Crime Wave in Phoenix

The “human trafficking” industry is in the middle of a turf war in Arizona leaving police struggling to contain the violence:

When the body of a man set on fire was discovered earlier this week, Phoenix police not only got a case of whodunit. They also got to scratch off one of the suspects they were investigating as a high-level boss in a human-smuggling ring.

On Thursday night, police made a bust in the killing, arresting seven people and rescuing a second man who was kidnapped alongside the homicide victim.

Authorities say the case illustrates the continuing violence of human-smuggling groups operating in the Valley, where brutality plays out between rival organizations and today’s victim is tomorrow’s suspect.

“It’s all about money and it’s all about profit,” said Lt. Lauri Burgett of Phoenix police’s Violent Crimes Bureau. “They really stop at nothing, including killing and burning a body. And I think they do that to further their intimidation tactics.”

Phoenix police investigated 356 border-related kidnappings in 2007, about 40 percent more than the previous year. Police say the uptick is an indication that both more kidnappings are taking place and that more people are reporting them.

Still, authorities suspect the majority go unreported in part because most victims are illegal immigrants involved in smuggling activity.

All suspects arrested Thursday night were accused of participating in immigrant smuggling. So were their victims.

Police now believe the homicide victim, a Guatemalan named Aroldo Virsabi-Robles Gonzalez, was a high-ranking leader in a human-smuggling organization and that his status may have led to his death. Gonzalez, 26, was also the subject of a smuggling investigation earlier this year, Burgett said.

The seven men arrested are all suspected smugglers. Phoenix police don’t need the headache of trying to contain cartel style violence in their city, especially now while they suspect a serial rapist/murderer is on the loose:

PHOENIX — Police are hunting for a serial predator who has been linked to four unsolved attacks on women in Phoenix and nearby Mesa, including two unsolved killings.

“We would absolutely like to find this person and get him off the streets before he has a chance to harm anyone else,” Mesa police Detective Steve Berry said Monday.

The newest case to be linked to the crime spree occurred Nov. 4 when a 35-year-old woman was kidnapped, taken to an alley in central Phoenix, raped and beaten, said Phoenix police Detective Reuben Gonzales.

He said investigators believe the woman was left in the alley for dead. She survived with injuries to her head, neck and torso, Gonzales said.

Berry said DNA evidence connected the assault to the rape and killing of two women in Mesa in 2004 and in 2007, and to another rape in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb.

“We’re very concerned,” Berry said. “We’ve got a violent predator out there who abducts these women, and two of them have resulted in homicides and the other two are serious sexual assaults.”

The trail began in Mesa with two slayings. The naked body of Karen Jane Campbell, 44, was found on a roadway in October 2007. The partially clothed body of Alisa Marie Beck, 21, was found in an alley in 2004 about five miles from where Campbell’s body was left. Both had been strangled.

It’s possible that the Phoenix strangler is connected to the violent smuggling rings that are turning the city into a war-zone. Certainly the violence and brazen nature of the crimes (one woman was kidnapped off a busy street in broad daylight) seems at home with the trafficking rings.

Regardless, in trying to maintain order as these criminal groups fight their turf war the police will have to divert resources they need to find the rapist to keeping smugglers safe. Crime in Phoenix is likely to get worse as these powerful gangs stretch police resources to the limit, providing cover for the most heinous of crimes to be committed.

h/t Crime Scene KC

53 Illegal Immigrants Held Captive in Phoenix

Where’s La Raza when illegals really need them?

Fifty-three illegal immigrants found Sunday had been held against their will in a fortified home by suspected smugglers demanding more money, authorities said.

The group of rescued immigrants included two 13-year-old girls, three women and a mentally disabled man. The rest were men, Department of Public Safety spokesman Harold Sanders said.

Authorities began investigating Saturday after getting a tip that immigrants were being held captive. Sanders said the smugglers wanted an average of $2,500 for each person’s release.

The single-family home where they were kept had been fortified to prevent escape and weapons were seized at the location. The suspected smugglers also took away the immigrants’ shoes so they couldn’t run off.

Sanders said five people, all residents of Mexico, were being jailed on charges of extortion, kidnapping, aggravated assault and human smuggling.

Authorities on the scene said the immigrants had little food and water and it was unclear how long they had been held inside the house.

“Because the undocumented aliens are held in fortified rooms and do not have access to watches, clocks, telephones, televisions, etc, so when they are interviewed, many do not have a true sense of time and whether hours, days or weeks have passed.” Sanders said.

Wait. You mean all these smugglers and “immigrants’ rights” activists have less than honorable motives for the illegals they want to come here? Really? Who would have thought that the people who want to flood America with people who would naturally be isolated and easily victimized might not have their best interests at heart?

h/t BreitBart

Bomb Threat, Suspicious Device Close Navy Construction Site

A story from San Diego that happened yesterday but hasn’t had many updates:

SAN DIEGO (AP) – A bomb threat followed by the delivery of a suspicious object brought the evacuation of a construction site at the U.S. Naval Reservation in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood.

Police spokeswoman Monica Munoz says military officials told police about the threat this morning.

Authorities cleared out the Main Street construction area and a bomb squad with dogs found the possibly explosive device.

The object was safely removed from the area by 4 this afternoon, but is not yet clear whether it was actually explosive.

The A.P. filed the report last night a little before 9:00pm and as of yet there are no updates. There have been a lot of bombings this year which is a bad sign.

h/t N.T.A.

Victimless Crime File: Women Crossing Border Illegally Targeted for Abuse by Drug Smugglers

Here’s a convergence between two “victimless” crimes that seem to produce scores of victims. The so-called “immigrant rights” advocates are nothing more than modern day slave masters advocating for the flooding of America with millions of vulnerable and desperate people who will be taken advantage of. Drug legalization advocates ignore both the inherent vileness of drug gangs and the fact that repealing prohibition didn’t make the mafia disappear. Both groups have no concern for the safety of people they help put in danger.

Here’s what happens when poor people are lured here by leftists and open border libertarians who could care less what happens to them while crossing the same desert the criminals they buy their drugs from lurk in:

Two female illegal immigrants from Guatemala said Thursday that they had been raped earlier this week by a group of armed drug smugglers.

The women, ages 18 and 28, were apprehended along with a group 38 earlier this week but didn’t tell anyone about the sexual assaults until Thursday morning while meeting with an assistant U.S. attorney in preparation for a deportation hearing, said Mario Escalante, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman.

They gave the following account: A group of men dressed in black and carrying backpacks intercepted the group as they were walking through the desert on Monday night. The men pulled the two women aside and sexually assaulted them. One women said a man put a pistol to her head.

Officials notified the Guate-malan Consulate in Phoenix about the incident. The women were still set up for formal removal proceedings, Escalante said.

It’s the second report of women being raped by drug smugglers and third report of violence against women on the desert trails in the past week.

On May 4, three Mexican women, ages 16, 17 and 20, told agents that they had been raped by masked, armed bandits the day before.

On May 6, the Border Patrol encountered two Nicaraguan women, ages 41 and 36, near Milepost 20 on Arivaca Road who were visibly injured and dehydrated.

They said they had been badly beaten by a guide, or coyote, when they asked to slow down, Escalante said.

They were then left behind in the desert.

Let’s be clear. The gun that was held to these women’s head while they were raped, and kept their fellow travelers from intervening, was purchased with drug money. The money you give to people to buy your pot helps rape the illegals you pay slave wages to mow your lawn. That’s not what I call a victimless crime.

Repealing Prohibition won’t solve the problem either. As drug gangs lose their main revenue they’ll use the cache of weapons and funds to move into new territories. From the AZstar:

Drug-fueled home invasions, kidnappings and other violent crimes have surged in Tucson recently, echoing the drug war raging in northern Mexico.

As law enforcement cracks down on smuggling along the border, officials say, traffickers increasingly are turning to more desperate measures to continue their criminal activity.

In some cases, smuggling groups turn on each other, finding it easier to steal from competitors than bring drugs across the border themselves.

And although the violence is most likely to hit those engaged in drug-related activities, there’s always the risk that it will spill over and involve innocent people — a possibility that local law-enforcement agencies are scrambling to confront.

The violence is driven in part by the massive amount of drugs flowing through Arizona, officials say.

Although it’s one of four states along the U.S.-Mexico border, 60 percent of illegal drugs that end up in the country come through Arizona, said Tucson Police Department Capt. Terry Rozema, commander of the multiagency Counter Narcotics Alliance.

Drug trafficking always has been a brutal trade, but lately the violence is on the rise, officials say.

In response, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, now assisted by the U.S. Border Patrol, recently created two border-crime units that target human and drug smugglers in rural areas.

The growing threat in the city prompted the formation last month of a home-invasion unit, staffed with a sergeant, five detectives, a crime analyst and a clerk, said Sgt. Matt Ronstadt, the unit’s supervisor.

“The criminal element recognizes it’s probably easier to obtain a large quantity of narcotics or cash from someone who’s already done the hard work of shipping the product and finding a place to store it,” he said.

In other words, repeal prohibition and allow your local bodegas to sell weed and those bodegas will become death traps for everyone daring to cut into the cartel’s business.

But of course prohibition isn’t stopping the violence either. Mary Anastasia O’Grady has a great article in WSJ that talks about American demand for drugs destabilizing Mexico:

The upshot: Americans underwrite Mexico’s vicious organized crime syndicates. The gringos get their drugs and the Mexican mafia gets weapons, technology and the means to buy off or intimidate anyone who gets in their way. Caught in the middle is a poor country striving to develop sound institutions for law enforcement.

The trouble for Mexico is that, even if it understands that U.S. demand is not going away, it cannot afford to cede large swaths of the country to the drug cartels. Thus Mexican President Felipe Calderón has made confronting organized crime a priority since taking office in December 2006. His attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, told me in February that the goal is to reclaim the state’s authority where it has been lost to the mafias.

But after 17 months of engagement, while San Diego students party on, victory remains elusive and the Mexican death toll is mounting. Most of the drug-related killings since Mr. Calderón took office seem to be a result of battles between rival cartels. Still, the escalating violence is troubling. The official death toll attributable to organized crime since the Calderón crackdown began now stands at 3,995. Of that, 1,170 have died this year.

Especially alarming are the number of assassinations among military personnel and municipal, state and federal police officers. The total is 439 for the 17 months and 109 so far this year. Many of these victims have been ordinary police officers whose refusal to be bought off or back off cost them their lives.

But as the murder of police chief Millan makes clear, high rank offers no safety. Two weeks before he was gunned down, Roberto Velasco, the head of the organized crime division of the federal police, was shot in the head. The assailants took his car, which leaves open the possibility that it was a random event, but most Mexicans are not buying that theory. Eleven federal law enforcement agents have been killed in ambushes and executions in the last four weeks alone.

If U.S. law enforcement agencies were losing their finest at such a rate, you can bet Americans would give greater thought to the violence generated by high demand and prohibition. Our friends in Mexico deserve equal consideration.

The only real solution would be for Americans to stop buying so much pot, to boycott the cartels the way we boycott companies whose policies we don’t like. But Americans are spoiled and used to receiving their instant gratification and college aged kids will no more give up getting high to save some Mexican lives than they are likely to not have unprotected sex to avoid catching AIDS. Pot smokers will continue funding the destruction of Mexico, and when the cross border violence becomes intolerable they’ll demand action from the government.

But when we demand action from them, the people that fund the cartels, they’ll always fall back on the “it’s a victimless crime” argument.

A.C.L.U.: Speaking Out for Sex Offenders’ Right to Drive Ice Cream Trucks

Really.

Apparently a few states are reacting to some high profile incidents in which convicted sex offenders were found driving ice cream trucks. In one case a man named Eduardo Grau ended up molesting a 9-year-old girl while using his ice cream truck as a rolling child lure. To prevent such crimes in the future people are attempting to use common sense and keep pedophiles and rapists from working in what is essentially a child service industry. The A.C.L.U. is not on-board:

Efforts to keep predators out of ice cream trucks gained momentum in 2004, when Eduardo Grau of Troy, N.Y., 56, was arrested after police said he offered rides in his ice cream truck to children and abused a 9-year-old girl.

The case spurred the 2005 New York state law. Grau eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual abuse in 2006, according to District Attorney Patricia DeAngelis. Since then, cities including San Antonio and Tucson have passed similar measures. New York appears to have the only statewide restriction, said Sarah Hammond of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Florida Assistant State Attorney Harmon Massey prosecuted a 2005 case involving the driver of an ice cream truck who was eventually convicted of battery against a teenager.

Massey said Florida should consider an ice cream vendor law. “Can you think of a better kid magnet, if you were a sex offender?”

Amanda Burnham of Perris, Calif., said that for a sex offender, “there are a bazillion things you could do for a living that don’t involve children. It just seems like a very, very odd choice.”

Burnham learned last summer that a man who drove an ice cream truck down her street is a registered sex offender. She and her neighbors put notices “on every single house” to warn residents, she said. The effort helped inspire the proposal in San Bernardino County.

Such laws can go too far, said Jennifer Ring, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas.

“If you’re throwing everyone in the same bucket, you’re really restricting these people who have paid their debt to society to go on and be productive citizens,” Ring said.

Is anyone really surprised by this?

h/t Crime Scene KC.