Deputies discover Border Patrol uniforms

STOCKTON - The suspicions of deputies delivering a court order in east Stockton on Wednesday afternoon led them to a haul of Border Patrol uniforms, a missing Sheriff's Office badge and a 36-year-old man with an outstanding warrant for forgery.

According to the Sheriff's Office, deputies were serving a protective order at a residence at East Cherokee and North Wilcox roads when they spotted a vehicle nearby with expired registration tags. It appeared unoccupied, but the front driver's side window was down. When deputies approached, they saw a man in the driver's seat, which had been fully reclined. He appeared to be trying to escape attention, said Deputy Les Garcia, a Sheriff's Office spokesman.

The man identified himself as Michael Edward Garcia, 36. He had been wanted since late July on suspicion of forgery for allegedly writing a fraudulent check for $1,300 in return for a convertible 1988 Ford Mustang.

The deputies searched Michael Garcia's vehicle, not a Mustang, and found six Border Patrol uniforms and the badge, which had been reported missing in 2005.

Les Garcia said the Sheriff's Office is investigating whether the equipment had been used to commit other crimes. He said illegal immigrants are vulnerable to victimization by someone posing as a Border Patrol agent.

"It is a concern," he said. "We need to determine whether or not, in fact, he used those to victimize other people."

Michael Garcia was booked into the County Jail on suspicion of possession of stolen property and on his outstanding warrant. He was being held in lieu of $25,000 bail. By Thursday, he had been released.

The Sheriff's Office is asking anyone with information call investigators at (209) 468-4400.

A regional spokesman for Customs and Border Patrol could not be reached for comment.

Article was forwarded by NAFBPO. What follows is their most recent M3 Foreign news report.

Chihuahua: rampant violence

Posted: 05 Nov 2009 08:11 AM PST

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS Visit our website: http://www.nafbpo.org Foreign News Report

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.

Thursday, 11/5/09

Norte, El Diario, Lapolaka, Agora (all from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 11/4/09

Chihuahua dawns with 19 executions. Rampant violence continues.

(A compilation) Today (Wed.) was just a few minutes old when a group of masked and armed men burst into the “Amadeus” Club, described as an exclusive, well guarded, topless night spot and bar in downtown Ciudad Juarez. There, the intruders tried to carry off a couple of individuals seated with others around a table. When those seated resisted, a scuffle began and then the intruders opened fire with handguns and assault rifles. Most reports agreed that six men were killed, though an updated report mentioned that a seventh, an “exotic dancer,” was also shot and died. One of the men killed had U.S. Air Force credentials, as did also one other man who was taken to El Paso after receiving emergency first aid in Juarez.

“Norte” also reported six other homicides in Juarez yesterday, not related to the “Amadeus” killings. But “El Diario de Coahuila” (Saltillo, Coah.) today reported two other triple executions plus other ones last night in the state of Chihuahua, which brought to nineteen the total of those assassinated. To cap the bloody day, “Lapolaka” reported that early this afternoon a group of hired killers caught up with four men who were traveling in a car in Juarez. The four were made to get out and to stand up against a wall on the neighborhood street, there to be shot. One, who tried to run and escape, made it only a short distance before the bullets reached him. The other three died against the wall. That made eleven assassinations just in Juarez this day. The writer of that last column mentioned that Wednesday still had hours left.

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La Hora (Guatemala City, Guatemala) 11/4/09

“Who said we’re a poor country?”

Full transl. of an op/col. by Francisco Caceres Barrios, titled as above

The information I have just received had me reach the conclusion that made me wish we were a poor country such as Finland, whose national anthem says: “…. We are a poor country that has no gold, the resource we have is our people.” That is the reason why they invest in their people. There, it’s mandatory that every person receive training and education that will allow them to go as far as their capability allows. For them, it’s not enough to have “some” educated persons, on the contrary, “the entire society” has the right to count on their ability to develop properly during their lifetime. That’s how they strive in Finland to face and resolve the problems of education and corruption. They know well that an educated people can elect honest and competent leaders, the way an ignorant people wastes its resources and becomes impoverished, becoming fertile ground for the demagogues.

On the other hand, Guatemala is a country rich in beauty, resources, climate, scenery, ancestral culture, ah, well, countless things Finland and so many countries of the globe would like to have. Might that be why we forget about the education and the formation of the character of our people and we occupy ourselves in corrupting society to the nth degree? That’s why, for example, public works projects such as the bus terminal of the Aldea Fronteras, in Livingston, Izabal,(*) have not been completed despite the fact that 2.0 million quetzals (**) were given to that contractor in advance. Likewise, our justice courts prescribe “compensations” for themselves, when, instead, they ought to reimburse the people for their ill gotten gains during the period for which they were elected, without fulfilling their duties to the best of their ability.

Since we’re rich instead of educating and bringing up our people, we let the trusteeships continue, which officials use to carry out the best crooked deals they can think of under guise of being more efficient with their expenditures. We are so rich that we allow smugglers and drug traffickers to do as they wish and that the police itself, the representatives of the law, may contribute to the shameless proliferation of corruption. Since we have more than enough resources, we allow our congressmen or judges to have good banquets with the peoples’ money, which should instead have been invested in its education and character formation.

Even worse, in our country, so envied by those who visit us, we treat them badly, we assault them, we rob them, we rape their women without being charged by the law, or we give them fines for parking their vehicles incorrectly without relying on the street parking signs, instead of protecting them as a present and future treasure. On top of all that, during the last few years, even with more determination, we have irresponsibly dedicated ourselves to destroying our environment. As a sample, Lake Atitlan, “the most beautiful in the world” is proof enough. And still, can they insist in saying we are poor?

(*) – Livingston is a city in the dep’t. (state) of Izabal, on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast.

(**) – Quetzals: the Guatemalan currency

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Prensa Libre (Guatemala City, Guatemala) 11/4/09

A facet of crime in Guatemala

Armed assaults and robberies continue against Guatemala’s public transport system. Two separate incidents in buses yesterday resulted in three deaths and six persons wounded by firearms. The usual M.O. is for the thugs to board the bus, pretending to be innocent passengers; then, at a selected point, they proceed to carry out their armed attacks. Six other persons were murdered in Guatemala yesterday, in events unrelated to the attacks in buses.

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Armada Nacional de Colombia (Bogota, Colombia) 11/4/09

More cocaine on the Pacific

Colombian Coast Guard units and the U.S. Coast Guard vessel “Sherman” intercepted a northbound motorboat 52 nautical miles off the western coast of Colombia. Aboard the boat: 2,219 kilos of cocaine, plus shrimp, lobster and six crewmen.

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Cambio de Michoacan (Morelia, Michoacan) 11/4/09

State of Michoacan emigration

At the opening ceremony of a Family Unity Forum, the governor of Michoacan acknowledged that the state of Michoacan ranks at the top level nationally in migrations to the United States and Canada, and that more than half of the emigrants are young. He added that half of the prison inmates in Michoacan jails are young people.

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“To exorcise the everyday horrors”

[Portions of an op/col. by Carlos Tapia, titled as above]

There is no hour or day when the soldiery and the police do not interpose themselves in our daily affairs. Sirens, grim faces, weaponry, armament. It all darkens the day, the afternoon, the evening before sleep. One asks oneself, where was the forcible carrying-off of a person, the “express” kidnapping, the shootout. Who did they take away, who was killed by gunfire. The print media show photographs and reports about the latest ones executed, dismembered, kidnapped ones, disappeared ones. For that reason, when I think, observe and gather information about the daily occurrence of horrors, I concentrate on the cruelty, the immorality and amorality of the monster we face daily.

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Frontera (Tijuana, Baja Calif.) 11/4/09

A use for blankets in Tijuana

The bodies of two men and a woman were found early this morning on a street on the east side of Tijuana. They showed signs of having been beaten and were presumed to have been strangled. They were all covered with a blanket.

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- end of report -

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