- CIUDAD JUAREZ murder victim -

August was the most violent month in the border city since the drug-related violence took off in 2008, with 327 homicides registered by Chihuahua state prosecutors.

A total of 2,027 murders have been committed in Ciudad Juarez, located across the border from El Paso, Texas, this year.

At least nine people, including a municipal police officer, were gunned down on the last day of August.

A total of 291 murders, or an average of just over nine per day, were reported in July.

June ranks as the second most violent month of the year, with 313 homicides.

There were 262 killings in May, 205 in April, 240 in March, 163 in February and 227 in January.

The number of killings of women also hit a new high in August, with 40.

Juarez first gained notoriety in the early 1990s when young women began to disappear in the area.

More than 500 women have been killed in Juarez since 1993, with the majority of the cases going unsolved.

In most of the slayings, the victims were young women from poor families who came to the border city from all over Mexico to work in the many assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, built here to take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, backed by hitmen from local street gangs, have been fighting for control of the border city.

Ciudad Juarez, where more than 6,000 people have been murdered since 2008, has been plagued by drug-related violence for years.

The murder rate took off in the border city of 1.5 million people in 2007, when 310 people were killed, then it more than tripled to 1,607 in 2008, according to state Attorney General’s office figures, with the number of killings climbing to 2,635 last year.

Ciudad Juarez, with 191 homicides per 100,000 residents, was the most violent city in the world in 2009, registering a higher murder rate than San Pedro Sula, San Salvador, Caracas and Guatemala, two Mexican non-governmental organizations said in a report released earlier this year.

Some 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon declared war on Mexico’s cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006.

More than 7,000 gangland killings have occurred so far this year in Mexico, Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez said last month.

The death toll for all of 2009 was 7,724.

Source: laht.com

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- Bikie Gang -

Mr Gregoriou has been charged with stealing confidential information and unlawfully disseminating it to his cousin, Peter Vassily, who has alleged links to the Comanchero bikie gang.

Mr Gregoriou’s defence team had argued that much of the evidence contained on laptops and in phone intercepts involving Mr Gregoriou, Mr Vassily and the Comanchero associate Baris Tukel was inadmissable.

But the magistrate Lee Gilmour decided to allow most of it with conditions yesterday, acknowledging that the case was built on ”a complex web of inter- and intra-related circumstantial evidence”.

That evidence includes Google searches for Malinda Downey, the author of one of the intelligence reports, that were done on a computer at the home of Mr Tukel, whose brother Hakan owns a real estate business with Mr Vassily.

It also includes phone intercepts of calls between Mr Vassily and others, which will be allowed in the DPP’s attempts to prove his links to the Comanchero.

And it includes extensive evidence showing the coincidence of Mr Gregoriou’s behaviour after printing off three intelligence reports into bikie gangs and taking them home.

Police allege Mr Gregoriou downloaded the files within 24 hours of each being posted online, took the narrative sections of each but removed the references to his own name, and contacted Mr Vassily after each occasion.

Police suspect the Comanchero have gained access to up to 12 confidential reports, putting undercover police agents at risk and undermining state and federal drug inquiries in what has been described as one of the worst cases of alleged NSW police corruption in recent years.

Source: smh.com.au

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- Gambino Family prostitution ring -

The government said it ended the operation as soon as it discovered that the under-age girl was involved. The witness, who was participating in an investigation of the Gambino crime family, learned of the prostitution ring in June 2009 and reported it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prosecutors said. The witness was then authorized to participate in the trafficking activity for investigative purposes.

But it was not until three months later, in August, that the witness and F.B.I. discovered the ring involved a 15-year-old, and the operation was halted, the United States attorney in Manhattan said in court papers filed on Wednesday. The office was responding to a motion by the defense lawyer, Gerald J. McMahon, who had asked a judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, to dismiss an indictment on the ground of “outrageous government misconduct.”

In April, prosecutors filed a broad indictment against 14 Gambino defendants, which included accusations that some had run a trafficking ring involving women under the age of 20. One prosecutor said the ring was perhaps “a new low for the Gambino family.”

Mr. McMahon claimed in court papers that the witness, Jude Buoneto, who assisted in the trafficking, was a convicted sex abuser who in the 1990s raped one girl and sexually abused another, and who also once ran a brothel with his mother in Brooklyn.

While Mr. Buoneto was involved in the trafficking ring, he acted as a pimp for the 15-year-old girl, Mr. McMahon claimed.

But a prosecutor, Elie Honig, wrote that Mr. McMahon’s motion was “completely meritless” and asked that it be denied. He said the description of Mr. Buoneto’s background was “wildly inaccurate” and that the accusations of rape and operating a brothel were “completely false.”

The “only grain of truth,” he said, was that Mr. Buoneto pleaded guilty in 1998 at age 19 to misdemeanor offenses related to sexual abuse of a child under 17, as the government had disclosed. But, Mr. Honig said, the girl later admitted she had “fabricated the charges against Buoneto” to get back at him for beating up her brother.

Mr. Buoneto cooperated with the F.B.I. from about October 2008 though September 2009, and consistent with standard procedure, the bureau authorized him to participate in certain crimes as part of the investigation, Mr. Honig wrote.

Around June 2009, various defendants began planning and running the sex-trafficking operation, which Mr. Buoneto reported to the F.B.I., Mr. Honig said. The bureau authorized his role.

“There is nothing unusual or improper about the F.B.I. authorizing a cooperating witness to participate in criminal conduct for investigative purposes,” Mr. Honig noted.

The operation quickly ended after the witness and the bureau learned of the girl’s age, he added. Last week, an F.B.I. spokesman in New York said, “This office would not — and did not — approve of any criminal activity involving a minor, much less the sexual exploitation of a minor.”

Mr. McMahon declined to comment on Wednesday.

Source: nytimes.com

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Khalil Robinson was in the living room of the first-floor apartment on Blake Avenue in East New York at 9:20 p.m. when as many as seven shots were fired.

Khalil was struck in the neck and chest and rushed to Brookdale Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.

At least one slug was recovered from a couch in the apartment.

Neighbors said the gangsters were teenagers and the shooting may have been the result of an ongoing turf war.

A witness who declined to give her name said she was with her 7-year-old child when the fusillade started nearby.
“When we heard the shots, we just started running,” she said.

Source: nypost.com

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- Former Luzerne County judge Mark Ciavarella -

SCRANTON – Federal prosecutors have asked the attorney for former Luzerne County judge Mark Ciavarella to identify any person Ciavarella may call as an alibi witness in his upcoming corruption trial.

In a letter to attorney Al Flora, U.S. Attorney Peter J. Smith asks Flora to state whether Ciavarella intends to call any alibi witnesses to rebut any of the charges against him.

If he does, Smith requests Flora identify the person and to identify place that Ciavarella claims to have been at the time the alleged offense occurred.

Ciavarella and former judge Michael Conahan were indicted by a federal grand jury last September on 48 counts, including racketeering, bribery, extortion and money laundering.

Prosecutors said the ex-judges improperly accepted $2.8 million from the owner and builder of two juvenile detention centers in exchange for issuing rulings that benefited the centers.

Conahan pleaded guilty in April to one count of racketeering conspiracy.

Ciavarella is awaiting trial, which has been scheduled for Feb. 7, 2011.

Under federal law, a defendant is required to identify any witness who would testify to the whereabouts of the defendant during the time frame in which he or she is alleged to have committed the crime.

Smith’s letter to Flora states that the information must be provided within 10 days of the request.

Source: timesleader.com

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- Jim Allen -

The so-called gang leaders have scheduled a news conference and even notified the media with a press release from a public relations firm.

It comes after police superintendent Jody Weis issued a warning to reputed gang leaders at a meeting last month.

As some elected officials criticize Weis for the meeting, some of the purported gang leaders are saying they were tricked into the meeting and have no plans to respond to what they call the superintendent’s threats.

Jim Allen calls himself a minister with a long-established West Side gang. He distinguishes himself by saying he’s a ‘legal’ gang member, not a gang banger involved in drugs and violence. He was not at the meeting with Superintendent Weis but he says he has friends who were and say they were tricked into being there.
“We don’t have to be tricked into meetings and then be told you are going to govern people that can’t be governed,” said Allen.

Allen says he and about ten other reputed gang leaders plan to talk about the meeting with the superintendent at a news conference on Thursday morning, even as others question whether Weis should have met with them in the first place.

“Now they’re calling press conferences. What is this all about? It legitimizes the role of gangs in our society,” said Alderman Bob Fioretti, 2nd Ward.

Alderman Fioretti says the superintendent should be focusing on more effective policing rather than talking with gang leaders. Governor Quinn also opposes the meeting.

“In my opinion I don’t think that’s the way to go. I think a better way to go is to take on the assault weapons used to terrorize neighborhoods,” said Quinn.

U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald says he supports police using creative strategy to fight crime but it’s not something his office would try.

“We are not negotiating with anyone. Anyone who thinks that anyone has a pass to commit crimes in this city is wrong. The federal government goes after drugs, guns and gangs,” said Fitzgerald.

Despite being a gang member, Jim Allen says he’s working to try to stop the violence. But he says the answer is to provide resources to his underprivileged community.

“A lot of this violence was started, was birthed by patronage, corruption and cronyism and us being locked out of contracts and jobs and resources within our communities,” said Allen.

At the news conference the purported gang leaders say they plan to accuse the superintendent of harassment and making unenforceable threats.

A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department had no response Wednesday night.

Source: abclocal.go.com

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- Veronica Guerin, who was shot dead shot dead by the pillion passenger on a motorbike as she stopped at traffic lights in Naas, just outside Dublin, in June 1996 -

A convicted Dublin criminal who fled the Irish Republic after the murder of investigative journalist Veronica Guerin by another gangland boss has been arrested in the Netherlands.

John Traynor is in Dutch police custody after being detained in Amstelveen, outside Amsterdam, as part of an operation between detectives in Holland and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

In a statement today, Soca said Traynor was believed to have been living in the Netherlands for a number of years.

Guerin was shot dead by the pillion passenger on a motorbike as she stopped at traffic lights in Naas, just outside Dublin, in June 1996.

Traynor, 62, has been wanted in the UK for 18 years after absconding from prison one year into a seven-year sentence for handling stolen bearer bonds in London.

A prisoner at Highpoint prison, in Suffolk, he was given temporary release, went back to Ireland and did not return.

He is now awaiting extradition to the UK to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Traynor was one of Guerin’s criminal contacts and, prior to her murder, was seeking a high court order to prevent her from writing about his involvement in organised crime.

He hired a gunman to shoot her in the leg a year before another gangland criminal in Dublin had her assassinated.

Traynor fled Ireland after she was killed and moved between Spain and the Netherlands. He was arrested with Brian Meehan in Amsterdam in 1997. Meehan was extradited and is now serving life for Guerin’s murder. Traynor was released without charge.

A Soca spokesperson said: “He is now awaiting extradition to the UK to serve the remainder of his sentence.

“This arrest is as a result of ongoing collaboration with the Dutch authorities that Soca has to apprehend criminals operating in the Netherlands that impact on the UK.” It is expected that Traynor will appear in court in the coming days.

There are no outstanding warrants for Traynor in the Irish Republic.

Traynor was an associate of Dublin criminal boss Martin Cahill, also known as The General, and was also close to John Gilligan.

Gilligan was cleared of the murder of Guerin in 2001. He was jailed by the special criminal court for 28 years for importing cannabis resin, the longest sentence handed down in Ireland for drugs offences.

Traynor was involved in a wide variety of criminal enterprises, from organising armed robberies to drug smuggling, embezzlement and prostitution. He was the second in command and main adviser of the drug-smuggling gang broken up by the Garda investigation into the Guerin murder. He also had contacts with the Irish National Liberation Army.

Source: BBC

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- The Russian mafia are now linked to almost every crime committed on the French Riviera -

Their grip on the region is now so tight that Riviera detectives expect an eastern connection to almost every crime.

“Everything from burglary and money laundering to vice is controlled by the Mob from former Communist countries,” said one police officer, who was involved in the arrest of 69 members of a Georgian syndicate in March.

Although most of the arrests of members have been in Spain, the gang’s nerve centre, many of the bosses now have luxury villas on France’s Mediterranean coast, and foot soldiers work for them, flying out for set period before returning home with their profits.

“They’re into everything, from the Russian prostitute rings in resorts like Cannes and St Tropez to gassing tourists in their villa and stealing everything they’ve got,” said the police officer.

“Bosses are now based here permanently, with foot soldiers working for them, often flying in for set periods before returning home with their profits in cash. The numbers really are unprecedented at the moment.”

Alain Bauer, a French criminologist, said: “This is one of the best structured criminal organisations in Europe, with a quasi-military operation”.
Another investigator, from the judicial police in Nice, told Le Figaro newspaper that he had recently been involved in the arrests of two eastern Mafia chiefs.

“One of them is involved in a vast money laundering operation in Spain and waiting to be extradited”, said the officer. “The other is suspected of masterminding the assassination of another rogue Georgian, and he organised a very violent settling of accounts, worthy of an action film, in a flat in Nice.”

Laurent Laubry, a representative of the police union Alliance, said that many of the gang members were heavily armed ex-soldiers from Soviet regions such as Chechnya.

He said that one of his colleagues was beaten up by four Chechens as he went to buy a packet of cigarettes last week.

“The undercover officer received a rain of blows to the face and was left for dead between two cars,” said Mr Laubry, who described the “ultra-violent methods of these people, who have no morals, no rules, and who are often heavily armed and beefy.”

As well as the arrival of the Russian Mafia, the traditional Italian one is also said to be alive and well in France.

In June, Giuseppe Falsone, a leading Sicilian Godfather, was arrested in Marseilles after a decade on the run. He was believed to have had plastic surgery and was using false identification while continuing to coordinate criminal activity, said local police.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

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- Edgar Valdez Villarreal -

Mr Valdez was an accomplished drug trafficker: he has been indicted in the United States for distributing thousands of kilos of cocaine, and he reportedly controlled much of the local consumption market in and around Mexico City. But his true forte was violence. His mercenary faction, nicknamed Los Negros (“The Blacks”), was responsible for many of Mexico’s most public and gruesome crimes. They include the shooting of a top Paraguayan football player in a chic Mexico City bar and the murder of the mother and aunt of the marine who died in the operation that killed Arturo Beltrán Leyva. “He’s clearly a sociopath,” says Georgina Sánchez, an organised-crime analyst. “Not only does he not care about killing, he doesn’t care about inflicting the most misery possible, such as by dismembering his victims.”

The government should reap three distinct rewards from Mr Valdez’s arrest. First, it is a much-needed public-relations coup, given the constant drumbeat of bad news in the drug war: over the last two weeks, two mayors have been killed, a prosecutor investigating the murder of 72 migrants went missing, and a bar in the tourist resort of Cancún was petrol-bombed. Second, unlike most arrests or killings of gang leaders, it may not provoke a bloody succession struggle. With Mr Valdez out of the picture, Héctor Beltrán Leyva will probably consolidate control over what remains of his brother’s empire.

Perhaps most importantly, since Mr Valdez was captured alive, he could become a vital source of intelligence. His knowledge of the inner workings of Mexico’s drug gangs may have no peer, thanks to his history of shifting allegiances—he once worked as Mr Guzmán’s bodyguard, and recently struck up an alliance with the feared Zetas mob. Given how susceptible Mexican prison guards are to corruption, Mr Valdez could still cause mayhem from jail, and would be a threat to escape. But since he is an American citizen, he can simply be deported to the United States without undergoing a cumbersome extradition procedure.

Nonetheless, Mr Valdez’s arrest will soon be forgotten if violence does not abate. The official death toll from the conflict has now reached 28,000, after a series of upward revisions, and is expected to be nearly twice as high this year as it was in 2009. And although Mexico’s national murder rate is still modest by Latin American standards, the gangs’ battles with the government and each other are increasingly affecting the lives of ordinary citizens. The economies of big cities like Ciudad Juárez and Monterrey are being strangled by extortion, kidnapping, and narco-roadblocks. As a result, support for the fight launched nearly four years ago by Felipe Calderón, the president, is waning. Just 19% of Mexicans think the situation will improve before his term ends in 2012.

The capture of Mr Valdez, like that of Teodoro El Teo García, an ally of Mr Guzmán, and the killings of Arturo Beltrán Leyva and Ignacio Coronel, Sinaloa’s third-in-command, show that Mr Calderón has successfully transformed his security apparatus. The government has vastly increased its intelligence capacity, and improved its cooperation with United States authorities. And its agents have now proven they can conduct sensitive operations without advance warning leaking to their targets (although Mr Valdez did reportedly escape capture by a few hours earlier this month). Mr Valdez was the first top-tier drug lord to be captured by the federal police, which Mr Calderón has made into a credible security force, as opposed to the army or navy. The government announced on August 30th that it has dismissed 3,200 federal police officers this year for suspected corruption, almost 10% of the total.

However, no country has vanquished organised crime with force alone. Much less progress has been made on the other components of a successful strategy, like rooting out corrupt politicians, offering quality education and job prospects to potential gang recruits, and attacking the traffickers’ finances. On August 26th Mr Calderón proposed modest new measures to fight money-laundering, such as capping cash transactions at 100,000 pesos ($7,650). But more robust tactics, like strengthening asset-seizure laws, would encounter fierce resistance. Mr Calderón has made a start, but it will fall to his successors to carry through his fight.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post mistakenly stated that Mr Valdez was responsible for the four decapitated bodies hung from a bridge near the city of Cuernavaca in August. In fact, the victims were working for Mr Valdez and were killed by his rivals.

Source: economist.com

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- Chicago Chief of Police Jody Weis and Mayor Daley criticized for Weis' meeting with gang members -

Gang leaders were tricked into meeting Weis when they were told to see their parole officers at the Garfield Park Observatory on Chicago’s west side. Once arriving, the gangsters were reportedly told to stop the killings or their lives will be miserable via the Chicago Police. The misery could come in the form of towing their cars for parking violations, requiring more parole visits, or traffic violations. The use of racketeering statutes were threatened, also.

Though Weis praises the program for its successes in Boston and Cincinnati, there are policemen who are speaking out against the meeting. While Weis claims the meeting was to lay down new rules to the gangsters, critics say the meeting was much like negotiating with terrorists. The offer to give gangsters a legitimate job and a chance of rehabilitation, of sorts, was criticized as being a weak move. Naturally, any criticism of Weis is criticism for Mayor Richard Daley, as he would have undoubtedly been involved with the planning or approval of the secret meeting.

This week, on the Chicago airwaves, Chicago city aldermen were also openly and very strongly opposed to Daley’s approval of such an action as this. The criticism is just another in a long list of criticisms given to Daley in recent months from the public and city officials. Much of the criticism has been about this topic – crime, violence, shootings, and murders in the city.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of the meeting in retrospect, the meeting was privately planned and held. Therefore, whatever good or damage the meeting produces will have to be seen in the following days on the streets of Chicago.

Source: examiner.com

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