Category Archives: The Front

Crime Wave in Phoenix

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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

Race Riot in Los Angeles High School

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Up to 600 Black and Latino students were involved in racially tinged violence at the Locke High School in South Los Angeles. The riot was described as the worst violence many of the faculty had ever seen in a high school plagued with violence and what the L.A. authorities are euphemistically calling “tagging crews.” It took 60 officers, some in riot gear, to restore order and only four arrests were made. One of the arrested was a non-student carrying a knife.

From The L.A. Times:

A fight between rival groups of black and Latino students at Locke High School quickly escalated into a campus-wide melee Friday, with as many as 600 students brawling until police restored calm with billy clubs.

The troubled campus in South Los Angeles was locked down after the fight broke out at 12:55 p.m., as students returned from lunch to their fifth-period classes. Overwhelmed school officials called Los Angeles police for help, but students and faculty said it took about half an hour before dozens of officers, many in riot gear, restored order.

“The kids were crazy, running from place to place, jumping on other kids,” said Reggie Smith, the school’s band director, who said he ran to pull his students from the melee. “Some of my kids were crying because they were walking to class with friends and they got jumped.”

Los Angeles Unified School District police said that there are only two officers assigned to Locke but that the school police force brought in about 60 officers after receiving word of the brawl. The Los Angeles Police Department also dispatched more than a dozen patrol cars and about 50 officers.

Susan Cox, an LAUSD spokeswoman, said police arrested four people — three students for fighting and one non-student for illegal possession of a knife. Four students were treated in the school nurse’s office for minor injuries.

The campus at 111th and San Pedro streets has long been one of the city’s most troubled. This school year has been particularly difficult, with near-daily fights — albeit on a much smaller scale — during much of the fall and winter. Locke is about to be reorganized as a cluster of charter schools run by Green Dot Public Schools, which will take over in July, and some faculty and staff have accused the district of letting the campus drift in its final year as a traditional public school.

“Morale has really dropped because they don’t feel like they have everybody behind them,” cheerleading coach Marlo Jenkins said recently. “There are just fights upon fights upon fights now.”

Not the kind of leadership needed in areas where the growing tensions between Blacks and Latinos is creating a culture of racist warfare. Locke High School is 65% Latino and 35% black, and though many students say there isn’t much open hostility the people interviewed in the article admit to both self-segregation of the groups and near constant “black on brown” fights. The actions of the police after restoring order should tell you how bad the situation really is in Los Angeles despite the rosy picture many try to paint regarding race relations:

After securing order, authorities rounded up the students who hadn’t returned to class and segregated them by race, holding Latinos in the boys gym and African American students in Hobbs Hall, the school’s multipurpose room.

Beginning at 2 p.m., school officials began releasing students in small groups to go home. The school remained on lockdown until the last group had left about 3:15 p.m.

LAUSD’s Cox said that there would be an enhanced police presence at Locke during school hours next week and that the district would send human relations staff to the school to talk to students.

In recent years, melees have broken out periodically at many campuses with a black and Latino presence, including in Los Angeles, Lynwood and Compton. There have been fights between Latinos and Armenians in other areas that led to campus lockdowns.

Soon we’ll end up with segregated schools. The Latino vs. Armenian violence mentioned is a problem that has been going on since the 90s apparently, with a gang called Armenian Power forming up specifically to protect Armenians from Latino gang violence. A.P. is small but extremely violent and have fought MS-13 on occasion. In ’05 there was a riot in Grant High School involving Latinos and Armenians.

If the youth in Los Angeles is any indication then race relations in America are getting much worse. The fact that authorities can barely control the groups involved make America’s future look bleak indeed.

There’s a video report from the local ABC affiliate. Breitbart has a nuts and bolts report.

Drug Cartels Destabilizing Mexico

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Mexico is in a losing battle with drug cartels whose escalating violence is providing cover for Marxist insurgents to become active. The newest cartel offensive raises troubling questions about the ability of the Mexican government to provide safety and security for its citizens, and heralds a future of bloody anarchy if officials cannot regain control of the streets. From WaPo:

MEXICO CITY, May 8 — Gunmen assassinated Mexico’s national police chief Thursday, blasting him with nine bullets outside his home in the capital and dealing a significant setback to the government’s campaign against drug cartels.

Edgar Eusebio Millán Gómez, the public face of Mexico’s offensive against drug cartels, became the highest-ranking law enforcement official to be killed since the launch of the effort 17 months ago. The assassination could give new confidence to drug cartels blamed for 6,000 killings in the past 2 1/2 years, and embolden other anti-government groups in this violence-plagued nation.

“This could have a snowball effect, even leading to the risk of ungovernability,” Luís Astorga, a Mexico City-based sociologist and drug expert, said in an interview. “It indicates terrible things, a level of weakness in our institutions — they can’t even protect themselves.”

Mexico’s drug and violence problem now engulfs the entire country, swamping cities along the U.S.-Mexico border and rugged drug cartel redoubts in the western mountains, and piercing into the heart of national power in Mexico City. The capital, once relatively immune to such brazen drug killings, has been the scene of four assassinations of high-ranking federal police officials in about a week.

[…]

The capital is also on edge because the once-dormant People’s Revolutionary Army, a rebel group that bombed oil pipelines last year, has been demanding the release of several jailed members. The rebels could see the killing of Millán Gómez as a sign of weakness, Astorga, the sociologist, said.

Federal police forces are stretched thin across Mexico, chasing an ever-growing number of suspects in drug killings. Last week, for instance, at least 17 people were killed in an attack on a ranch in the western state of Guerrero. This week, the military was engaged in a major battle with suspected cartel assassins in the central state of Zacatecas. That incident left three dead.

Fingers are pointing at the powerful Sinaloa Cartel which has its own military wing and has been known to contract MS-13 and Mexican Mafia to kill rivals. The Sinaloa Cartel has pushed well into the American southwest and has increasingly shown a willingness to engage Mexican forces and rival cartels in open firefights on the streets.

Mexico’s inability to maintain order has direct implications for American security, and this violence will spill into our country eventually. It’s only a matter of time.

Radioactive Material Stolen in England

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Britain’s socialist health care system may be responsible for more than just long waiting periods and piss poor doctoring. Soon a dirty bomb might be detonated in London or another English city courtesy of NHS:

Nine items that could be used to build a dirty bomb are missing from British hospitals, fuelling fears that Al Qaeda terrorists are trying to steal material to build a radioactive device.

The revelation comes as a new US State Department intelligence report highlights fears over terror suspects working in the NHS and reveals Britain has launched an urgent operation to track down all radiological material used in its hospitals.

A State Department counter-terrorism official said there was high-level “concern” in Washington about the large number of foreign-born workers in European hospitals with access to materials that could be made into a dirty bomb.

He added: “There is little doubt that eventually a dirty bomb made from radiological materials stolen from a hospital would be exploded.”

The operation to track down the material was launched last year by the Environment Agency with assistance from MI5.

This story puts a more sinister spin on what I originally thought was a rather funny piece in the Daily Mail about British authorities catching Iraqi and Afghani illegal aliens fleeing the country. The story implies implies that the “failed asylum seekers” are unhappy with the English weather and the piss poor service provided by “free” health care (Democrats take note) but with materials that could be used to make a dirty bomb missing the flight from England of Muslim immigrants from two fronts in the War on Terror seems more like a warning sign to me:

Failed asylum seekers are sneaking out of Britain – because they are fed up with the poor health care and bad weather.

Scores have been caught trying to break past border controls in recent weeks, according to immigration staff.

The majority of those who have been found are from Afghanistan and Iraq, said Les Williams, a chief immigration officer for the UK Border Agency.

He said: “One thing we have noticed recently is people trying to leave the country.

“We cannot explain exactly why they are trying to go, but when some of these people were questioned they said they wanted to go to a warmer country as they are fed up with the English weather and fed up with their treatment on the NHS.”

If the NHS is overwhelmed now imagine what would happen when a dirty bomb goes off. Maybe some of these border jumpers are thinking Italy will be able to treat their radiation induced symptoms better, or they just want to get out of the blast zone. Soon.

Either way these are both stories to watch.

American Privateers Fire on Iranian Boats

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red-jack-flag-of-christopher-moody.jpg

Had I known you could still receive what amounted to a Letter of Marque I wouldn’t be sitting in front of a computer now, I’d be on a Carrack in the Persian gulf striking the Red Jack like fellow transplant to South Carolina Christopher Moody.

Anyone want to buy a blog, I’ve got provisions to lay in.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A cargo ship hired by the U.S. military fired warning shots at boats suspected to be Iranian, the U.S. Navy said on Friday, underscoring tension in the Gulf as the Pentagon sharpened its warnings to Tehran.

According to American defense officials, the Westward Venture cargo ship chartered by the U.S. Defense Department was traveling in international waters when two unidentified small boats approached on Thursday.

After the boats failed to respond to radio queries and a warning flare, the cargo ship’s onboard security team fired “a few bursts” of machine gun and rifle warning shots, according to Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet.

“The small boats left the area a short time later,” she said by telephone. “They were able to avoid a serious incident by following the procedures that we use.”

The news helped push oil prices up more than $3 to $119.50 a barrel — within striking distance of the record $119.90 hit earlier this week — as traders worried escalating tensions in the region could eventually disrupt crude shipments.

Well if oil prices are going to spike let’s put our privateers to work! Just in case you think this is an isolated incident:

In March, another U.S. military-chartered ship preparing to cross the Suez Canal fired warning shots at a small boat, killing an Egyptian on board.

American privateers don’t mess around, and seem to be able to do the job the English navy can no longer do, that is defend themselves on the high seas.

Hot Air has a more timid examination. Figures those land lubbers would go all soft and not raise a toast to the bloody handed sea dogs who sent those Iranian Mahdi-lovers packing. They’re working off a BBC report but I won’t link to a hack outfit like them who make up news.

KPTM has more.

I say to the crew of The Westward Venture well done lads, well done indeed.

h/t Drudge

Update: Yes Jawa readers I know these are not technically Privateers, they’re federal employees. What I didn’t know was that the Internet was full of tiresome killjoys. Leave your corrections in the comments and stop emailing me.