Cartels Growing Marijuana in America

A dangerous trend: Mexican National marijuanna growers deposited in American in remomte terriane near their retail users, fully equipped for independent grow operations, armed to te teeth and willing to shoot it out with American Law Enforcement.

-Gochoa

Published: Sunday, Sep. 20, 2009 - 12:00 am

Amid dense scrub oak and manzanita high above the Coloma Valley in El Dorado County, the marijuana growers were stocked to subsist in the steep, unforgiving terrain.

They had seedlings, fertilizer and drip irrigation for thousands of high-grade plants. They had solar power, cookware and months of food. And they had a tiny, protective figurine: Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of Mexican drug traffickers.

With a month to go in the growing season, California is shattering records for pot seizures stemming from raids on illicit marijuana gardens. And authorities blame intricate Mexican drug networks that seek remote growing sites, supply and arm workers, and harvest and traffic the product.

They are tilling vast gardens in forests, on public lands and even close to tony suburban homes near Sacramento.

Authorities say the large gardens – law enforcement officials call them "grows" – supply high-potency pot that is trafficked across the country.

Authorities have found no direct link to the ruthless Mexican cartels blamed for 11,000 killings and a virtual civil war south of the border. But they are encountering heavily armed people willing to shoot it out to defend their cash crop.

"They used to just dump everything and run," said Lassen County Sheriff Steve Warren, who had two officers shot in June when workers at a pot garden opened fire as they approached.

"The change we're seeing now is they're holding their ground. We don't know if it's a cartel thing and people in another part of the world are saying you have to stand and fight. But they're doing it."

Plant seizures from outdoor marijuana grows, found in 40 of 58 California counties last year, exceeded the next closest state – Washington – by eight times.

So far this year, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting – a California task force of nine state and federal agencies – has seized about 4 million plants, a 1.1 million increase over last year's record haul.

"I think they're growing more and we're finding more," said Michelle Gregory, special agent for the state attorney general's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. "We would like to say that we find 50 percent of the grows, but honestly we don't know how much we miss."

Authorities this year recovered 76 weapons and arrested 64 suspects, almost all of them Mexican citizens. Gregory said those detained included people who were smuggled acoss the border, laborers who were kidnapped to work the grows and others recruited and hired locally.

Authorities also have raided extensive indoor gardens run by Asian gangs and routinely encounter home-grown pot farmers. Yet they say Mexican networks by far dominate the outdoor grows, of which 70 percent are on public lands.

Authorities have no evidence of Mexican-grown pot ending up in California's medical marijuana dispensaries.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Gordon Taylor said authorities "have not seen any direct link" to notorious cartels in Mexico, including the Sinaloa, Tijuana, Juárez and Gulf cartels, and other violent networks known as La Familia and Los Zetas.

"That doesn't mean the link isn't there. We just haven't seen it to date," said Taylor, who investigates marijuana grows in rugged terrain from the lower Central Valley to Oregon. "But there is no question that drug-trafficking organizations from Mexico, not necessarily tied to a cartel, are bringing up people, crossing into the United States illegally, and using them to grow marijuana in California."

Though authorities this year have eradicated marijuana crops worth up to $16 billion, most raids lead authorities to low-level laborers or supply-dropping "lunchmen" who seem to have little idea who the bosses are.

By the time an El Dorado County narcotics SWAT team, reached the freshly watered mountain pot garden above Coloma, the workers had fled, leaving only the figurine of Malverde and a mystery of whom they worked for.

The mustaschioed folklore character, a purported early 1900s bandit, was once seen as a mascot for the Sinaloa cartel. His image has been adopted by other traffickers and is revered at a shrine in the Pacific Coast city of Culiacán.

The Rest @ Thae Sacramento Bee

Najibullah Zazi Arrested in Denver in Anti-Terrorism Investigation

DENVER (Reuters) - Federal agents on Saturday arrested a Colorado man who had been under surveillance as part of an anti-terrorism investigation that came to light in a series of New York City raids this week, a spokeswoman for his attorney said.

The suspect, Najibullah Zazi, 24, a native of Afghanistan said to work as an airport shuttle driver in Colorado, was taken into custody along with his father after three days of questioning by the FBI in Denver, said Wendy Aiello, a spokeswoman for attorney Art Folsom.
Aiello said both men were taken to a local county jail for booking.

FBI agents entered Zazi's residence in suburban Aurora, Colorado, on Wednesday afternoon with a search warrant.

The entire three-story apartment building was roped off with yellow crime-scene tape, and authorities put black screens over the building's windows to prevent onlookers from seeing inside.

A house a few miles away was likewise cordoned off later in the day for what a local law enforcement source said was a search related to the anti-terrorism investigation.

The questioning of Zazi, who authorities suspect of sympathizing with al Qaeda, came days after he traveled to New York City.

He was stopped by authorities on September 10 while driving a rental car on the George Washington Bridge, which connects New York city with New Jersey, but later returned to Colorado.

Early on Monday, a joint anti-terrorism task force carried out a series of raids in an area of the Queens borough of New York where he had visited over the weekend.

(Writing by Dan Whitcomb, editing by Eric Beech)

The Rest @ Reuters

Maryland IDs MS-13 Recruiting Patern

Published: 09/17/2009

Prosecutors and police on Tuesday pressed Maryland lawmakers to make it easier to put gang members convicted of crimes behind bars for longer sentences, saying a 2-year-old state statute aimed at doing so had proven all but useless.

Lawmakers, including House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) who sat in on the hearing and asked an usually large number of questions, probed law enforcement officers for specifics on how the Maryland Gang Prosecution Act had failed.

They also seemed split on whether changes were needed. Del. Victor R. Ramirez (D-Prince George's) and others questioning if more draconian sentencing guidelines could inadvertently snare less violent teenagers charged as gang co-conspirators. And House Judiciary Committee Chairman Del. Joseph F. Vallario, Jr. (D-Prince George's), said the legislature did not want to get so specific in setting sentences that it risked undercutting judges' prerogative to order prison terms best fitting circumstances of crimes.

In the course of the hearing, Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy also released some interesting statistics about gang activity:

Last year, Montgomery County prosecuted 524 cases against gang members. In the county, there are now roughly 40 active gangs, and some 1,600 identified gang members, he said.

So far this year, suspects arrested in five of the county's 10 homicides have been gang members.

McCarthy said he believes the high percentage of killings tied to gangs this year is an anomaly. But he and others said the recruiting years for gangs across the state are now 6th, 7th and 8th grades. By the time teens enter high school, McCarthy said police in Montgomery have identified 20 to 25 incoming freshmen, on average, in each school as known members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha.


The Rest @ Corrections.com

Mexico Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Resigns

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Felipe Calderon removed his attorney general yesterday to try to revamp a war against drug cartels that have resisted an army campaign to defeat them.

Calderon told reporters that Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, who spearheaded the government’s fight against drug trafficking, had resigned and would be replaced by a little-known former legal official.

A crackdown by thousands of troops and federal police has been unable to suppress turf wars between rival cartels that have killed more than 13,000 people since Calderon took power in late 2006.

Calderon has staked his presidency on his war on drugs, but cartels are killing about 20 people a day in Mexico — often after torturing them — and traffickers have infiltrated many state and municipal police forces.A large deployment of troops in the city of Ciudad Juarez, on the border with Texas, has not slowed a wave of drug killings there.About a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez last week, lined up patients and shot 17 of them dead in a gang killing.Medina Mora will be replaced by Arturo Chavez, a former official in the attorney general’s office, Calderon said.

Despite making big drug seizures and capturing some cartel leaders, security forces have been unable to catch Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Mexico’s most-wanted man, Guzman escaped from jail in a laundry van in 2001.

The Rest @ Stabroek News

Cartel Sergio Saucedo,Trafficker, Money Launderer, Executed by Cartel

September 9th, 2009 EL PASO, Texas —

A body found with its severed arms crossed and placed on its chest in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was identified by authorities Wednesday as a Texas man kidnapped from his home.

Sergio Saucedo, 30, was kidnapped from his Horizon City house outside El Paso last Thursday. His mutilated body was found Tuesday in the Mexican border city across the Rio Grande, said El Paso County Sheriff’s spokesman Jesse Tovar.

“It’s apparent that the spillover has occurred,” Tovar said of the drug violence plaguing Juarez and much of Mexico.

Saucedo, who has a long criminal record including convictions for drug possession and money laundering, was kidnapped by three men, investigators said. His wife told deputies the men broke into the house, bound Saucedo with duct tape and carried him out the back door to the driveway, where he was stuffed into a dark sport utility vehicle with no license plates.
Witnesses reported hearing at least one gun shot and said Saucedo struggled with his attackers as he yelled for help.

Saucedo’s body was found dumped in the street late Tuesday with his severed arms placed on top of a cardboard sign on his chest, said Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for a regional prosecutor’s office in Juarez. He said the killers stuffed plastic bags into Saucedo’s mouth and taped his eyes.
The sign was immediately removed and authorities have not revealed what it said. Drug cartels often leave messages with victims they kill.

Ciudad Juarez is Mexico’s deadliest city with more than 1,300 drug-related killings this year.
El Paso investigators believe Saucedo was killed in Mexico, but a specific motive for the kidnapping and killing remained unclear Wednesday, Tovar said.

Court records show Saucedo, who has used various aliases, had been convicted of money laundering, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, trafficking marijuana and other drugs in Texas and Oklahoma. Tovar said investigators were not aware of a specific connection to any particular drug gang in Mexico.

Saucedo’s case is among a handful of drug-related kidnappings reported to federal authorities in recent years, said Andrea Simmons, an FBI spokeswoman in El Paso. While none Simmons knew of had previously ended so violently, Saucedo’s kidnapping isn’t the first sign of cartel violence in El Paso.

• In May, a Juarez cartel lieutenant and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement informant was shot eight times in front of his east El Paso house.
• A fellow cartel lieutenant and informant, along with two other men and a juvenile, have been arrested on capital murder charges in that case. At the time, authorities and experts said Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana was the highest ranking cartel member to be killed in the United States.
  

The rest @ blog Taragana