Entire police force in Los Ramones, Mexico quits after gunmen attack headquarters

spin

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Oct-27-10 03:23 PM
Original message

Entire police force in Los Ramones, Mexico quits after gunmen attack headquarters

October 27th 2010, 8:27 AM

A policeman walks among bullet-riddled patrol trucks after an attack at a police station in the town of Los Ramones. Gunmen shot more than 1,000 rounds and launched six grenades at the building.

The entire police force in a small Mexican town abruptly resigned Tuesday after its new headquarters was viciously attacked by suspected drug cartel gunmen.

All 14 police officers in Los Ramones, a rural town in northern Mexico, fled the force in terror after gunmen fired more than 1,000 bullets and flung six grenades at their headquarters on Monday night.

No one was injured in the attack. Mayor Santos Salinas Garza told local media that the officers resigned because of the incident.

The gunmen’s 20-minute shooting spree destroyed six police vehicles and left the white and orange police station pocked with bullet holes, the Financial Times reported.

****snip***

Los Ramones is in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, which has been a war zone of turf violence between two of the country’s fiercest drug gangs, the Zetas and the Gulf cartel.

Police have blamed members of both cartels for attacks on several police stations throughout the area. Several mayors in the region have been assassinated.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/27/2010-10-27_entire_police_force_in_los_ramones_mexico_quits_after_gunmen_attack_headquarters.html#ixzz13anPHFt3

EDITORIALS The guns of Mexico Memo to the gun control lobby
Tuesday, October 19 2010

YOU KNOW the dusty old saying that when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns? We've just seen more proof of it.

It was in a story about Mexico printed in your friendly neighborhood Arkansas Democrat-Gazette the other day. If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you know what's going down south of the border. The violence would make Quentin Tarantino blush. Gangs and drug cartels are killing each other by the thousands down there. In the last four years alone, more than 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars. And the violence is spilling over into this country.

The president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, says one way to stop the violence is to keep the Mexican mafia from importing guns from the United States. Mexico's attorney general, Arturo Chavez, concurs: "Mexico is facing an unprecedented and terrible struggle. We have to fight these criminals together. Positive results have been attained, but we need to do more and move faster." And, by the way, stop the guns at the border.

Except then came this in the article: Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. It is extremely difficult for citizens to legally buy or possess pistols or rifles.

The country has just one gun store, operated by the military. emphasis added

***snip***

The whole Mexican dilemma-from the violence rocking that nation to the absence of gun stores-proves the dusty old clichÈ, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. It's a dusty old clichÈ because it's been around so long. It's been around so long because it holds true so often.
http://www.allbusiness.com/crime-law-enforcement-corrections/criminal-offenses/15211132-1.html

U.S. struggles to stop flow of guns to Mexico
Thursday, October 7, 2010

IN MEXICO CITY Efforts to stem the smuggling of weapons from the United States to Mexican drug cartels have been frustrated by bureaucratic infighting, a lack of training and the delayed delivery of a computer program to Mexico, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

In the past four years, Mexico has submitted information about more than 74,000 guns seized south of the border that the government suspects were smuggled from the United States. But much of the data is so incomplete as to be useless and has not helped authorities bust the gunrunners who supply the Mexican mafias with their vast armories, officials said.

According to U.S. agents working here, Mexican prosecutors have not made a single major arms trafficking case.

In an address before a joint session of Congress this year, President Felipe Calderon asked the United States to reimpose a ban on the assault-style rifles favored by Mexican drug cartels and to work harder to stop weapons flowing from gun shops and shows along the southwest border into Mexico.

Obama administration officials have responded with a surge in spending to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Department of Homeland Security, and promises to curb cross-border gunrunning.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100607003.html