U.S. Border Patrol agents in Zapata, Texas, near the Mexican border, recently pulled over a sheriff’s vehicle from neighboring Webb County because something just looked strange, reported the Washington Post for August 30. The driver of the pickup with Webb County sheriff decals was wearing a deputy's uniform, and swore he was a real officer. However, when the checkpoint agents called Webb County’s dispatcher, he told them he could account for all county vehicles. It seems the agents had uncovered yet another imposter — one with a thousand pounds of marijuana in his pickup.

Increasingly, canny drug gangs and smugglers on both sides of the U.S. border with Mexico are disguising their couriers and assassins in phony uniforms and vehicles, posing them as everything from mail handlers and oilfield workers to Mexican soldiers and even Texas sheriffs. Border agents have caught these traffickers hauling marijuana in fake Wal-Mart trucks and� FedEx vans, as well as school buses, dump trucks, and ambulances. These counterfeit conveyances, which officials refer to as “clones,” have even included Border Patrol vehicles.

Gunmen for the paramilitary Zetas set up fake checkpoints and carry out hits in carbon copies of army trucks, while cartel commandos in masks zoom through checkpoints in pickups with forged POLICIA FEDERAL insignia, reports the Post.

“Impersonating a law enforcement asset is ingenious and disturbing," observes Fred Burton, vice president of the Austin, Texas-based security consulting firm Stratfor. “It's the tactic of hiding in plain sight. Cops don't want to stop other cops.” Burton, counterterrorism adviser for the Texas Department of Public Safety and former State Department diplomatic security special agent, notes that traffickers have taken a tool from the spy’s kit. “What is going to raise more red flags on the border?” he asks. “A delivery van, or a shiny SUV with smoked windows and a new set of rims?”

“If these guys are cloning law enforcement vehicles or emergency vehicles, it's a security risk,” adds Christopher Morrow, a highway safety analyst for Homeland Security. Jose E. Gonzalez, of the U.S. Border Patrol's Zapata sector, agrees, noting, “Trust me, whatever you can think of, the smugglers have already thought of, and with the Internet and a decent body shop, it’s not too hard to make a clone.”

U.S. authorities report that traffickers are also utilizing retired service vehicles sold at government auctions. In 2006, Mississippi police seized nearly 800 pounds of cocaine from a van covered with Comcast, Dish and other cable company decals. The smugglers had even plastered a “How’s My Driving?” sticker with a toll-free number on the van’s rear door; the number actually belonged to an adult chat line.

“We've started paying attention to everything we see on the road,” declares Aaron Sanchez, of the Zapata County Sheriff’s office. Pointing to an ambulance in the county impound lot, he observes, “We found 800 pounds of marijuana in that one. The company said the ambulance had been stolen, but we're still sorting it out.”

The U.S. government has sponsored a “first observer” program to� teach truckers, bus drivers and parking lot attendants how to spot suspicious vehicles and report them to officials. “When I see a school bus filled with drugs,” says John Harris, Highway Information Sharing and Analysis Center supervisor, “I imagine it is a school bus filled with ammonium nitrate [an explosive].”

In Mexico, drug mafias pay about $1.2 billion yearly in bribes to municipal police,�according to Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna. Police corruption is so widespread in that beleaguered country that President Felipe Calderon is pushing to disband municipal departments and replace them with a national police force.

Mexicans, long accustomed to shakedowns and other officer abuses, have learned that just because people wear uniforms doesn't mean they’re trustworthy. In fact, police — the very people meant to uphold law and order — have comprised many of Mexico’s kidnapping crews. One of the boldest of such police-related incidents was the August kidnapping and killing of Edelmiro Cavazos, Santiago’s mayor.�Gangsters in seven fake police vehicles seized Cavazos from his home near Monterrey in northern Mexico. His body was found two days later, blindfolded with hands bound, dumped on a rural road. The alleged assassins were municipal police wearing federal police uniforms.

Last week at an isolated ranch in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, where the bound and gagged bodies of 72 illegal migrants were found, soldiers discovered that the killers had used a cloned pickup, painted olive green, with markings and plates of the Mexican army.

Two fake army pickups were also recovered last month in Tamaulipas, where drug gangs employed the clone vehicles to carry out highway kidnappings and killings in broad daylight. In June, cartel gangsters dressed as marines assassinated the leading gubernatorial candidate, Rodolfo Torre Cantu. Torre, traveling in a motorcade, was stopped by a convoy of vehicles with military insignia. Deceived, his bodyguards got out of their vehicles to speak to the uniformed men, who opened fire, spraying them with up to 120 rounds. Torre and four bodyguards were killed.

The situation is exacerbated now as�Mexican authorities are publicly concealing their own identities, covering their faces for fear of becoming cartel targets. With their ubiquitous black facemasks, police patrolling Mexican cities resemble bank robbers, and such disguises make it easier for criminals to impersonate them.

The threat of attacks has grown so serious that the Mexican military has even changed its uniform design, trading camouflage for more counterfeit-proof patterns, according to Enrique Torres, spokesman for military and police operations in Chihuahua. He reports that� officers and soldiers are instructed to look for fakes and never assume someone is on their side based solely on appearance. “It makes our job even harder when there are criminals out there pretending to be authorities. It discredits anything good that we do.”

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Jillian Galloway said:

We have to act now. $113 billion is spent on marijuana every year in the U.S., and because of the federal prohibition *every* dollar of it goes straight into the hands of criminals. Far from preventing people from using marijuana, the prohibition instead creates zero legal supply amid massive and unrelenting demand. According to the ONDCP, at least sixty percent of Mexican drug cartel money comes from selling marijuana in the U.S., they protect this revenue by brutally torturing, murdering and dismembering countless innocent people. If we can STOP people using marijuana then we need to do so NOW, but if we can't then we need to legalize the production and sale of marijuana to adults with after-tax prices set too low for the cartels to match. One way or the other, we have to force the cartels out of the marijuana market and eliminate their highly lucrative marijuana incomes - no business can withstand the loss of sixty percent of its revenue! To date, the cartels have amassed more than 100,000 "foot soldiers" and operate in 230 U.S. cities, and Arizona police are now conceding that parts of their state are under cartel control. The longer the cartels are allowed to exploit the prohibition the more powerful they're going to get and the more our own personal security will be put in jeopardy.

September 01, 2010

Lee Gonzales said:

Legalization isn't the solution Who wouldn't want the situation described in the article by Kelly Holt to be solved as easily as "legalization of marijuana?" Presto, we pass a law making it legal,throw in some taxes for the government and solution solved. No more gangs and no more smugglers and no more killings over drugs, right? Wrong. The drug war is critical to both our foreign enemies and our own government who use the growing drug war as an excuse to clamp down on our freedom. The foreign enemies are really waging war on our nation. They like to make money in the deal but money isn't all they do it for. Drugs are used as part of their arsenal. They target our kids since they are the easier targets and the youth get turned on and tuned out of our culture. They are the first victims and victims are what the foreign enemies want. Our homegrown enemies, those in agencies like the DEA, and Homeland Security and the CIA wouldn't want the drug war to be won since they would be out of a job violating our Bill of Rights. They have a vested interest in keeping drugs flowing into the USA. The cartels oblige them. It's a myth that legalizing drugs will stop the gangland killings. So what is the solution? The Constitution, real enforcement. Abolishing police state agencies like DEA and DHS and putting God back into our schools and into the public square.

September 01, 2010

BigEd said:

... Its time to move FORWARD and legalize all recreational drugs. The prohibition has failed miserably. Lets go!

September 02, 2010

Rodge said:

... The only people who want to legalize drugs are either drug users or those who want to profit from legalization. If you legalize drugs all you are doing is rewarding bad behavior. If you say it's okay for anyone 21 or older to buy marijuana and you try to force out the cartels,who do you think they are going to sell to? YOUR CHILDREN!! The pushers will target underage buyers and make criminals of them when they get arrested. All the while the pusher will be able to stand on the corner legally. Doesn't it make more sense to put drug pushers in jail than our kids? To legalize drugs makes a bad situation worse. We are under constant attack to de-moralize and dumb down our society. Taking personal responsibility is the only way out of this mess.

September 04, 2010