The Cartels and Gwinnett County Georgia

The Cartels and Gwinnett County Georgia

Some of the material for this post is from Sylvia Longmire.  Ms. Longmire is a [medically] retired Air Force captain and former Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

During her eight years with AFOSI, she conducted numerous criminal investigations and worked extensively in the fields of counterintelligence, counterespionage, and force protection.

Here is a link to her web-site. She knows her business, please visit her site. http://borderviolenceanalysis.typepad.com  If you believe what I have said is not true, well I am not the only one saying it, so are we all just making this up. Wake up America.

For the past 2 years or more this administration has continued to stand on a mountain of lies and said there is really no spillage of violence from Mexico to the United States and that our borders, in particular our southern border is and has never been safer now than ever.  Are you going to continue to believe this?  Read the papers.

The carrier of the message is DHS Janet Napolitano, who of course carries the message from her boss, Hussein Obama.   My thoughts are that Obama must really believe that the American citizen is either stupid or does not care.

It is plain to see the violence is growing. Here in the Rio Grande Valley, we are just mere miles from ground zero, there are daily pursuits through our streets which endanger the innocent civilians and unfortunately we have had some fatalities due to the vehicles loaded with dope crashing and killing  innocent civilians.

Still this administration continues to lie to the public and in my opinion continues to facilitate the cartels and allows them to have a free hand in moving their narcotics to points within our country.

Yet, no one in congress lifts a finger, no questions, no hearings nothing, why?  I have just about reached my wits end with this administration, is there not an ounce of give a crap in the halls of congress anymore.  I guess not.  If the members of congress continue to sit on their hands and do nothing, you can expect to see this type of violence on our streets. You have you warning, SECURE THE BORDER NOW. Or it will be our heads  on the fence, I am not ready for that. I am just sick and tired of a do for nothing administration.  I have see enough violence in 28 years of law enforcement, and it is time something is done.

The violence is now spreading to the streets of Georgia, the scourge continues its march, pausing in Georgia to gain a toehold. Are we going to allow our country to resemble Somalia?  Apparently so, as nothing is being done to secure our borders.

Listen up friends and neighbors, Barack Hussein Obama does not give a crap about you, the sooner you understand that the better off you will be. Quit believing his lies of 4 years ago about hope and change, the only change is going to be when he rips up our constitution and institutes Marshal Law.  Could he, yes he could. Would he? yes he would, at the first opportunity. Just remember what I said. I hope I am proven wrong this November, and we kick is ass out of the Washington and send him back to Kenya, where he is a legal citizen and where he belongs.  Now, back to Georgia.

(Mexico Drug War)“A recent increase in drug-related kidnappings in Gwinnett County Georgia has put a spotlight on drug violence in Georgia, federal agents say. About nine drug-related kidnappings have occurred in Gwinnett this year. The latest involved a man bound and chained in a basement in Lilburn whom federal agents rescued earlier this month. 

Mexican drug cartels are moving large amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into the country for distribution up the East Coast, said Rodney Benson, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Atlanta.

Drug-related kidnappings have increased in the past 90 days, he said. David Nahmias, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said Gwinnett is a center of Mexican drug cartel activity in the area because of easy transportation on I-85 and a large Hispanic population where traffickers can try to blend in… Representatives of Mexican drug cartels in Atlanta are ‘clashing with each other,’ the DEA’s Benson said.

Drug traffickers are also getting younger, Gwinnett County Assistant District Attorney Keith Miles said… Miles says the up-tick in kidnappings is not a ‘blip.’ ‘It’s just a matter of time before innocent people get caught in the crossfire,’ he said.” Link to Full Article

Analysis: This story shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as Atlanta is a known trafficking hub for Mexican TCOs. What should come as a surprise is that THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN JUY 2008! Yep, this headline and complete story would fit right in with news reports coming out today.

Honestly, I don’t have much by way of analysis on this story; it really speaks for itself. I highly recommend following the link to the full article and scrolling down to the bottom so you can read some of the kidnapping cases that occurred in the first half of 2008 in Gwinnett. My point for writing this post is to showcase exactly how little we’ve progressed in acknowledging that Mexico’s drug war is here.

This kind of stuff has been happening not just in Georgia, but in Alabama, Baltimore, Denver…you name it. US cities nowhere near the border have been experiencing kidnappings and violent drug-related murders for years, but some in charge are happy to pass those incidents off as “the drug business as usual.”

And hey, maybe it is. DHS chooses not to keep track of cartel-on-cartel violence here in the US, which totally misses the point of what border violence spillover really is. The El Paso Sheriff’s Office has told me that if they investigate a gang-related murder that is somehow connected to the Mexican drug trade, they don’t consider that spillover; just “business as usual.” I’m pretty sure that DHS wouldn’t classify these Gwinnett kidnappings that way either, which makes me wonder how many TCO-related violent incidents are occurring in the United States where agencies – for purely subjective or political reasons – choose to not advertise the link to Mexico.

Then you have other agencies, like the DEA and several south Texas departments, who are happy to let Americans know, “Hey! We’ve got a problem here!”  Yes Texas has a problem and no one in Washington GIVES A CRAP!  As long as congress collects their pay checks and other incentives they are happy, and screw the American public.

I just get so angry when I stumble across old news reports like this that read like today’s news. It makes me feel like some people at DHS and in the White House are asleep at the wheel. How is it that no progress has been made in the last four years in our cities where Mexican TCOs are operating? It’s all about priorities, and it seems obvious to me that the drug war has been nowhere near the top of the national security priority list since it started in earnest several years ago.

Mexican Cartels Plague Atlanta

(USA Today) In a city where Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service and Home Depot are the titans of industry, there are new powerful forces on the block: Mexican drug cartels.

Their presence and ruthless tactics are largely unknown to most here. Yet, of the 195 U.S. cities where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are operating, federal law enforcement officials say Atlanta has emerged as the new gateway to the troubled Southwest border.

Rival drug cartels, the same violent groups warring in Mexico for control of routes to lucrative U.S. markets, have established Atlanta as the principal distribution center for the entire eastern U.S., according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center.  In fiscal year 2008, federal drug authorities seized more drug-related cash in Atlanta — about $70 million — than any other region in the country, Drug Enforcement Administration records show.

This year, more than $30 million has been intercepted in the Atlanta area — far more than the $19 million in Los Angeles and $18 million in Chicago.Atlanta has not seen a fraction of the violence that engulfs much of northern Mexico, but law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about the cartels’ expanding operations here.

“The same folks who are rolling heads in the streets of Ciudad Juárez” — El Paso’s Mexican neighbor — “are operating in Atlanta. Here, they are just better behaved,” says Jack Killorin, who heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s federal task force in Atlanta.

The same regional features that appeal to legitimate corporate operations — access to transportation systems and proximity to major U.S. cities — have lured the cartels, Atlanta U.S. Attorney David Nahmias says.

Explosive Hispanic growth

An added attraction for the cartels, say Nahmias and Rodney Benson, the DEA’s Atlanta chief, is the explosive growth of the Hispanic community. Nahmias calls northeast suburban Gwinnett County, about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, the “epicenter” of the region’s drug activity.

Gwinnett’s Hispanic population surged from 8,470 in 1990 to 64,137 in 2000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Now, 17% of the county’s 776,000 people are Hispanic.

“You see Mexican drug-trafficking operations deploying representatives to hide within these communities in plain sight,” Benson says. “They were attempting to blend into the same communities as those who were hard-working, law-abiding people.”

The cartel representatives here range from the drivers, packagers and money counters to senior figures in the drug trade.

“We’ve got direct linkages between cartel representatives who take their orders from cartel leadership in Mexico,” Benson says.

From the border, shipments of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin are routed over land to Atlanta for storage in a network of stash houses. They are then moved to distribution operations in the Carolinas, Tennessee, the Mid-Atlantic, New York and New England.

Cash is generally moved over the same routes back to the Atlanta area, where balance sheets are reconciled. The bundles of money are turned over to transportation units for bulk shipments back to Mexico, Benson says.

Concern over violence

Although the level of drug-related violence in Mexico has not surfaced in the Atlanta area, recent incidents have raised concerns among law enforcement officials.

Last July, for example, a Rhode Island man who allegedly owed $300,000 to Atlanta-based traffickers was found chained to a wall in the basement of a Lilburn, Ga., home, located in western Gwinnett County.

Benson says the man had been blindfolded, gagged and beaten. Federal investigators, who were alerted to the location, later found the man alive but severely dehydrated. Three Mexican nationals fled the house when authorities approached. All three were captured and a cache of weapons, including an assault rifle, was seized.

“There is no doubt in my mind that … we certainly saved his life,” Benson says.

About the same time last year, another man was kidnapped in Gwinnett County for non-payment of drug proceeds. When traffickers went to pick up what they thought was a $2 million ransom, shots were exchanged between the traffickers and police who were working with the victim’s family. One of the suspects was killed and the other arrested, Benson says.

Killorin says much of the violence has been related to similar incidents of “intra-cartel discipline” and has not spilled into the streets.

There is no mistaking the groups’ influence.

“We know they’re here,” Gwinnett County Police Cpl. Illana Spellman says, adding that the area’s access to interstate highways is a major lure. “Geographically, it’s set up perfectly for these kinds of activities.”  (Source)

Friends, there it is in a nut shell, I have told you about how the violence is spreading, the article you just read is just the beginning.  I am not going to say that it would not have happened if the border was secure. What I will say, it will no doubt make it a hell of a lot more difficult for the cartel mules, knowing that we are at the border, ready and willing to bring all the heat that they can handle. If they kill one of us, you kill 20 of theirs.  That’s just the reality of the drug war.  That is all they understand, violence.

Is this the conditions in which you want our children raised in?  Not me, I want my grandchildren to run free and not worry about catching a stray bullet in the back.  It is time, now is the time to say enough is enough. It is certain Obama has no intention of securing the border, he is doing the opposite. They want anyone and everyone all of the MOOCHERS to come to the United States. Remember what I said, if you, if we allow this prepare yourself to live in conditions like Somalia, where lawlessness rules.

It is time and November is when Obama’s time is up!

Read more at Brady’s Bad to the Bone Blog