Article about Col. Lt. Leyzaola

[Yia!]

You got that right. Of course it will never happen because the politicos and the cops and the DEA are all getting paid tremendous amounts of money to keep it illegal. The citizens of the USA are always too stupid to realize what is in their best self-interest.

 

[cleric]

I repeat: Until the United States stems the demand, the supply get here. Someone else will step up to the plate for their swing at the riches. Men like Leyzaola are remarkable and admirable but it was not Elliot Ness that broke the Mob, it was the repeal of Prohibition.

 

[Pompal 09.]

When I first wrote about Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola a military man running the civilian TJ police force I was troubled by potential human rights issues in Tijuana, because military soldiers aren't trained as civilian police officers.

But potential nothing as information is coming out every day about how Leyzaola has his men torture TJ cops suspected of having drug cartel ties which is a violation of the Mexican Constitution.

Here read about what they are doing in TJ. Now some will say, "so what?" He is cleaning up the city isn't he?" Well not really, there are still many cartel killings, although they seemed to have an agreement between the cartels to cool down for awhile. The drugs are flowing freely to the US even more than before, and Leyzaola hasn't even made major seizures of the drugs as seizures are down too.
__________

 

[webkinzlover525]

Not just the relatives but anyone who did business with them, their lawyers etc. After a while no one even wanted to talk to Pablo let alone do business with him.

The mayor of San Pedro Garza Garcia (Suburb of Monterrey) is already in on it. At one press conference he announced that several guys were dead even before their bodies were discovered. He has pretty much said that there are vigilantes now operating to bump off these guys.

 

[cupidgirl]

interesting,so the death squads in Colombia killed the relatives of narcos?
death squads in Mexico?were?

 

[Priestess]

There is only one way to clean up Mexico. The same way the Pepes took care of Escobar in Colombia. You kill anyone and everyone associated with him and eventually he is all alone like a rat. Even his family were trying to escape Colombia because they knew it was a matter of time before they too would be killed. Death squads are now being formed in Mexico who are going to take it to the drug cartels in ways that their rivals and the army cannot.

 

[zoe]

From the article:

I don't know, when I read things like this it make me a little uncomfortable.

In his quest to clean up Tijuana, I could see a lot of basic human right and constitutionally laws ignored. I for one don't like to be stopped on the street for nothing, and them randomly checking for drugs and weapons.

I'm also uncomfortable with a guy who doesn't understand " “Plata o Plomo" the code many in Mexico law enforcement have been living by. That's an awful lot of money these drug cartels are offering, and I find it hard to believe people could turn that kind of money down, especially since the US "war on drugs" is a losing war which is fueled by an insatiable appetite on the US side.

But will find soon enough if Leyzaola is beyond reproach. If he is still around in the year, that will probably mean that he has fallen in line like everybody else in government.

 

[xxAbbyxxJeffro]

Obviously, he is the right man for the job. Sadly, if we do not do something about the demand for illegal drugs, especially in the United States, I fear that he will ultimately fail. Uh, oh. I sense another legalize-it/keep-it-illegal discussion coming ...

 

[Pompal 09.]

I had the good fortune to meet this gentleman a couple of months ago. I believe him to be honest and a breath of fresh air to a job that has been filled with corrumption for many years now.

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Tijuana's new weapon in gang war
Leyzaola goes after ‘filthy, shiftless’ foes

By Sandra Dibble, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Sunday, December 6, 2009 at midnight
Tijuana’s public safety secretary, Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola Perez, has a five-year plan to gain control of the city.

/ Special to the Union-Tribune

Tijuana’s public safety secretary, Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola Perez, has a five-year plan to gain control of the city.
PROFILE

Julian Leyzaola Perez

Age: 49

Born: Culiacلn, Sinaloa

Military career: Lieutenant colonel with 25 years on active duty; on leave since 2000

Civilian career: Public security posts in state government in Oaxaca; head of state police academy, director of state penitentiaries, head of State Preventive Police in Baja California; top operational commander with Tijuana Police Department; currently Tijuana’s secretary of public safety

Family: Married, three children, two grandchildren

Online: For photos, videos and more stories about border violence and its effect, go to borderwar.uniontrib.com

TIJUANA — In the year since Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola Perez became Tijuana’s top cop, drug traffickers have gone to great measures to force him out.

They’ve gunned down his officers; left him taunting, handwritten messages at crime scenes; and more than once plotted his assassination.

But Tijuana’s hard-driving secretary of public safety says he’s not going away. He says that would be giving in to the criminal groups that torture, kidnap, kill and corrupt as they fight for control of the region’s drug-trafficking trade and lucrative smuggling routes to the United States. When the subject comes up, the derisive term he favors is los mugrosos y los holgazanes — Spanish for “the filthy and the shiftless.”

“If I pay attention to them and leave, then I’m their collaborator,” Leyzaola said during a recent interview. He has a five-year plan to increase police training, improve equipment and gain control of the city, and he hopes to carry it out.

For security reasons, he no longer operates out of the small, bustling police headquarters on Calle Ocho downtown. Instead, he receives visitors in an office building that police use a few blocks away in the city’s Rio Zone. When he moves around the city, it’s only under heavy guard.

“The criminals think they’re businessmen, but we have to make them realize they’re delinquents, that they have to hide, and not drive around the city in caravans of eight or 10 vehicles showing their weapons,” Leyzaola said. “Before, they controlled authorities, and as a person, as a society, as a public servant, I can’t allow that.”

On leave from the Mexican armed forces, he’s the first military officer to head the 2,100-officer municipal department, the largest police agency in Baja California.

Some care little for his brash manner and tough talk, saying it only serves to infuriate dangerous adversaries and that his officers end up paying the price. But others praise him for daring to bring about change: In a city where it has sometimes been difficult to distinguish the cops from the criminals, Leyzaola has taken pains to point out the difference.

“Julian Leyzaola is playing a very important role, which is confronting crime,” said Roberto Quijano, a corporate attorney who heads the Tijuana branch of the national business group, Coparmex, and an observer of crime trends. “It is costing many lives, but he is doing a good job and being recognized for it.”

To avert attacks, police have been ordered to patrol in groups, and in recent weeks have been moving through the city in squads of three to five pickups. By Leyzaola’s tally, 42 officers have been gunned down in the line of duty in the past two years.

“It wasn’t this way before, because they were cooperating with the criminals, and now they’re facing them as police,” Leyzaola said. “I call them heroes, because they know the risks they’re up against, and yet they still come to work, step into their patrol vehicles and attend to citizens.”

State investigators say the tally is higher — 56 Tijuana municipal officers killed in the past two years — and that the causes aren’t so clear-cut. They say up to 45 percent of the deaths could be linked to the officer’s suspicious activity.

But some were indisputably killed for doing their jobs. And others were shot because they were wearing police uniforms — killings allegedly ordered by suspected drug-gang leader Teodoro Garcيa Simental to pressure Leyzaola to step down.

With civilian police agencies across Mexico weakened by decades of internal corruption, the military has assumed a central role in confronting drug-trafficking groups under Mexican President Felipe Calderَn. Increasingly, military officers such as Leyzaola have been tapped for leadership positions in civilian law enforcement agencies across Mexico.

He said his close relationship with military authorities has been crucial in his current job: “We have total, total coordination. Without their support, we wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything here.”

A trim, athletic 49-year-old, Leyzaola is the son and grandson of military officers, becoming a soldier at 16 when he enrolled in the Heroico Colegio Militar, Mexico’s West Point. He now lives apart from his family and sleeps at the military base in Tijuana for security reasons.

Leyzaola isn’t new to civilian law enforcement: Previous positions include heading Baja California’s prison system and the state’s police force. But never before has he drawn so much public scrutiny.

A widely viewed YouTube video shows Leyzaola detaining a violent drug suspect named José Filiberto Parra Ramos this year in the parking lot of a Tijuana shopping center.

Unaware that journalists were watching one Saturday in October, he punched the body of a suspect who had been killed in a confrontation with police officers. It was an act of frustration, he later explained, because he had just learned that an officer shot in the incident had died.

Last month, Leyzaola made headlines again when he said the members of Los Tucanes de Tijuana, a popular musical group, should be investigated for links to drug traffickers because of their songs that celebrate violent exploits.

Leyzaola’s staunchest civilian supporter is Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos, who appointed Leyzaola to the department’s No. 2 spot when he began his term two years ago. In December 2008, as drug-related violence rose to unprecedented levels, Ramos promoted Leyzaola to the top position, secretary of public safety, replacing Alberto Capella, an attorney and anti-crime activist.

“This was not a job for a civilian,” Ramos said. “We needed someone who would win the trust of the population, but most of all of military authorities.”

Under Capella and now with Leyzaola, the department has undergone an unprecedented purging, with the dismissal or resignation of 470 officers. Of those, 120 are behind bars, including at least a dozen high-ranking commanders accused of collaborating with organized crime.

Ramos said Tijuana spends close to $105 million a year on public safety — one-third of the city’s budget. Police salaries have been increased, and a starting officer receives nearly $1,200 a month, which Ramos said is the highest for a municipal department in Mexico.

Still, the results of the city’s crime-fighting efforts remain difficult to quantify.

State government figures show that crime has gone down, 12 percent in Tijuana in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2008. But an analysis by Coparmex, the business group, shows overall crime in Tijuana down 7 percent from last year, and thefts and robberies have risen. Homicides have dropped from a record 844 last year to 530 so far this year, about half of them attributed to organized crime, according to the Baja California Attorney General’s Office.

While lauding the city’s efforts, Quijano, the Coparmex president, said, “The general impression is that there’s still a lot to be done.” He said the city feels far safer than it did a year ago, and that residents are once again venturing out to movies and restaurants. But Quijano and others say Tijuana’s crime trends are part of a regional problem that depends not just on Tijuana police but on measures such as crime-prevention programs, drug-abuse-prevention measures and coordination among agencies, including those in the United States.



In Mexico, municipal police serve as patrol officers in charge of maintaining public order; they don’t investigate crimes, but are often the first on the scene once a crime has occurred. For drug-trafficking groups, corrupt municipal police have been important allies by allowing them to commit crimes with impunity.

An officer with seven years on the force said he has noticed a difference when he detains criminals.

“When we catch someone, there is a legal process that follows,” the officer said. “Before, when you made an arrest, if the suspect worked for someone powerful, we’d let him go.”

He and other officers interviewed for this story asked not to be identified because they fear repercussions if they speak out. One high-ranking commander acknowledged that his working conditions have changed, saying, “We needed a cleansing of the most corrupt officers.”

The commander, who has 15 years on the force, said it was once common practice to receive orders from superiors to stay away from certain areas or ignore calls for assistance, which allowed criminals to conduct business. “I felt angry, but I couldn’t do anything,” said the officer, adding that the practice has come to a stop.

Still, not everyone is applauding. One patrolman said he feels trapped because he’s afraid to go out on patrol, but more afraid of the suspicions he would arouse if he tried to leave the force. And families of at least two dozen detained officers say the officers were tortured by military authorities seeking to extract confessions, accusing Leyzaola of turning them in without a judicial order and being present during the interrogations. Leyzaola has denied participation in any acts of torture.

With the support of human- rights groups, the families have spoken out before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. Raْl Ramيrez Baena, a former Baja California human-rights ombudsman, said Leyzaola should be suspended while civilian authorities investigate the complaints.

“He is the only one who has taken a decided stance against organized crime; we recognize that,” said Ramيrez, who now heads a small group called Citizens Committee for Human Rights of the Northwest. “But you can’t fight crime by committing another crime.”

Leyzaola said that much work needs to be done in the months ahead, including improving equipment and training, and hiring officers. The city is working with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to send 50 Tijuana officers at a time for three-month training programs.

Leyzaola said he’s moving forward using a strategy that involves gaining control of one sector of the city at a time.

“I knew from the beginning that recovering the city would not be easy, I knew from the beginning that we’d have to confront them,” Leyzaola said. “In wars, there are deaths, and this is war.”