Pubdate: Sun, 31 Jul 2005
Source: San Antonio Express-News (TX)
Copyright: 2005 San Antonio Express-News
Contact:  http://www.mysanantonio.com/expressnews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/384
Author: Lisa Sandberg, Express News Staff Writer

OUTGUNNED COPS PATROL ONLY PART OF BORDER CITY

NUEVO LAREDO - When masked gunmen attacked a house in the upscale Campestre 
neighborhood Thursday night, they fired rocket-propelled grenades and 
semi-automatic rifles.

When about 80 members of the city's brand new police force reported for 
duty last week, there weren't enough guns to go around. Officers had to 
share their weapons, turning their guns in after their shifts.

While rival drug lords fire with impunity - wherever it strikes their fancy 
it seems - the new police force is restricted for the time being to the 
city's central district.

"We're waiting for more personnel and armaments," said Jesus Muro Garcia, 
29, commander of the municipal plaza substation. "Their weapons are a lot 
more powerful than anything we have."

Welcome to the streets of this Mexican border city, where an out-of-control 
turf war among drug cartels has left more than 100 dead this year, 
including almost a dozen police officers. And last month, the city's new 
police chief was killed six hours after assuming office.

The escalating violence apparently has proved too unsettling for U.S. 
Ambassador Tony Garza, who Friday, citing the "unusually advanced weaponry" 
used in the Thursday night attack, announced he was shutting the consulate 
for at least a week.

Since earlier this year, the State Department had issued a travel advisory 
warning Americans to take caution when traveling to the border region, 
specifically in Nuevo Laredo.

The advisory expired Thursday.

By most accounts, the recent attack was particularly brazen. According to 
media reports, more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition were fired, turning 
quiet Mexicali Street in the tony Campestre neighborhood into a virtual war 
zone.

Using rocket-propelled grenades, assailants tore three big holes through 
the blue outer wall of a once-charming house. Windows a full block away 
were shattered. A 15-minute shootout ensued between those inside the house 
and the attackers.

No one was believed killed in the battle, and no one has been arrested, 
though Muro said several people at the home may have been kidnapped. He did 
not know who lived there.

Rosa Estela Manzanales, 56, was sitting in her courtyard two doors down 
when the first of several explosions shattered the calm of a humid late 
July night.

"It was worse than a war," she said of the 8 p.m. attack.

"I thought it was only in movies, but right here," she said, pointing 
around her, "with our grandchildren and everything. I don't know how we are 
still alive."

She and 11 members of her family - children and grandchildren - dove for 
the concrete floor of their humble home that sits amid opulent houses. She 
and her family remained, trembling but quiet, until the last weapon had 
gone silent.

The police arrived afterward, she said, to mop up the mess.

Manzanales said she knew the family in the blue house only casually. They 
were recent arrivals to the neighborhood, renters she believed, who seemed 
pleasant and well adjusted.

She has come to accept that the violence now has spread to her quiet 
Mexicali Street, which was wilderness when her family settled it many 
decades ago. But things are different now.

"You go out, and you don't come back," she said.

In all, 460 city police officers have been cleared to return to work six 
weeks after 700 of them were yanked off the street in a massive 
anti-corruption probe.

The returning officers have cleared a host of evaluations, including 
polygraph and drug tests.

The entire force was tainted by indications that officers have been 
rewarded by or intimidated into working for drug cartels fighting for 
control of smuggling routes into South Texas.

But only those whose weapons have been delivered are back on patrol, Muro 
said. Others mill about the downtown substation in their pressed black and 
white new uniforms, filled with a restless nervousness.

"We don't have the arms necessary to do this job," said a five-year-patrol 
officer who gave his name only as Carlos. "You see what they have - 
grenades, sophisticated arms."

At least four of Carlos' colleagues from the substation have been killed in 
the past year. Two were shot to death in broad daylight five blocks from 
the police station.

Officials have said many city cops work as lookouts for the Gulf Cartel, 
which is alleged to control the lucrative drug smuggling routes into South 
Texas.

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman of the Sinaloa Cartel and his allies are vying 
for the turf, which is believed to be part of the reason for the police deaths.

Muro said his family and friends all beg him to "do something else."

"A lot of times I think about leaving," he said.

But in the end, he notes, "I like the work."
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