by Bernd Debusmann Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of nearly 4,000 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high- profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

Thursday, July 23:

In Tijuana, 17 teenagers -- most of them accused of being cartel hit men -- escaped from a juvenile detention center near the US border in Baja California after digging a hole through an outer wall and striking a correctional officer with a metal rod.

There have been more than 20 jail breaks in Mexico this year alone. Notably, in May, gunmen dressed as police officers arrived in a convoy and rescued 53 cartel members held in a prison in Zacatecas.

On the American side of the Baja California/California border, Robert Rosas, a US Border Patrol agent, was shot and killed. Five men have been detained by Mexican authorities in relation to the killing, all thought to be people-smugglers or members of drug gangs.

Saturday, July 26/Sunday, July 27:

At least 20 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez and its environs over the weekend in separate incidents. The wave of killings began late Friday night when a man was shot dead by unidentified assailants. Two other men were killed Friday night in separate incidents.

Six men were killed Saturday, while a seventh died from wounds inflicted after an incident in which men dressed as members of the army tried capture him after he attempted to rob a service station. Another five men were shot dead on Sunday. Among the dead from the weekend violence was a woman who had apparently been stoned to death.

In Chihuahua, the capital of the state of Chihuahua, which includes Ciudad Juarez, three adults were killed and a seven-year old girl was wounded when gunmen opened fire on their car.

Ciudad Juarez is the most violent city in Mexico. Unofficial reports indicate that at least 200 people have been killed so far in the month of July, and over 1,000 have been killed since the beginning of 2009, even with the presence of 8,500 military and police personnel.

Also on July 26, the office of Mexico's attorney general released a statement that an alleged cartel assassin, Alfredo Araujo Avila -- known as "El Popeye" -- has been sentenced to 11 years in prison on weapons-related charges. This prosecution is notable because Arujo has been implicated in the high-profile 1993 killing of Cardinal Juan Posadas Ocampo, which caused widespread outrage in Mexico. Ocampo was killed on May 24, 1993, under unclear circumstances. Some claim he was caught in the crossfire between rival drug gangs, while others claim he was killed in a case of mistaken identity. Araujo is the only person implicated in the murder -- which also claimed the lives of the cardinal's driver and five gunmen -- who has been prosecuted.

Monday, July 27

The Associated Press (AP) has reported that Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana, a Mexican national and Juarez Cartel lieutenant who was shot dead outside his home in El Paso, was working for US officials as a confidential informant. The AP cites information from two federal and one local official who said that Gonzalez was handing over information on cartel operations to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). While police have no official motive, law enforcement is working on the assumption that he was murdered because the cartel discovered his activities. Gonzalez was shot eight times at close range outside his home on May 15th.

Mexico announced a pilot program to have special drug courts handle cases in which drug addicts committed crimes while under the influence of drugs. The focus of these courts is to be on rehabilitation, rather than punitive prison terms. One third of funds seized from drug traffickers are to go towards the establishment of new rehabilitation centers. The program was immediately praised by US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske.

Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, criticized US measures to stamp out the marijuana trade. "We frequently see insufficient resources and infrastructure to prosecute those who carry out small-scale or fragmented marijuana trafficking in the United States," he said at a joint news conference with US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske in Mexico City. Medina Mora added that the issue would be further discussed next month when Mexican President Felipe Calderon meets with US president Barack Obama.

Tuesday, July 28

Off the coast of San Diego, three teenagers aboard a 22-foot boat were arrested by US Customs and Border Enforcement officers. Hidden underneath the deck was 1,060 pounds of marijuana. The three teenagers, one aged 18 and two aged 19, claimed that they were returning from a fishing trip in Ensenada, Mexico.

Total reported body count for the week: 20

Total reported body count for the year: 3,947

Today I am ashamed to call myself an American.

Over and over, the very foundations of the war on drugs are revealed to be utterly fraudulent and corrupt. These laws are harmful enough when they're enforced honestly, but moments like this really illustrate what a colossal fraud this whole thing truly is:

CLEVELAND — An agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was indicted today on charges that he lied repeatedly in a botched 2005 drug case that caused 17 people to be wrongly charged.

Lee Lucas, a 19-year veteran, was charged in U.S. District Court in Cleveland with perjury, making false statements, obstruction of justice and violating a person's civil rights involving a case that resulted in 26 arrests in Mansfield. [Cleveland Plain Dealer]

As one might expect, all of this revolves around a lying informant who played everyone in a desperate attempt to save his own hide. Officer Lucas is accused of failing to provide proper supervision and repeatedly lying to cover up the mess.

Of course, Lucas's fellow officers have eagerly come to his defense, because there scarcely exists any form of police misconduct so shocking to the conscience as to disqualify from being treated as a martyr by their colleagues. This comment, posted on the Plain Dealer story, perfectly reveals the mentality that police aren't responsible for mistakes in the war on drugs

Lee Lucas is being a scapegoat for a convicted drug criminal named Jarrell Bray. Jerrel Bray turned on Lee because Lee would not engage in getting Jerrel off the hook for a shooting Jerrel committed.
…
Jerrel is afraid to return to prison as a snitch. Can you blame him? He is a weasel who is trying to save his skin on the inside.

How do you think a snitch like Jerrel would function in the big House?

Is Jerrell Bray the person you want to trust?

No, he's not, and that's exactly the problem. This shady informant's dubious allegations should never have formed the basis for criminal charges against anyone. It was Lucas and the DEA who trusted this guy and used him to serve their agenda, not anyone else. Everything these informants say is treated as gospel when it comes to getting search warrants and scoring convictions, but the second the informant turns on the cops, all you hear is that informants can never be trusted. No kidding.

If you rely on untrustworthy people to help you make drug arrests, then your drug arrests can't be trusted. It's just that simple. And if you can't (as drug cops often claim) do basic drug enforcement without relying on these people, then it follows that solid and reliable drug enforcement is truly impossible.

It's amazing to watch a disgraced drug cop comes forward and try to defend himself with no better argument than the fact that his whole job revolves around working with notorious liars to put people in jail who may or may not have done anything wrong. It sounds like Lucas stepped way out of line here, but the real fault lies with the way our drug laws are enforced in general. Can you even imagine how often this process produces gratuitous injustices without anyone but the innocent defendant paying the price?

Inspired by the murder of Florida State University graduate Rachel Hoffman, 23, after Tallahassee police sent the small-time pot dealer out with $13,000 to buy cocaine and guns from people she didn

A federal judge in Atlanta Tuesday sent three former Atlanta narcotics officers to prison for their roles in a misbegotten drug raid that ended in the death of a 92-year-old woman and shone a distu

A Virginia jury on Wednesday convicted Ryan Frederick (see his MySpace page here)

The death of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old social pot dealer in Tallahassee, Florida, who was killed by criminals police sent her to buy hard drugs and guns from after they arrested her and intimid

Apparently, there aren’t enough unsolved crimes to keep Albuquerque police busy:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The Albuquerque Police Department has turned to the want ads for snitches.

An ad this week in the alternative newspaper The Alibi asks "people who hang out with crooks" to do part-time work for the police.

It reads in part: "Make some extra cash! Drug use and criminal record OK." [MSNBC]

Does this sound at all like something that’s going to make Albuquerque a better place? It’s absurd on its face, a completely sick feeding frenzy mentality that goes a long way towards explaining how we’ve become the world’s leading jailer. The very fact that police are actively seeking sketchy people to rat out other sketchy people shows you exactly how useless and cyclical much of our criminal law-enforcement activity has become.

Worse yet, this is exactly how you incentivize bad people to create bad situations. This is how innocent people’s addresses end up on drug warrants, only to have their doors smashed in, their dogs shot, and their peaceful lives forever tarnished by the long, infinitely clumsy arm of the law. This is how police become detached from morality, collaborating with criminals to create crime.

If there is such a thing as "sending the wrong message" in the war on drugs, it isn’t marijuana reform, it’s police offering people money to take drugs and commit crimes.

At long last, we’re seeing some accountability for the officers who got Rachel Hoffman killed after coercing her into working as an informant in the mindbending botched drug sting disaster of the century:

Police Chief Dennis Jones requested that investigator Ryan Pender's employment be terminated.

Jones also wanted this disciplinary action taken: Deputy Chief John Proctor, reprimand; Capt. Chris Connell, two-week suspension without pay; Lt. Taltha White, two week suspension without pay; Sgt. David Odom, two week suspension without pay; Sgt. Rod Looney, two week suspension without pay.

Jones is reassigning White, Odom and Connell within the department.

"We have taken the necessary time to conduct a thorough and honest review and asked others to examine our operations," Jones says in the statement from the city. He said he has contacted Hoffman's family and provided a report.

"While we cannot change the events of May 7, we can make the type of changes within the department to help ensure our future actions are consistent with policy," Jones said.

[City Manager] Thompson also issued a reprimand to Jones to require a stronger level of supervision from top to bottom in the department. [Tampa Bay Online]

Anything resembling police accountability in the war on drugs is so rare that we should really take a moment to just reflect on this. Miraculously, we’ve reached a point where all you have to do to get the cops in trouble is be a pretty white girl with a loving family and hundreds of friends, get sucked into a steaming cauldron of first-rate drug enforcement incompetence, and perish dramatically on 20/20’s tear-jerker TV special of the season.

That’s what it takes, because despite the all-encompassing aversion of police officials towards acknowledging even mild misconduct, it’s still easier than conceding that the entire drug informant system is fundamentally corrupt and perverted to its core. This isn’t about Officer Pender, it isn’t about Tallahassee, and it isn’t going to get any better just because a couple incompetent cops got called out. The Burn Em’ & Bail Drug Informant Circus of Horror is a national tour sponsored by the war on drugs and it won’t go away until every last one of us makes it abundantly clear that we want no part of this. Not with our money, not in our community, and not in our name.

The fallout following Rachel Hoffman's murder is becoming intense. DEA has refused to allow three agents to testify before a grand jury regarding their involvement in the case, resulting in a surprising backlash from the State Attorney's office:

State Attorney Willie Meggs has told the Tallahassee Democrat that his decision to no longer prosecute cases involving the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is, "probably more symbolic than it is substantive, but I am very serious about it."

He went on to say, "I'm just not going to play that little game with those folks. I don’t need them and if these agencies want to work with them and do their cases with them, that's fine." [Tallahassee Democrat]

Strong words indeed. This sort of vitriol is rarely exchanged between drug warriors and it seems to indicate a drawing of battlelines as we wait to see who'll be held to account for this now-legendary drug war f#%k-up.

Mark R. Trouville, DEA's Special Agent in Charge of the Miami Field Division, predictably blamed his officers' non-compliance on a technicality:

We feel it is important for the public to know that DEA did not refuse to testify before the grand jury in this case. Although notified both verbally and in writing by DEA, the State Attorney’s Office refused to comply with Department of Justice regulations (which have been respected by the Florida Supreme Court) and therefore DEA Agents did not receive authorization to testify before the grand jury. In order to comply, the State Attorney’s Office simply needed to issue a subpoena and provide the local United States Attorney’s Office a summary of the information sought and its relevance to the proceeding.

This is the same guy who once claimed that today's marijuana "will kill you," so he has all the credibility of a drunk frat-boy on April Fool's Day. Thus I lean towards the assumption that DEA is covering its ass, which would explain why State Attorney Meggs is raging pissed.

To be honest though, I'm really not quite sure what the hell is going on here. I don't understand DEA's role in the murder because they won't testify, but in hindsight the fact that Rachel was told to purchase 1,500 pills of ecstasy, 2 ounces of crack cocaine and a gun sure gives the impression that DEA may have been calling the shots. The conspicuously large order Rachel placed had a great deal to do with her cover being blown, so to whatever extent DEA may have been responsible for that, they would be equally responsible for the fatal outcome.

Ultimately, many people made many errors contributing to this horrible event, but we all know that it takes more than a few greedy cops to manufacture a tragedy as compelling and gut-wrenching as this. After the finger-pointing subsides, after a few sacrificial reassignments, re-trainings and procedural revisions, the war that killed Rachel Hoffman will rage on without missing a beat. The culture of threats and manipulation that characterizes modern drug enforcement will remain intact and the mentality that led to Rachel's death will continue to guide police as they take on the drug problem with handcuffs in one hand and a gun in the other.

This 20/20 report on the death of Rachel Hoffman illustrates perfectly the greed and incompetence that too often characterizes modern drug war policing. Even if you already know the story, I can't recommend highly enough that you watch this and share it with everyone you know.

From the moment Tallahassee police laid their hands on her, to the day she died, to the disgraceful press conference in which they blamed her for her own death, there was not one moment throughout this shameful episode that can be excused. I can think of at least a half dozen laws that should be changed immediately in the aftermath of this and a few police officers that should be thrown out of the department and mauled in civil court.

But the one thing you won’t hear on 20/20 is that policing this bad doesn’t happen by accident. It wasn't bad training or a series of tragic coincidences that produced this outcome. It is the war on drugs, corrupt to its core, that incentivizes police to behave with a reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of the people they serve. Every action they took made sense to them. That's the problem.

Many of our readers know about the tragic case of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old in Tallahassee, Florida, who was killed by drug dealers after police coerced her into acting as an informant without

Many of our readers know about the tragic case of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old in Tallahassee, Florida, who was killed by drug dealers after police coerced her into acting as an informant without

Many of our readers know about the tragic case of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old in Tallahassee, Florida, who was killed by drug dealers after police coerced her into acting as an informant without

Many of our readers know about the tragic case of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old in Tallahassee, Florida, who was killed by drug dealers after police coerced her into acting as an informant without