The U.S., with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, consumes more than half of the world’s drugs; most of the marijuana and methamphetamine, much of the heroin, and 90 percent of the cocaine comes from or through Mexico. “U.S. consumers are already financing this war,” Medina Mora tells me, “only it’s on the wrong side.”
Legalization makes this disappear overnight. The United States refuses to learn the lessons from prohibition.
Mexico has no gun-tracing system of its own, so it relies on the A.T.F., to whom it sends between 3,000 and 7,000 trace requests each year. A special Mexican federal police unit has been set up to investigate gun trafficking, but according to people who study Mexican law enforcement, the country has a long-standing, intense aversion to conducting serious investigations, and the main branches of the federal police are constantly at loggerheads. One American agent working on the gun problem in Mexico City says, “They don’t have the skills, they don’t have the knowledge, and they don’t have the training. They want us to give them everything on a platter.”
Then there is the corruption, endemic on the local and state levels but common enough in the federal police force as well. In 2005, Mexico’s attorney general reported that one-fifth of the federal force was under investigation. It’s not a black-and-white affair, though. City police loyal to traffickers are known to supply them with guns (and vice versa), but honest cops who work in poor departments also buy guns on the black market for protection. According to the agent in Mexico City, however, even the federal police often don’t report the guns they seize; they either keep them for themselves or, more troubling, resell them to criminal organizations along with such items as uniforms. (Cartel hit men often wear police uniforms, either as a disguise or because they sometimes are the police.) It’s not uncommon for seized guns to end up at new crime scenes later.
...
In 1985, Mexico disbanded the entire Direcciones Federales, the predecessor of the current federal police force, after high-ranking officials were implicated in a D.E.A. agent’s murder. At least twice since then, its head narcotics officers have been tied to cartels, as have members of all three major political parties and, reportedly, at least two presidential families.
I fail to see how US gun laws are going to fix the broken system in Mexico.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
