What a dangerous world we live in!
Bert W. Fannin
Western sidereal Astrologer
bwfannin at (no spam) ltastrology.com
www.ltastrology.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strategic Forecasting logo
Mexican Cartels and the Fallout From Phoenix
July 2, 2008
Graphic for Terrorism Intelligence Report
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Late on the night of June 22, a residence in Phoenix was approached by
a heavily armed tactical team preparing to serve a warrant. The
members of the team were wearing the typical gear for members of their
profession: black boots, black BDU pants, Kevlar helmets and Phoenix
Police Department (PPD) raid shirts pulled over their body armor. The
team members carried AR-15 rifles equipped with Aimpoint sights to
help them during the low-light operation and, like most cops on a
tactical team, in addition to their long guns, the members of this
team carried secondary weapons — pistols strapped to their thighs.
But the raid took a strange turn when one element of the team began
directing suppressive fire on the residence windows while the second
element entered — a tactic not normally employed by the PPD. This
breach of departmental protocol did not stem from a mistake on the
part of the team’s commander. It occurred because the eight men on the
assault team were not from the PPD at all. These men were not cops
serving a legal search or arrest warrant signed by a judge; they were
cartel hit men serving a death warrant signed by a Mexican drug lord.
The tactical team struck hard and fast. They quickly killed a man in
the house and then fled the scene in two vehicles, a red Chevy Tahoe
and a gray Honda sedan. Their aggressive tactics did have
consequences, however. The fury the attackers unleashed on the home —
firing over 100 rounds during the operation — drew the attention of a
nearby Special Assignments Unit (SAU) team, the PPD’s real tactical
team, which responded to the scene with other officers. An SAU officer
noticed the Tahoe fleeing the scene and followed it until it entered
an alley. Sensing a potential ambush, the SAU officer chose to
establish a perimeter and wait for reinforcements rather than charge
down the alley after the suspects. This was fortunate, because after
three of the suspects from the Tahoe were arrested, they confessed
that they had indeed planned to ambush the police officers chasing
them.
The assailants who fled in the Honda have not yet been found, but
police did recover the vehicle in a church parking lot. They
reportedly found four sets of body armor in the vehicle and also
recovered an assault rifle abandoned in a field adjacent to the
church.
This Phoenix home invasion and murder is a vivid reminder of the
threat to U.S. law enforcement officers that stems from the cartel
wars in Mexico.
Violence Crosses the Border
The fact that the Mexican men involved in the Phoenix case were
heavily armed and dressed as police comes as no surprise to anyone who
has followed security events in Mexico. Teams of cartel enforcers
frequently impersonate police or military personnel, often wearing
matching tactical gear and carrying standardized weapons. In fact, it
is rare to see a shootout or cartel-related arms seizure in Mexico
where tactical gear and clothing bearing police or military insignia
is not found.
One reason for the prevalent use of this type of equipment is that
many cartel enforcers come from military or police backgrounds. By
training and habit, they prefer to operate as a team composed of
members equipped with standardized gear so that items such as
ammunition and magazines can be interchanged during a firefight. This
also gives a team member the ability to pick up the familiar weapon of
a fallen comrade and immediately bring it into action. This is of
course the same reason military units and police forces use
standardized equipment in most places.
Police clothing, such as hats, patches and raid jackets, is
surprisingly easy to come by. Authentic articles can be stolen or
purchased through uniform vendors or cop shops. Knockoff uniform items
can easily be manufactured in silk screen or embroidery shops by
duplicating authentic designs. Even badges are easy to obtain if one
knows where to look.
While it now appears that the three men arrested in Phoenix were not
former or active members of the Mexican military or police, it is not
surprising that they employed military- and police-style tactics.
Enforcers of various cartel groups such as Los Zetas, La Gente Nueva
or the Kaibiles who have received advanced tactical training often
pass on that training to younger enforcers (many of whom are former
street thugs) at makeshift training camps located on ranches in
northern Mexico. There are also reports of Israeli mercenaries
visiting these camps to provide tactical training. In this way, the
cartel enforcers are transforming ordinary street thugs into
highly-trained cartel tactical teams.
Though cartel enforcers have almost always had ready access to guns,
including military weapons such as assault rifles and grenade
launchers, groups such as Los Zetas, the Kaibiles and their young
disciples bring an added level of threat to the equation. They are
highly trained men with soldiers’ mindsets who operate as a unit
capable of using their weapons with deadly effectiveness. Assault
rifles in the hands of untrained thugs are dangerous, but when those
same weapons are placed in the hands of men who can shoot accurately
and operate tactically as a fire team, they can be overwhelmingly
powerful — not only when used against enemies and other intended
targets, but also when used against law enforcement officers who
attempt to interfere with the team’s operations.
Targets
Although the victim in the Phoenix killing, Andrew Williams, was
reportedly a Jamaican drug dealer who crossed a Mexican cartel, there
are many other targets in the United States that the cartels would
like to eliminate. These targets include Mexican cartel members who
have fled to the United States due to several different factors. The
first factor is the violent cartel war that has raged in Mexico for
the past few years over control of important smuggling routes and
strategic locations along those routes. The second factor is the
Calderon administration’s crackdown, first on the Gulf cartel and now
on the Sinaloa cartel. Pressure from rival cartels and the government
has forced many cartel leaders into hiding, and some of them have left
Mexico for Central America or the United States.
Traditionally, when violence has spiked in Mexico, cartel figures have
used U.S. cities such as Laredo, El Paso and San Diego as rest and
recreation spots, reasoning that the general umbrella of safety
provided by U.S. law enforcement to those residing in the United
States would protect them from assassination by their enemies. As
bolder Mexican cartel hit men have begun to carry out assassinations
on the U.S. side of the border in places such as Laredo, Rio Bravo,
and even Dallas, the cartel figures have begun to seek sanctuary
deeper in the United States, thereby bringing the threat with them.
While many cartel leaders are wanted in the United States, many have
family members not being sought by U.S. law enforcement. (Many of them
even have relatives who are U.S. citizens.) Some family members have
also settled comfortably inside the United States, using the country
as a haven from violence in Mexico. These families might become
targets, however, as the cartels look for creative ways to hurt their
rivals.
Other cartel targets in the United States include Drug Enforcement
Administration and other law enforcement officers responsible for
operations against the cartels, and informants who have cooperated
with U.S. or Mexican authorities and been relocated stateside for
safety. There are also many police officers who have quit their jobs
in Mexico and fled to the United States to escape threats from the
cartels, as well as Mexican businessmen who are targeted by cartels
and have moved to the United States for safety.
To date, the cartels for the most part have refrained from targeting
innocent civilians. In the type of environment they operate under
inside Mexico, cartels cannot afford to have the local population, a
group they use as camouflage, turn against them. It is not uncommon
for cartel leaders to undertake public relations events (they have
even held carnivals for children) in order to build goodwill with the
general population. As seen with al Qaeda in Iraq, losing the support
of the local population is deadly for a militant group attempting to
hide within that population.
Cartels have also attempted to minimize civilian casualties in their
operations inside the United States, though for a different
operational consideration. The cartels believe that if a U.S. drug
dealer or a member of a rival Mexican cartel is killed in a place like
Dallas or Phoenix, nobody really cares. Many people see such a killing
as a public service, and there will not be much public outcry about
it, nor much real effort on the part of law enforcement agencies to
identify and catch the killers. The death of a civilian, on the other
hand, brings far more public condemnation and law enforcement
attention.
However, the aggressiveness of cartel enforcers and their brutal lack
of regard for human life means that while they do not intentionally
target civilians, they are bound to create collateral casualties along
the way. This is especially true as they continue to conduct
operations like the Phoenix killing, where they fired over 100 rounds
of 5.56 mm ball ammunition at a home in a residential neighborhood.
Tactical Implications
Judging from the operations of the cartel enforcers in Mexico, they
have absolutely no hesitation about firing at police officers who
interfere with their operations or who dare to chase them. Indeed, the
Phoenix case nearly ended in an ambush of the police. It must be
noted, however, that this ambush was not really intentional, but
rather the natural reaction of these Mexican cartel enforcers to
police pursuit. They were accustomed to shooting at police and
military south of the border and have very little regard for them. In
many instances, this aggression convinces the poorly armed and trained
police to leave the cartel gunmen alone.
The problem such teams pose for the average U.S. cop on patrol is that
the average cop is neither trained nor armed to confront a heavily
armed fire team. In fact, a PPD source advised Stratfor that, had the
SAU officer not been the first to arrive on the scene, it could have
been a disaster for the department. This is not a criticism of the
Phoenix cops. The vast majority of police officers and federal agents
in the United States simply are not prepared or equipped to deal with
a highly trained fire team using insurgent tactics. That is a task
suited more for the U.S. military forces currently deployed in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
These cartel gunmen also have the advantage of being camouflaged as
cops. This might not only cause considerable confusion during a
firefight (who do backup officers shoot at if both parties in the
fight are dressed like cops?) but also means that responding officers
might hesitate to fire on the criminals dressed as cops. Such
hesitation could provide the criminals with an important tactical
advantage — an advantage that could prove fatal for the officers.
Mexican cartel enforcers have also demonstrated a history of using
sophisticated scanners to listen to police radio traffic, and in some
cases they have even employed police radios to confuse and misdirect
the police responding to an armed confrontation with cartel enforcers.
We anticipate that as the Mexican cartels begin to go after more
targets inside the United States, the spread of cartel violence and
these dangerous tactics beyond the border region will catch some law
enforcement officers by surprise. A patrol officer conducting a
traffic stop on a group of cartel members who are preparing to conduct
an assassination in, say, Los Angeles, Chicago or northern Virginia
could quickly find himself heavily outgunned and under fire. With that
said, cops in the United States are far more capable than their
Mexican counterparts of dealing with this threat.
In addition to being far better trained, U.S. law enforcement officers
also have access to far better command, control and communication
networks than their Mexican counterparts. Like we saw in the Phoenix
example, this communication network provides cops with the ability to
quickly summon reinforcements, air support and tactical teams to deal
with heavily armed criminals — but this communication system only
helps if it can be used. That means cops need to recognize the danger
before they are attacked and prevented from calling for help. As with
many other threats, the key to protecting oneself against this threat
is situational awareness, and cops far from the border need to become
aware of this trend.
Tell Stratfor What You Think
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with
attribution to
www.stratfor.com
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact Us
© Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting Inc. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
