Mexican police force on strike after grenade attack[Zihuatanejo]

Reuters ^ | Feb 23, 2009 | Mica Rosenberg

[SwinneySwitch]

MEXICO CITY, - The entire local police force in a Mexican beach resort town walked off the job on Monday demanding better pay and benefits to compensate for the rising dangers they face from drug violence.

More than 300 municipal police officers in Zihuatanejo, a town on the Pacific coast north of Acapulco popular with foreign tourists, went on strike after grenades were lobbed at their offices over the weekend.

(snip)

"We are seeing a lot things here that we have never seen before. It is our job to serve the citizens, but we need assurances that our families will be protected if one of us is killed," a member of Zihuatanejo's municipal police told Reuters.

The police want to have direct talks with Calderon to request improved benefits and an increase in their roughly $350 (5,200 pesos) per month salaries before they go back to work.

[SwinneySwitch]

Local PD demands direct talks with the President about a pay raise?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

They’d better talk to somebody.

[GeronL]

Mexico is a scary place right now

[mgc1122]

Better pay & benefits? Hell, I think asking for an uparmored Humvee would on my list of demands.

[SueRae]

Situation deteriorating.

I guess a lot of US citizens are rethinking those vacation plans to Cozumel, Cancun, etc. If they haven’t, they should.

[dfwgator]

Although I think in the not-so-distant future a lot of our troops will be heading down there.

[Explodo]

We’ve gone to Ixtapa 4 or 5 times in the past 10 years or so. We finally stopped going down there in 2005 after muggings and attacks on tourists completely kept us from going into the resort zone after dark.

WE refuse to go there anymore...I’t would be akin to vacationing in a war zone.

[MahatmaGandu]

I was in Zihautenejo in May 2007 and they had sailors from the Mexican Navy (who were uniformly very nice kids) patrolling the pier and waterfront with M-16's. I asked and was told they were there to keep us safe from the bandits who had robbed tourists earlier in the year.

Just my opinion, but Mexico is sliding into anarchy and it's going to get worse as the remittances their illegals send home from the US decline. If it was bad in 2007 then it's worse now. I'd cancel plans to visit Mexico if anyone is contemplating them as I'd hate to be there when order eventually breaks down completely.

[Ken H]

End marijuana prohibition, and cut out most of the cartels' revenues:

John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said marijuana, not heroin or cocaine, is the "bread and butter," "the center of gravity" for Mexican drug cartels that every year smuggle tons of it through the porous U.S.-Mexico border. Of the $13.8 billion that Americans contributed to Mexican drug traffickers in 2004-05, about 62 percent, or $8.6 billion, comes from marijuana consumption.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnintdrugs.3a98bb0.html

[pissant]

Where is Speedy Gonzalez when you need him?

[cripplecreek]

Guess I can’t really blame them but I sure as hell would ask for more than money.

[dblshot]

Anyone contemplating a sping break in Mexico had better rethink their options.

[GeronL]

I know people who had to travel from a small village to Juarez trying to get into the US legally. They took a bus because they decided that they would be easier targets in a private vehicle.

Juarez police chief had just quit after 4 cops were killed in an ambush and pro-narco terrorists had shut down the international bridge.

wonderful timing for that meeting

[henkster]

In wonder if Thomson Consumer Electronics is happy they closed their three huge Indiana plants and moved them to Juarez.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Oddly, word of the strike doesn't appear in La Jornada, one of the major Mexico City papers. Their top story is the fact that the peso shrank to 15.35 against the dollar in intra-day trading to close at 14.92 pesos to the dollar. The peso had been at about 10 to the dollar since revaluation in the early '90s. Here's a chart showing the last 120 days.

So the average Mexican's money is now worth about 2/3rds what it was four months ago. This makes remittances more valuable than ever and will encourage illegal immigration even in the teeth of the US recession.

The big crime story for the day seems to be the theft of 40 tonnes of frijoles in the state of Sinaloa - seriously.

I'm not saying the news is being censored but it looks like Mexico has bigger problems than a police strike in a beach town.

[Ken H]

Who had it right in 1990, Bill Bennett or Milton Friedman?

Milton Friedman on the "War on Drugs" (via 2006 FR thread))

(Letter to Bill Bennett; April 1990)

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us.

You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve. Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels.

Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

-snip-

[ScottinVA]

“Although I think in the not-so-distant future a lot of our troops will be heading down there.”

If our troops go down there between now and 2012, it’ll be to escort the “undocumented workers” to safety into the USSA, from those hostile, inhospitable, nativist ranchers.

[GeronL]

lol.

Taiwan would have been a better idea I guess

[TLI]

Yes it is deteriorating and anyone that believes this will not full break through the border and flood into Texas (primarily) is just not situationaly aware.

Mexico’s revenue is failing fast. The reduction in the u.S. economy is reducing the money being sent back to mexico from the criminal illegal alien border and immigration law violators.

This is pushing more mexicans into the exploding drug industry, which increases the doper / police war, which decreases tourism, further reducing a primary source of cash flow, ie. the tourist industry. Add to that the 5% per year decline in the Mexican oil fields production and we are looking at a potential of 3 years to total loss of control.

At that point we will see the general mexican population, NOT just the ones wanting American jobs, flooding across the border en mass. Southern Texas up to about San Antonio will probably be a lost cause, possibly a “no-go” area.

I am in Dallas and I am currently prepping a fallback to southern Missouri. Do I really think it will be that bad?

You betcha. If mexico goes belly up Texas will be nothing but a war. The current border violence will be nothing compaired to it.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Wife and son and I visited Ixtapa in the 1980s-90s when we lived in the Twin Cities. It was great because Sun Country would take us to Zihautanejo in one hop, cutting through the BS of changing planes in Mexico City or elsewhere. Ixtapa beaches were and are great but I would not go back there today.
In the mid 90s, we flew back via Mexicana through Mexico City because we wanted to see the big museum and the pyramids. The hotel got us a car and driver for $25 for the day. After our tour, we were walking in the Pink Zone past a bank and there was a very young Mexican soldier with a Tommygun standing at the front door. Mexican police carried 870 Remingtons on every corner.