Crime Time

Costs of border crossings told in dollars, lives

Here’s two from the border.

According to The Associated Press, landowners are telling Texas lawmakers that police chasing smugglers through the borderlands cause more than $100,000 in property damage every year.

In testimony before the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence on Tuesday, Susan Durham of the South Texans' Property Rights Association said the chases ended in 1,000 wrecks in 10 counties in the past three years.

The AP also reported how Border Patrol agents found the remains of three suspected immigrants on South Texas ranches in recent days, adding to a total that is outpacing last year’s.

Agents say one body was found Saturday and the other two Monday on ranches in Brooks County.

— Bill Miller

Texas game wardens seize nearly $4 million worth of pot

When you hear about game wardens busting someone, you think of poachers, or anglers over their limits.

But pot busts?

It happened Wednesday, but this wasn’t just an outdoorsman caught with his personal stash.

Wardens, with help from the U.S. Border Patrol seized more than two tons of marijuana worth nearly $4 million (shown here in this photo from Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.)

This is one of the biggest drug seizures in TPWD's history.

It happened about 7 p.m. on Wednesday in Starr County near the U.S.-Mexican border.

Read more in this report from Mike Cox, TPWD.

— Bill Miller

Police chief in Cartel border stronghold is missing, police say

The police chief of the violent Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo is missing, according to reports.

An investigation was underway Monday into the disappearance of Roberto Balmori Garza.

Local media reported that two of Balmori Garza's brothers were found shot dead Sunday inside the trunk of a car in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon. One of his brothers was a federal investigator, media reported.

Nuevo Laredo, a stronghold of the Zetas drug cartel, has been the scene of bloody drug-gang turf battles since the beginning of the year.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/02/18/4628250/police-chief-of-mexico-border.html#storylink=cpy

The Associated Press has this story.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/02/18/4628251/police-chief-of-mexico-border.html#storylink=cpy

Thugs in Mexican jail threatened Marine vet with beheading

Only days after U.S. Marine veteran Jon Hammar was thrown into a Mexican prison for carrying an antique shotgun into the country, gangsters in the jail warned him of his likely fate – beheading.           

“They threw every threat in the book at me,” Hammar said Thursday in his first public remarks since his release Dec. 21 after more than four months in prison.

“They’d cut my head off, they told my family,” he said.

McClatchy Newspapers has more in this report.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/03/178980/marine-freed-from-mexico-jail.html#storylink=cpy

Cartel Watch: Christmas dinner turns into bloodbath in war between 'El Chapo' and Zetas' allies

A group of armed men stormed a town in the mountains of the western state of Sinaloa on Christmas Eve and shot nine men to death with assault weapons, then dumped their bodies on a sports field as part of a war between Mexico's two most powerful cartels, officials said Wednesday.

They said El Platanar de Los Ontiveros had become part of a dispute between the Sinaloa cartel controlled by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted man (shown here), and remnants of the Beltran-Leyva cartel who have allied themselves with the Zetas, a paramilitary organized-crime group founded by ex-members of the Mexican special forces.

The nine victims were eating Christmas dinner when gunmen entered the town on foot, surrounded them, and opened fire with assault rifles.

They decapitated one victim with a machete and dumped the bodies on field, officials said.

The army had set up a checkpoint nearby to hunt for drugs, but the killers had avoided it by entering the town on foot.

Read more in this report from The Associated Press.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/12/26/4508317/9-slain-in-mexican-town-as-cartels.html#storylink=cpy

Mexico releases Marine vet held for five months over heirloom shotgun

A Marine veteran jailed for months in Mexico after trying to carry a family heirloom shotgun across the border has been freed, according to The Associated Press.

The attorney for Jon Hammar tweeted Friday night that his client had been released from a detention center in Matamoros, Mexico, and was "going home." U.S. officials had planned to drive the 27-year-old Hammar across the border at Brownsville, Texas.

Hammar had been jailed since August after he and a friend tried to cross the border with the shotgun, which once belonged to his great-grandfather.

Marine vet shackled to bunk in Mexican prison cell

U.S. Marine veteran Jon Hammar spends most of his day on a bunk bed in a dingy Mexican prison, and at times his ankle is restrained by a handcuff locked to a bed.

Hammar, 27, is charged with illegal possession of a firearm -- an heirloom shotgun that once belonged to his grandfather -- and has spent more than four months in a prison in Matamoros, Mexico.

The saga of Hammar, a veteran of Marine campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, has become a pre-Christmas bilateral issue brought up on the floors of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

For the first time, a photo of Hammar’s detention has been made public.

Read more in this report from McClatchy Newspapers.in Florida are fighting for Hammar's

Also check out this report about how family and friends in Florida are fighting for Hammar's release.

 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/12/17/4490877/this-is-how-mexico-confines-us.html#storylink=cpy

Marine vet jailed in Mexico for shotgun with barrel 'an inch too short'

A Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is being held in Mexican jail, accused of bringing an illegal shotgun across the border.

Jon Hammar (shown here) and his friend were on their way to Costa Rica in August and planned to drive across the border near Matamoros in a Winnebago filled with surfboards and camping gear.

But Hammar's gear also included an antique shotgun with a barrel that's an inch too short to comply with Mexican law.

When the pair crossed the border and handed the paperwork to Mexican officials, they impounded the RV and jailed Hammar, saying it was illegal to carry that type of gun.

Family attorney Eddie Varon-Levy questioned the way Mexican officials measured the gun, because the measurements can differ depending on where they are taken on the barrel.

He said dealing with Mexican authorities has also been difficult. He said Hammar was brought to court a few weeks ago, where officials tried to convince him to plead guilty without a lawyer present.

"I am fuming," he said.

Read more in this report by The Associated Press.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/12/11/4477017/parents-fight-for-release-of-son.html#storylink=cpy

Cartel Watch: former Mexican mayor stood up to drug lords and died

María Santos Gorrostieta, former mayor of a small Mexican community, spoke out against the drug cartels -- and they reportedly tried to kill her, twice.

A third attempt on her life succeeded.

Her body was identified recently by Mexican police after the half-nude, tortured and mutilated remains were found on a rural road in the state of Michoacán.

She was last seen Nov.12 while dropping her daughter off at school in the state capital of Morelia.

According to reports, gunmen pulled in front of her car and grabbed her as she pleaded for them to leave her child alone.

Read more in this report from Fox News (Latino).

 

Cartel Watch: Mexican troops pursue 'Knights Templar' -- a Robin Hood-style drug gang

A three-truck convoy of Mexican army troops recently pulled out to patrol the rugged, mountainous region of the western state of Michoacan, when a raspy voice burst out of an unencrypted radio inside one of the cabs: "Three R's, 53." (Three army vehicles, headed your way.)

It wasn't a soldier's voice. The radio had picked up a call from the Knights Templar, a quasi-religious drug cartel that controls the area and most of the state.

The gang also monitors the movements of the military and police.

Its members not only live off methamphetamine and marijuana smuggling and extortion, they maintain country roads, control the local economy and act as private debt collectors for citizens frustrated with the courts, soldiers say.

Read more here.