Drug Wars tooooo close to home!

[Cloud]

nooooooooo! then we would all be forced to watch Canadian TV and Bollywood musicals.

[Cloud]

in the news today, a shift from guns and helicopter type aid to Mexico, to aid to encourage the rule of law and non-corrupt government and police. That's a step in the right direction, to me.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_15166460

[classicman]

Thats great news! I hope it isn't because we've been finding that the past guns and stuff went to the drug dealers.

[TheMercenary]

Any solution must begin with 1. Locking down the pourous borders tight. Normal channels of travel would remain open. All others would be subject to arrest or death.

Then and only then can we address reform.

All other solutions are doom to failure.

[Cloud]

the definition of ironic:

The Sun City is holding it's spot as the second safest large city in United States. See the Top 5...

The FBI released their 2009 Preliminary Crime Statistics, and *based on the numbers El Paso has the second lowest number of violent crimes per capita of the top **25 most populated cities.

San Diego, California beat out the Sun City for the number one spot.

Top 5 City Rankings

1) San Diego, CA
2) El Paso, TX
3) Austin, TX
4) Phoenix, AZ
5) New York City, NY

[classicman]

Obama's border plan looks similar to Bush's

PHOENIX – President Barack Obama's plan to send as many as 1,200 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border appears to be a scaled-down version of the border security approach championed by his predecessor.

The 6,000 troops who were sent by President George W. Bush to the border from June 2006 to July 2008 were generally credited within law enforcement circles as having helped improve border security, but restrictions placed on the soldiers were denounced by advocates for tougher enforcement who are now leveling similar objections at Obama's plan.

Some law enforcement officials along the border said they worry that Obama will repeat Bush's mistake by limiting the troops to support roles, such as conducting surveillance and installing lighting, rather than letting them make arrests and confront smugglers. They also believe the scale of the force — one-fifth of the size of the one sent by Bush — is too small to make a difference along the length of the 2,000-mile border.

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, whose jurisdiction includes about 80 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border, said 1,200 soldiers might make a difference in a smaller portion of the border. "But if you spread it across the border, it's like spitting into the wind," Dever said.

Under the Obama plan, the troops will work on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, analysis and training, and support efforts to block drug trafficking. They will temporarily supplement border patrol agents until Customs and Border Protection can recruit and train additional officers and agents to serve on the border. Obama also will request $500 million for border protection and law enforcement activities.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat who has prosecuted rings of drug and immigrant smugglers, said the planned deployment was a good first step, but believes that the president's plan should evolve to include more troops and more authority for the soldiers.

"I'll take what we can get," Goddard said. "Again, I don't think this is the final response."

The Mexican government issued a statement saying it hoped the troops would be used to fight drug cartels and not enforce immigration laws. Mexico has traditionally objected to the use of the military to control illegal immigration.

more

Originally Posted by Cloud

the definition of ironic:

Indeed...the top two are border cities and two other large cities in AZ and TX make the top four.

[TheMercenary]

All the more reason for the other border states to adopt the legislation that AZ has adopted. Force the whores in Congress to take action.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

All the more reason for the other border states to adopt the legislation that AZ has adopted. Force the whores in Congress to take action.

The AZ law does not go into effect until later this summer.

These are 2009 crime stats.

Just pointing out the obvious.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Cloud

So--I live in a border town. El Paso/Cd. Juarez is essentially one big city, with an international border in the middle. Lots of commerce between the two. But let's just say--tourism is way down. People used to go to visit, to shop, to eat, to drink--not so much any more.

Over 200 people have been killed this year alone--many of them police officers--in a war to control drug smuggling routes into the US. The violence is horrendous: executions, drive-by shootings are the least of it. People's heads cut off, kidnappings, multiple graves unearthed in suburban houses, (Houses of Death);

--and that's not even mentioning the mysterious and still unsolved rape-murders of perhaps 400 hundred women over the last decade, which may or may not be connected.

All this is happening a stone's throw from my very door. Is this on anyone's radar but El Pasoans?

Very, very scary.

[Cloud]

your purpose in quoting my first post is . . . . ? None of that has changed. On THIS side of the border, it's the second safest city in the nation. On the OTHER side of the border, it's the most dangerous city in the world.

What caught my eye in the list of safest cities was the high proportion of latinos in each (although I'm not sure about NYC).

[Shawnee123]

repeating posts for Posterity, or being a Posterior. who Knows?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Cloud

your purpose in quoting my first post is . . . . ? None of that has changed. On THIS side of the border, it's the second safest city in the nation. On the OTHER side of the border, it's the most dangerous city in the world.

What caught my eye in the list of safest cities was the high proportion of latinos in each (although I'm not sure about NYC).

I just read an article about that today. The link between high immigrant populations and high crime levels is not necessarily true.

In a peer-reviewed paper appearing in the June 2010 issue of Social Science Quarterly, Wadsworth argues not only that “cities with the largest increases in immigration between 1990 and 2000 experienced the largest decreases in homicide and robbery,” which we knew, but that after considering all the other explanations, rising immigration “was partially responsible.”

This is not an ideological question, although some of the law’s supporters, including some cops, would like to turn it into one. Experience has shown that when immigrants think they’ll be nailed for immigration offenses, they stop cooperating with law enforcement. The intelligence needed to find and fight hard-core criminals, whatever their immigration status, will be harder to get. People who feel themselves singled out for discrimination will withdraw more and more into ghettos, increasingly marginalized from American life instead of integrated into it. Smart cops understand all this perfectly well.

But of course if you’re using frog puppets as part of a know-nothing campaign to convince people that immigrants bring crime to the United States like rats carrying the plague, you’re not going to want to listen to reason, and you’ll ignore facts like the just-released preliminary statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report, which appear to line up with Wadsworth’s research. What’s so striking about them, he told me in an e-mail, is not just that the FBI numbers provide anecdotal support for his analysis, but that they are “entirely inconsistent with the claims of politicians and the general public sentiment.”

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/27/r...rithmetic.html

[Cloud]

yes, that's one of the arguments against the AZ law--that local people will simply stop cooperating with the cops, thus making their jobs much harder.

[Cloud]

oh, here's the answer to the NYC question, from the same article:

Most of the immigrants are headed deeper into the country, of course, including New York City, which has seen its Mexican population rise by an astounding rate of almost 58 percent since 2000, for a total of almost 300,000 by 2007. And crime rates? New York City, with a population of 8.5 million, some 40 percent of whom were born outside the United States, is one of those jurisdictions that prohibit police officers from questioning people about their immigration status. Its murder rate plunged from 2,245 in 1990 to 471 in 2009.