AZMEX UPDATE 9-12-16

AZMEX UPDATE 9 DEC 2016

Note: despite the drug & human trafficking cartels, still way behind that city of corruption - Chicago, IL.
Thx


Slayings in Juárez in 2016 on pace to pass 500
Lorena Figueroa , El Paso Times
7:19 p.m. MST December 8, 2016

http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/local/juarez/2016/12/08/slayings-jurez-2016-pace-pass-500/95160226/

JUÁREZ — Slayings in Juárez in 2016 are on pace to surpass the more than 500 killings recorded three years ago, despite efforts to prevent a surge in violence.

By Wednesday, homicides already were over 490, surpassing the total body count of 311 in 2015 and 438 in 2014, according to the Chihuahua attorney general's office.

There were 514 slayings in 2013, the agency's data show.

The increase in violent deaths this year has prompted law enforcement officials to redesign security operations.

It also put Juárez on a list of the 50 most violent Mexican municipalities in which Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration, in coordination with local authorities, is implementing a strategy to combat violence and crime.

Announced in late August during the National Council for Public Security in Mexico City, the strategy includes strengthening security and law enforcement agencies that are at the forefront of combating criminal groups.

Secretary of the Interior Miguel Angel Osorio Chong visited Juárez last week and met privately with military, federal, state and local officials to get an update on the city's security strategy.

"We have reversed the incidents (of homicides) and we are trying to keep lowering that rate with, of course, a long-term plan," Osorio Chong said in a brief news conference after the meeting.

He was referring to a significant drop in homicides in the past few weeks after a surge of violent killings since July, when execution-style slayings and shootings in broad daylight spiked.

Fifty-one slayings were reported in July after an average of 30 each month since the start of 2016.

October, however, was the bloodiest month this year. Official data show there were 98 slayings that month, although different news outlets have reported there were as many as 104.

Officials from the state attorney general's office have said the surge in slayings was related to disputes over small-scale drug deals involving crystal methamphetamine.


The increased violence also coincided with political changes in Mexico, experts have said.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Mexico's ruling party, was booted from power in Juárez and Chihuahua during June elections. Juárez elected independent Mayor Armando Cabada, while Chihuahua state Gov. Javier Corral of the National Action Party, or PAN, carried the state. Cabada and Corral took office in early October.

The death toll that month prompted law enforcement officials to change their operations, with the federal government again cooperating with local officials in those efforts.


Osorio Chong did not discuss the security strategy implemented in Juárez.
"What we had this year was clearly an increase of homicides and what we are doing again is take actions so we do not return to that complex and difficult moment that Juárez lived a few years ago," he said.

Local and state authorities have said they worked on the return of mixed police units to patrol the city as they did during the most violent years in Juárez. The units are made up of local, state and federal police, as well as members of the military.

"It is a coordinated action of the three levels of government. We have to participate in these type of strategies that include the federal police, the Mexican armed forces, the state's attorney general's office with its police and, of course, the municipality," Chihuahua state prosecutor César Peniche recently told reporters.

Juárez Chief of Police Jorge González Nicolás added there was an increase in arrests, seizures and "frontal combat" against small-scale drug trafficking.

Police data show that within a month authorities arrested 361 drug-trafficking suspects and seized almost 4,000 illegal drug dosages, mostly crystal methamphetamine.

González Nicolás also noted the implementation of a program between the community and emergency services to prevent crime and arrest criminals was a major factor in trying to bring down the death toll.

And it did. In November, the number of homicides dropped drastically to only 35, according to data from the state attorney general's office.

Although violence subsided significantly, it has not gone away.

After Osorio Chong's visit to the city, two execution-style deaths were reported Wednesday in south Juárez and the naked body of a woman wrapped in a blanket was found a few feet from Camino Real Boulevard in the Juárez Sierra.

Those deaths increased the number of slayings in December to nine, while the tally for 2016 rose to 492, according to the state attorney general's office.


END