with handguns, is playing a key role in driving the violence.

Many commentators assume that arms and ammunition are flooding into the arsenals of drug cartels from illegal dealers spanning the US-Mexican border. There are empirical studies substantiating this claim. Other analysts contend that some military-grade firepower consists of stolen and leftover kit from Central American conflicts of the 1970s and ’80s. They are also partly right.

But the full picture is more complex.

In fact, at least 50 countries have exported military-grade weapons and associated materiel to Mexico over the past five decades —with well over half of them exceeding $1 million in sales over the period. There has been a steady uptick in sales since 2006, and especially since former President Felipe Calderon ratcheted up the drug war.

According to UN customs data compiled by NISAT, a research group, the United States is by far the largest exporter of military arms to Mexico. The sums are not trivial. The US has exported more than $300 million worth of “military style” weapons to Mexican authorities since the 1960s; more than half of those sales have been since the year 2000. Top exporters following the US are Italy, Belgium, France and Israel, some of the world’s largest manufacturers.

These firearms include crew-serviced machine guns, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy explosives and related munitions, parts and accessories. However, the US and others also sell vast quantities of “civilian-style” weapons, including shotguns, handguns, and related ammunition.

An arms mapping visualization developed by the Igarapé Institute with partners including Google Ideas shows that Mexican imports of all types of weaponry increased steadily from 2006 onward. Moreover, the share of all imports that included military-style weapons shot up from around 10-25 percent a year to 30-50 percent each year during this timeframe.

While many of these weapons are officially destined for the Mexican armed forces and the country’s more than 1,600 federal, state and local police agencies, some of them fall into the hands of cartels and militia. In Mexico, military-style arms are frequently diverted and leaked from official arsenals. In some cases weapons are sent to the wrong customers altogether. For example, a recent high-profile case involved 9,000 firearms shipped illegally to Mexico by a German firm.

Of course, military-issue firearms and ammunition are routinely trafficked across international borders, including from the US. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has traced high-powered rifles and handguns shipped by land, air and sea. One especially controversial operation dubbed Fast and Furious allowed weapons from the US to be smuggled to Mexican cartels for tracking purposes —hundreds were lost en route and linked to subsequent crimes.

Igarapé Institute and University of San Diego research has determined that a considerable proportion of illegally acquired firearms in Mexico were originally sold by federally licensed dealers in the US. Meanwhile, older issue US and Soviet-style weaponry is also trafficked from post-conflict Central American countries, including via El Salvador, Honduras and of course Guatemala.

Military and police stocks in some of these Central American countries were singled out by the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala as the largest source of illegal firearms in the region. Twentieth-century M16s and AK-47s have surfaced in the arsenals of the Juarez, Sinaloa, Zeta and Gulf cartels, though the quantities are comparatively modest.

Making matters more complicated, the Mexican authorities lack a robust marking and tracing system. They have traditionally relied on their US counterparts for background checks on seized weapons. Getting a handle on leaked and trafficked weapons has simply not been a priority of successive governments.

In the past, samples of seized weapons were submitted to the ATF (using eTrace). Extrapolations generated from these assessments suggest that up to 70 percent of recovered firearms were from the US, though these numbers are disputed on both sides of the border.

While internationally supportive of more gun regulation, Mexico is not especially transparent when it comes to reporting on weapons exports, imports or recovery, as the Small Arms Survey arms barometer makes clear. It is also unable to comprehensively get to grips with where illegal guns are coming from.

At least part of the problem is that under Mexican law, all firearms seized by the government must be surrendered to the armed forces within 48 hours. The military is charged with “safeguarding” these arms and is under no compulsion to assist in related law enforcement investigations. The fact that the armed forces may well be one of the key sources of illicit arms is problematic, to say the least.

In the case of the US, ATF officials are required to submit a formal request to the Mexican Attorney General for each and every weapon (with accompanying data on the firearm type/caliber). As a result, most weapons are simply not traced and abusers go unpunished.

The development of a more effective system for tracing the origins of illicit firearms is a priority for both the US and Mexican governments. The current approach is deeply inefficient. If Mexico wants to do more to stop the shooting, it cannot afford to keep asking questions later.

 

Oregon: BLM and the Hammonds

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All is not what it seems much less what both the right and left are reporting with regard to the Hammond family and the stand-off in Burn, Oregon with respect to grazing permits and the Bureau of Land Management.

Click here for an article on the Hammonds in 1994.

The Hammonds agreed to the re-sentencing in court. AGREED! Click here for the court testimony.

Further, the Hammonds have been challenging government for decades and even threatened them with death as well as volunteer firefighters. Click here for an interactive map of the land designations in Oregon.

The full .pdf document is here.

Nearly half of the western United States is owned by the federal government. In recent years, several western states have considered resolutions demanding that the federal government transfer much of this land to state ownership. These efforts are motivated by concerns over federal land management, including restrictions on natural resource development, poor land stewardship, limitations on access, and low financial returns.

This study compares state and federal land management in the West. It examines the revenues and expenditures associated with federal land management and compares them with state trust land management in four western states: Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona. The report explains why revenues and expenditures differ between state and federal land agencies and discusses several possible implications of transferring federal lands to the states.



Key Points:

  • The federal government loses money managing valuable natural resources on federal lands, while states generate significant financial returns from state trust lands.
  • The states examined in this study earn an average of $14.51 for every dollar spent on state trust land management. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management generate only 73 cents in return for every dollar spent on federal land management.
  • On average, states generate more revenue per dollar spent than the federal government on a variety of land management activities, including timber, grazing, minerals, and recreation.
  • These outcomes are the result of the different statutory, regulatory, and administrative frameworks that govern state and federal lands. States have a fiduciary responsibility to generate revenues from state trust lands, while federal land agencies face overlapping and conflicting regulations and often lack a clear mandate.
  • If federal lands were transferred, states could likely earn much greater revenues than the federal government. However, transfer proponents must consider how land management would have to change in order to generate those revenues under state control.

 

Drug Traffickers Hacking Surveillance Drones

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DefenseOne; The drug cartels aren’t just buying golden Uzis anymore. As the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, or CBP, has upped its drone patrols along America’s Mexican border, narcotics traffickers have responded with expensive technology of their own.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement confirmed that Drug Traffickers are hacking surveillance drones on the border.

Small drones are another powerful tool used by the US Department of Homeland Security to monitor its borders, but drug traffickers already adopting countermeasures. In order to avoid surveillance, drug traffickers are hacking US surveillance drones used to patrol the border.

US surveillance drones

According to Timothy Bennett, a Department of Homeland Security program manager, drug traffickers are using technology to spoof and jam the US surveillance drones.

“The bad guys on the border have lots of money. And what they are putting money into is spoofing and jamming of GPSs, so we are doing funding to look at small UAS that we can counter this,” Bennett said during a panel at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. 

The principle behind the GPS spoofing attack is that sending to control system of the drone fake geographic coordinates it is possible to deceive the onboard system hijacking the vehicle in a different place for which it is commanded. Non-military GPS signals are not encrypted, this makes drones vulnerable to this kind of attacks.

Using jamming techniques against drones, it is possible to interrupt the GPS receiving transmitted to the UAVs. In this scenario the aircraft could potentially lose the capability to monitor its route and to calculate its location, altitude, and the direction in which it is traveling.

Both attack techniques are adopted by drug traffickers that belong to well-funded organizations that has access to modern advanced hacking technology.

DHS hasn’t provided further details on the attacks, but Bennett confirmed that the attacks are interfering with the operations conduced by members of the law enforcement.

“You’re out there looking, trying to find out this path [they’re] going through with drugs, and we can’t get good coordinate systems on it because we’re getting spoofed. That screws up the whole thing. We got to fix that problem,” Bennett told Defense One.

Terror threats, the New Normal

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When the Washington Post publishes an item explaining that Barack Obama has left his terror strategy and messaging to his deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, America is in trouble. Obama think he has a strategy and that all of us across the country ‘just don’t get it’.

Obama thinks his Syria strategy is right — and folks just don’t get it

Throughout the nine-day trip, which had begun less than 24 hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris, they had all heard critics at home and abroad charge that he had no coherent game plan, Obama said. There had even been suggestions that France, with tough talk and a series of retaliatory airstrikes, was now leading the anti-terrorism fight.

Aides agreed that the message they had heard on the road was “jarring,” said a senior administration official who was on the flight.

But while many outside the administration found the strategy itself lacking, Obama felt what they really needed was to do a better job of explaining it. He ordered what the official called an “uptick in our communications tempo.” More here.

Terror threats are the new worldwide normal standard. The question is when will leaders take forceful action both militarily and begin to profile, collaborate and train? Let us not forget, just this past May, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced expedited travel ‘preclearance’ programs with at least 9 foreign countries.

Terror threats will be the new normal for Europe, experts say

Guardian: Terrorism experts believe Europe faces a “new normal” of more threats and disruption to major events as security fears remain high in the months ahead.

Following the attacks in Paris, analysts in the UK and Europe say security services are coming to terms with the fact that Islamic State appears to have the intention and capability to hit European targets in professionally planned and executed attacks.

Munich was partially evacuated following a terror threat on New Year’s Eve, and events in other European cities were either cancelled or scaled down because of security concerns.

Margaret Gilmore, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said more disruption was likely.

“For the last 15 years there have been terrorist organisations who have wanted to carry out attacks in crowded places, so in that sense this is nothing new. And since the attack in 2008 in Mumbai we have been aware of the possibility of the marauding multi-site gun attacks.

“But what is new now is that Isis has proved they are capable, after Paris, of carrying out terrible attacks beyond its traditional arena of the Middle East.”

She said the attack on the French capital had underlined how quickly the group had grown. She said security services in each country would still have to judge each threat on its merits, but the knowledge that Isis has the capability to carry out large-scale attacks would mean more security – and potentially more cancellations of high-profile events.

“It is clear from what we saw in Paris that they are capable of controlling the process – able to train, plan and execute these attacks – and that is something that the security services across Europe will be taking very seriously indeed.”

Prof Rik Coolsaet, a terrorism expert at Ghent University in Belgium, said that although there was nothing new in terrorist groups wanting to attack high-profile public gatherings such as New Year’s Eve, Isis’s appeal meant Europe was entering a new era.

He said the group had become the “object of all kinds of fantasies for all kinds of individuals, from thrill-seekers to the mentally unstable”, who wanted to be part of the Isis, and that made the security services’ job much harder.

“In the months ahead we are going to be facing a new normal,” Coolsaet said. “One day the hype surrounding Isis will have vanished, but until that happens I fear there will be more threats, more disruption, more houses raided and more arrests as countries come to terms with the scale of this group and its intentions … It is something we will have to get used to.”

He also warned there was a danger of people conflating Europe’s refugee crisis with the growing terror threat.

“What I do fear is the combination of these two things into something near hysteria. We must not confuse these two separate issues and we must be wary of any politicians who try and do that for their own ends, to the detriment of the very fabric of our society.”

Entire Police Dept. Busted for Laundering Drug Money

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Entire Florida police department busted for laundering millions for international drug cartels

RawStory: The village of Bal Harbour, population 2,513, may have a tiny footprint on the northern tip of Miami Beach, but its police department had grand aspirations of going after international drug traffickers, and making a few million dollars while they were at it.

The Bal Harbour PD and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office set up a giant money laundering scheme with the purported goal of busting drug cartels and stemming the surge of drug dealing going on in the area. But it all fell apart when federal investigators and the Miami-Herald found strange things going on.

The two-year operation, which took in more than $55 million from criminal groups, resulted in zero arrests but netted $2.4 million for the police posing as money launderers. Members of the 12-person task force traveled far and wide to carry out their deals, from Los Angeles to New York to Puerto Rico.

Along the way, the small-town cops got a taste of luxury as they used the money for first-class flights, luxury hotels, Mac computers and submachine guns. Meanwhile, the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs were buying all sorts of fancy new equipment.

Besides these “official” uses of the money, confidential records obtained by the Miami-Herald show that officers withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars with no record of where the money went.

“They were like bank robbers with badges,” said Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who taught undercover tactics for the U.S. State Department. “It had no law enforcement objective. The objective was to make money.”

The operation, which was not fully reported to federal authorities, funneled millions of dollars to overseas criminals and interfered with investigations being carried out on known money launderers.

The latest revelations show that at least 20 people in Venezuela were sent drug money from the Florida cops, including William Amaro Sanchez, the foreign minister under Hugo Chavez and now special assistant to President Nicolas Maduro.

They wired a total of $211,000 to Sanchez, even while the U.S. government was investigating Venezuelan government leaders involved in the drug trade. Instead of reporting their knowledge of Sanchez to federal agencies, the cops went on laundering money, taking their cut, and all the while aiding Sanchez in his machinations, which likely included political corruption.

Four other Venezuelan criminals and smugglers were major recipients of the millions being wired from the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriff’s Office, including a figure tied to one of the largest drug cartels in the hemisphere.

These actions violated strict federal bans on sending illegal money overseas, and the Florida cops never investigated the backgrounds of the people receiving their laundered drug money.

“I can’t think of a more podunk town than Bal Harbour — not in a bad way. But in the sense that these cops would have otherwise been stopping traffic or shooting radar,” said Ruben Oliva, who has represented alleged narco-traffickers since the 1980s. “In reality they were being launderers. The minute they started doing busts, it would have been over.

“This is like a movie. You’ve got these guys and they’re flying all over. They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m in the big leagues.’ I’ve seen every kind of law enforcement money-laundering investigations. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s really one for the ages.”

After the Department of Justice busted the Bal Harbour PD for misspending seized money to pay police salaries, the Miami-Herald began deeper investigations and found a much bigger pool of money that was never noticed by the feds. Soon after that, the ambitious sting operation—which was really just a money-making scheme—began to fall apart.

“The Miami Herald gained unprecedented access to the confidential records of the undercover investigation, reviewing thousands of records including cash pickup reports, emails, DEA reports, bank statements and wire transfers for millions of dollars. The inquiry found:

▪ Police routinely withdrew cash — thousands at a time — totaling $1.3 million from undercover bank accounts, but to this day there are no records to show where the money was spent. “In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chief Overton said.

▪ Bal Harbour officials say they cannot find receipts for hundreds of thousands in expenses, including five-star hotel bookings, dinners that ran up to $1,000 and scores of purchases like laptops, iPads, electronic money counters, flower deliveries, and even iTunes downloads.

▪ While posing as launderers, police delivered nearly $20 million to storefront businesses in Miami-Dade to launder the money for drug groups — gathering critical evidence against the business owners — yet took no action against them. Years later, the businesses are still open, some still suspected by federal agents of laundering for the cartels.”

Cash deposits to SunTrust Bank totaling $28 million do not appear anywhere in police records. It’s no coincidence that the operation was launched “at a time law enforcement agencies across Florida were looking to boost their budgets during one of the state’s toughest economic periods.”

“We had to find a revenue stream,” said Duane Pottorff, chief of law enforcement for Glades. “It allowed us to have resources we wouldn’t normally have.”

Federal authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have launched probes into the Bal Harbour police, which will surely confirm the rampant abuses of power. However, the fact that these types of shady operations, carried out with the help of agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can occur at all is even more troubling.

Government creates a black market of drugs and blood money through prohibition, then under the War on Drugs it grants itself the power to break the law and get involved in money laundering operations. While the professed goal is to “sting” the bad guys, government rakes in millions upon millions of dollars to further bolster its prohibition and war on drugs.