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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJuly 19th, 2010
In one of the worst single-incident killings in Mexico’s drug war, gunmen opened fire at a party in the northern Mexican city of Torreon, killing 17 men and women and injuring another 18. Officials counted 122 spent shells from assault rifles.
“The party was ongoing … when gunmen arrived in several vehicles, disembarked and, without uttering a word to those in attendance, opened fire,” Jesus Torres, state attorney general, said in a statement. The assailants fled.
The party was organized by a gay group and was being held at the Italia Inn in Torreon, Coahuila. The event was organized via facebook, and was “open to all.” Investigators suspect drug traffickers were behind the massacre. The northern city of Torreon has become a drug smuggling transfer point for entry into the U.S.
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Priya Lynn
July 19th, 2010
The police say drugs were the motive, not hate. Does anyone have any idea why the drug traffickers wanted to murder these people?
Regan DuCasse
July 19th, 2010
Hi Priya,
The gang warfare is essentially similar to what the Taliban is doing. They are putting innocents in the middle for the sole purpose of terrorism.
They murder police officers, judges, mayors and other members of the chain of enforcement and justice. Corrupted, greed members of this chain are not motivated to challenge the gangs, and are so integrated among those who do care about keeping order, that no one knows who is who and what they are doing.
They have a great deal in common the way the terrorists are now operating.
Including now, the Mexican cartels are car bombing along with other forms of violence.
This has encroached on America already. Phoenix is the state of Arizona’s largest city and is the kidnapping capitol of America.
We’ve had kidnappings and disappearances here in California, traced to these gangs as well.
And how does our nation respond?
By suing AZ, putting a chilling affect on ANY enforcement of illegal immigration, human and drug trafficking and capitulation to Mexico’s demands and allowing corporations to determine foreign policy, instead of our federal laws.
It’s painfully clear that our country is uninterested in fighting the very people determined to engage in warfare on our soil by stealthy means. And each and every gang terrorist has something easy to exploit and is becoming more powerful than the law enforcers south of the border.
Meanwhile our own peace officers are becoming outnumbered, outgunned and outspent by these gang terrorists.
America doesn’t have long. It really doesn’t. All the things that made us strong, industry, loyalty and courage: don’t exist anymore or are extremely weakened.
The Mexican government has our administration in it’s pocket. Otherwise how do any of our Presidents in my adult memory, practically apologize for existing and enforcing their own laws?
And I can’t believe that gay people are buying that AZ’s enforcement of existing law is racial profiling. That straw man won’t fly.
Why?
Because what qualifies ANY immigrant from having documentation to drive, travel and make purchases or have a job that EVERY person living here is required to have?
Citizens and immigrants alike.
And how is rewarding cheating our system of laws long enough fair, to those who didn’t cheat?
These sorts of gang acts of violence are already starting in America. There was a massacre of four men in a small restaurant in my neighborhood. Less than a mile away.
I work in law enforcement as you all know. And your government is taking the teeth out of those charged with serving the safety and welfare of the public.
Just as it gets taken and disorganized in every banana republic, Third World country the world over.
I didn’t know that any of these victims were gay. The press isn’t reporting it as gay related.
But it was only a matter of time before this could happen.
Places where people gather to bowl, dance, have a party, wedding and so on have all been attacked.
Just like they are in Pakistan and Iraq.
It’s terrorism.
And it’s not ‘over there’.
It’s been here.
There were lots of things that happened on a smaller scale leading up to 9/11.
And considering how our government has been acting, you’d think none of that ever did.
The LAPD, is outnumbered by gang members 127 to one, but last survey.
And barely keeping the lid on it all.
Barely.
With the budget cuts and all, and a lot of officers being lost by attrition as well as different departments being depleted by furloughs…
And unlimited, ongoing, un accounted for illegal immigration, I don’t know how we’re going to make it.
I really don’t.
Regan DuCasse
July 19th, 2010
Typo alert: I meant to say what DISQUALIFIES an immigrant from having…
Priya Lynn
July 19th, 2010
Thanks Regan.
Jim Burroway
July 19th, 2010
I’m calling B.S. How does enacting an unconstitutional law that encourages Joe Arpaio’s well-documented history of targeting minoritiy Americans contribute the tiniest iota to combatting Mexico’s drug war.
While American arms manufacturers and dealers turn a blind eye to the massive shipments of military-style assualt rifles south of the Border with GOP/NRA backing, and while America’s failed “war on drugs” continues to oppose every effort to sanely address some of the more stupid components of our drug policies, harassing nana while she’s walking to the neighborhood grocery story in the name of the drug war is nonesense.
And morally wrong.
Jim Burroway
July 19th, 2010
And by the way, of course it encourages racial profiling! The day my white ass is pulled over for a nonexistent broken taillight or I’m asked to show my I.D. while walking down the street without my driver’s license is the day I’ll believe otherwise.
Timothy Kincaid
July 19th, 2010
“While American arms manufacturers and dealers turn a blind eye to the massive shipments of military-style assualt rifles south of the Border with GOP/NRA backing,”
Jim, do you have a source for that?
Jaft
July 19th, 2010
Thanks for covering that one, Jim. I’ll just add what ought to be common sense for our group.
What the law assumes is that people will be pulled over and, if they’re a citizen and have their papers nothing will be wrong and if not we catch an illegal alien. It assumes that this law will not be abused in the slightest.
As members of a group that was targeted and harrassed by the police for far too long, we ought to know well the way prejudice works.
The law easily allows for some racist cop (particularly with the recent climate around immigrants) to pull someone over just because they feel like it and are hoping they can nail them for some other charge.
The potential for obvious prejudical abuse is really quite clear for this law – and it’s been done many times in the past before.
Jim Burroway
July 19th, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0719/p01s01-woam.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0719/p01s01-woam.html
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/international-news/portfolio/2008/06/16/Examining-the-US-Mexico-Gun-Trade/
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/10/nation/na-guns10
But try to propose some simple common-sense efforts to stem the flow, and the NRA and GOP get all up in arms, excuse the pun.
Jim Burroway
July 19th, 2010
Sorry, one of the duplicates should have been:
http://www.yumasun.com/articles/machine-62366-ammunition-cbp.html
Mark F.
July 19th, 2010
Get rid of drug prohibition and you pretty much put these criminals out of business. It’s that simple. More government and gun control will continue to fail.
Burr
July 19th, 2010
Precisely, Mark. How many must die until we stop the insanity of doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results?
Regan DuCasse
July 19th, 2010
And I’ll raise you, Jim.
Your white ass and my black ass are required to have valid licenses and registration for operating a car. We also have to for applying for jobs, making purchases and other things. I’ve gone walking without my id. I’ve been stopped and asked something for various reasons. I also have a badge that I don’t carry at all times.
Now I’ve known of officers who have abused people who are minorities, or women or gay people. And you know very well that they are not a significant part of an agency.
Would you prefer we do things like the cops south of the border do things?
I have more at stake than YOU do as someone who has a BLACK ass, don’t I?
But I also know that we have millions of people in this country who cannot be accounted for. And whatever incidents of overreaching by a local peace officer or officers, is no excuse to do NOTHING and treating the majority of police officers concerned with reasonable controls on the problem as if they were all Nazis.
In a war on anything, you have to know who is who and where they are.
The way things are, those who have to, know NEITHER.
And you don’t know either, for that matter.
All you mentioned was drug smuggling. You forgot about the HUMAN smuggling, and it’s attendant violence, identity theft and document fraud.
This is a hydra Jim, and all the heads of the snake need to be cut off, not just a part of it.
As for being un Constitutional, well, that’s rich.
That there is a complaint that this law influences foreign policy, while sanctuary city policies do EXACTLY that.
Tell you what Jim, I’ve suggested all along that the people involved here would do well to really have a sit down and try and understand and work with the police, instead of setting a goal to be antagonistic and uncooperative.
Because the police are NOT the gang terrorists.
And if you don’t think there is a difference, then why have police at all and YOU put on the vest.
It’s going to get down to that.
You don’t have to make the decisions or shoulder the responsibilities or deal with what’s required.
You really don’t.
Of course, I’m not defending anyone that’s acted inappropriately and abused the very position I’m talking about.
I ride along with patrol officers because that isn’t part of my regular job. I’m there after an incident has already happened. You could be more proactive instead of reactive. You DO have that option.
But it’s morally wrong and unfair to legal residents or citizens to pretend that it’s the police that are the problem and not illegal immigration.
Gulliver
July 19th, 2010
When you intive heterosexuals to gay events you are inviting violence and hostility. I believe this was an anti-gay hate crime. Drug crimes in Mexico tend to be targeted and planned out. The killers here just sprayed the place with bullets.
Regan DuCasse
July 19th, 2010
Hi Mark F. No, it’s not that simple. A lot of my job, unfortunately is attending to children being neglected, domestic violence, assaults and other things that are the result of drug USE.
One of the things that added to the crack scourge is because it was so much cheaper and easier to obtain than powder cocaine. Economic incentive was part of participating in the marketplace, but addiction did all manner of other kinds of damage that had nothing to do with monetary profit.
It’s about access and use too. Productive people being turned into unproductive people in their primes.
Lost health, incomes and not enough public funding to deal with that and rehab and so on.
It’s not that simple, because the gangs involved, have all kinds of thumbs in all kinds of pies. Not just drugs.
A massacre by assault rifle less than a mile from my house. Four killed outright, six more with serious injuries.
There are costs, if not profits there my friend.
And there is no winning strategy anywhere.
Timothy Kincaid
July 19th, 2010
Jim,
I certainly am aware of the flow of guns south. What I don’t at this point have a source for are:
“…with GOP/NRA backing”
I do know that the GOP opposes the smuggling of guns into Mexico and would like to close the border in part to stop that business. An argument – a strong one, in fact – could be made that it is those who oppose the closing of the border that “back” the exportation of guns to Mexican drug lords.
I do know that “the NRA and GOP get all up in arms” about efforts to deny gun rights to American citizens, but I don’t think we can, with integrity, claim that they support the exportation of assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
Jim Burroway
July 19th, 2010
I can’t speak for L.A. But in Arizona, they don’t just make up “a significant part of an agency.” In Maricopa Conty, they make up the leadership of an agency.
And no. I don’t prefer we do tihing like cops south of the border. I don’t prefer we have police target random people based on what they look like and demand they prove their innocense. I don’t prefer we discard legitimate investigative procedures and instead place entire classes of people under suspician. In fact, I AM arguing that we do things the American way, not the third-world way.
Jim Burroway
July 19th, 2010
I agree. I was ineligant. What I meant to say, and I do believe, is that the GOP and NRA’s opposition to common sense approaches to gun control has the effect of facilitating “American arms manufacturers and dealers turn[ing] a blind eye to the massive shipments of military-style south of the Border.”
And I do believe that arms manufacturers and dealers really aren’t that interested in cutting down on their business, just as they haven’t been that interested in keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons in our own country. No, they aren’t cheering on the drug war. But they aren’t going to do anything that cuts sales.
Donnchadh
July 20th, 2010
My own objection to AZ’s law is not the law itself, but the way in which it unilaterally breaches an old compromise about immigrants whereby they are declared illegal but the laws saying so are unenforceable.
This is a reasonable halfway point between those who think the States should let in the huddled masses, and those who would rather keep it a pristine Aryan land. I’m not going to say one either side is right or wrong, I have a lot of respect for both, but this law breaks it with no consideration for the other side.
I would be happy to see a different compromise whereby these laws are enforced, only with the provision that they are also repealed and anyone coming into the work is allowed to work and have a track to citizenship.
Regan DuCasse
July 20th, 2010
Hi Jim, okay..
Random people, or random detention based on other confluent factors?
I’m not playing dumb.
But, for example: there are several public parks in Los Angeles, in particular areas well known by the local police as gang hangouts. The innocent public is intimidated by groups of young men, loitering at hours when most people are at work, or in their beds.
Harassment and intimidation by these groups, required that the police randomly approach these young people and investigate their reason for being in the park. They weren’t targeted ONLY for their ethnicity, but the way they dressed, the hours they were there, their tattoos and other identifying aspects.
Sometimes it turns out that half of them are also illegal immigrants and have warrants for other infractions. The RICOH laws has effectively reduced this activity.
Legal and illegal immigration has a feeder effect, and this activity is integrated into what citizens should be able to do.
That is to say, a birthday party or bbq/tag game also has situations either mixed gang or illegal immigrant situations. Again, warrants are in evidence and the police have to approach these situations and investigate.
To say nothing of if drivers are reckless, erratic or in any other way behaving suspiciously, the police have to pull them over and investigate if they can be identified, or are properly licensed and registered.
On board computers kick back a lot of information.
And serious criminals can be caught or incidents can be prevented or solved through random investigation.
I’m a forensic artist, there is also the matter of what a suspect looks like too and might have been seen by an officer OR a civilian.
What do you want, nobody to check? EVER?
And why get belligerent and uncooperative if a police officer wants to talk to you?
Why do you think the murder rate has gone down so much in the last 5-10 years?
Precisely because the police have been more proactive in knowing who is who and what they are doing.
We have a small police force, even including the unincorporated cites, for such a large county.
Let alone the state.
And a lot of our people are being furloughed, overtime cut and so on, while a lot of nuisance criminals have been released because of budget cuts.
All the work that’s gone into lowering the murder and assault rate, is about to be lost.
And illegal immigrants are a HUGE problem because of so much dependence and those most relied on to cover that expense are gone. And many facilities like hospitals and so on, are too.
At any rate, I just had to make another appointment to go on a 12 hour shift with a patrolman on Saturday.
Some days I could always predict that some young person would die that night from a drive by.
And I’m unfortunately, usually right. Some areas are more heavily Latino than others. Most of the victims of gang violence tend to be black or Latino.
Illegal immigration is big business and illegal immigrants easy to exploit.
And it’s not the police doing it.
Random indeed.
Better to have the police come up and ask you where you’re from, and not a gang member.
Guess which scenario is the one you’re more likely to survive?
Burr
July 20th, 2010
Considering alcohol abuse accounts for a MUCH larger percentage of those things you point to, one must conclude we should re-institute that prohibition too no?
Maybe if government resources weren’t being wasted on harassing mere possessors they could do more about the violence and neglect.
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