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