Borderline Psychosis Update: Gunboat Diplomacy- Texas Style; Police Chief Slain in Sinaloa; Texas Deputies Plead Guilty in Cocaine Delivery Sting; Mexico to Take a Page From Colombian Counternarcotics Strategy?

TEXAS- The Texas Department of Public Safety has taken to the waters of the Rio Grande and Intercoastal waterways in heavily armoured 34-foot shallow water boats to interdict drug smugglers in waters along the US-Mexico Border.

Texas now has a small navy of gunboats patrolling the Rio Grande and the Intercoastal Waterway. Each of the boats, equipped with armor-plating, night vision equipment and a small arsenal of weaponry, costs about $580,000 in state and federal funds. Troopers patrolling the border say the expense is justified, considering the ruthless nature of their adversaries in the Mexican drug cartels. What they fear, more than anything else, is the prospect of an ambush. "They’ve got radios, they’ve got their telephones, there’s somebody right here in this abandoned house right here," Goble says, gesturing to people hanging around on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. "There’s somebody there now. They’re watching what we’re doing."　 They’re watching, troopers explain, mainly because they’re providing real-time intelligence to smugglers who dump bales of drugs into the river and let the current carry them to the U.S. shoreline. Smugglers typically steal trucks in south Texas, load them up with drugs on the river and drive inland.　 If they’re caught close to the border, many of the smugglers make a run back to the river, speeding down the dusty roads and crashing their trucks into the water. Then they climb out of their vehicles and quickly unload their contraband cargo, helped by confederates splashing into the river from the Mexican side. They haul their bales of dope back onto the dry land in Mexico, ready to try again another day. "They fear Texas law enforcement, but not as much as they fear going back and saying they’ve lost their load," Goble says. "Everything’s at stake. They will go to any extreme to get away from law enforcement and to get the contraband back to the owner." The desperate flights back to the river happen so often, troopers have nicknamed them "splashdowns." Law enforcement authorities have recorded more than 60 of these escapes in the last three years. Troopers point out rusting hulks of abandoned trucks on the U.S. shore where fleeing smugglers have abandoned their stolen vehicles

Each of the boats are equipped with six M-240 belt-fed machine guns capable of firing 900 rounds per minute- hardly overkill on the part of the Texas DPS considering the kind of firepower the cartels have availed themselves of. Last month, a police station and studios for the Televisa network were targeted in multiple grenade attacks in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, TX. Two years ago, 29 gunmen purportedly working with the Sinaloa cartel were killed when the convoy they were travelling in came under fire from a carefully coordinated ambush with heavy weaponry less than 12 miles south of the border crossing at Sasabe, AZ. Currently, the Texas DPS has four of these gunboats in service, but the fleet is expected to grow to six total.

ELSEWHERE IN TEXAS- Two Bexar County Sheriff's Deputies pleaded guilty to protecting conspiracy and attempting to distribute cocaine after agreeing to protect drug shipments on multiple occasions between 2008 and 2010 after meeting with an informant and an undercover FBI agent.

The first meeting took place July 3, 2008, in the parking lot of a Hondo Wal-Mart. [Duputy Jose Angel] Cordero, in full uniform with his service weapon, agreed to transport about 9 pounds of what he thought was cocaine to the Omni Hotel in San Antonio. [Deputy Hector] Franco rode with Cordero to the Wal-Mart parking lot and then to the Omni. The agent paid Cordero $1,500, and Cordero later paid Franco $500. The second meeting took place December 17, 2009, at the Airport Hilton. The same undercover agent — accompanied by an FBI informant — struck a deal with the two deputies to escort a shipment of about 15.5 pounds of cocaine from San Antonio to New Braunfels. This time the FBI agent paid the men, who both arrived in full uniform with their service handguns, $1,200 each for their efforts. The third meeting took place March 23, 2010, at a high-end San Antonio steakhouse, where the deputies told the agent and his informant they'd be willing to transport cocaine to Dallas.

The terms of Cordero's plea agreement with prosecutors remains under seasl, although he did plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy. The county seat for Bexar County is San Antonio.

MEXICO- The counternarcotics strategy of Mexico's incoming Nieto presidency is starting to take shape with the hiring of Colombia's recently-retired National police commander as an adviser.

The proposal newly retired Colombian police director Gen. Oscar Naranjo explained in an interview with The Associated Press offers a glimpse of how President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto might fulfill his promise to slash the number of murders and kidnappings by 50 percent during his six years in office. Similar to the approach that Naranjo employed against Colombian traffickers, the proposal raises the question of whether the widely respected general can reproduce his success in a very different country. Pena Nieto has discussed a new offensive against the smaller, local gangs that have cropped up in many Mexican states and earn money through kidnapping and extortion in addition to drug dealing. Naranjo's proposal of small elite units dovetails with that idea. Such units have specific goals and typically work in isolation. The better a unit performs, the more resources it gets. Information is compartmentalized to prevent leaks. The model worked in Colombia and Naranjo said it could also be effective in Mexico. Such units, which Naranjo said could be comprised in Mexico of the Army, Navy and police, should pursue not just of "high-value targets" such as Sinaloa and Zeta cartel bosses, said Naranjo, who retired June 12 after five years atop his country's 170,000-member police. "In the first 100 days (of Pena Nieto's government) the goal should be set for reducing violence. It could go badly. It could go well. But it should be put in play," he said. "I think it's possible to tell the Mexicans, 'Look, in 100 days we want to cut the violence we have in half." It's feasible, he said, because Mexico's violence "is really concentrated. If you look at the map of violence there it's in six places. It's impossible that in six cities you can't have some control."

Naranjo, who had recently retired from his 36 year police career, had also consulted with Calderon's government [Naranjo pointedly mentions he was against Calderon's deploying the military to Juarez- NANESB!]. The 55 year old Naranjo is credited with forming the Colombian task force who [with the aid of intelligence and surveillance from the DEA] was eventually able to locate and kill Medellin Cartel chief Pablo Escobar in 1993. The elusive Escobar and his cartel had waged a war of attrition against the Colombian government throughout most of the 1980s, assasinating presidential candidates, judges and policemen and bombing an Avianca flight and multiple truck bombings in Bogata and Cali.

NUEVO LEON- An individual described as the Zetas 'piracy czar' was arrested by Mexican troops near the industrial center of Monterrey last month.

[Gregorio Villanueva Salas]- Considered one of the main operators working for [Zetas leader Heriberto] Lazcano, he told military interrogators before being paraded in Mexico City that 14 men found dead last week in a vehicle in Ciudad Mante in Tamaulipas belonged to his outfit. Mexican officials announced on Wednesday that more than 50 alleged members of the feared Zetas drug cartel, including two active duty policemen, women and children, had been arrested in the northern state of Nuevo Leon. The arrests came on the heels of the indictment on Tuesday of the man believed to be the drug cartel's second in command, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, along with 13 others in the United States. Trevino, who is still at large in Mexico, is accused of presiding over a vast money laundering operation that hid millions of dollars of drug proceeds in an American horse racing and breeding syndicate.

Gregorio Villanueva Salas also said that he carried out attacks on schools, newspaper offices and military installations at Lazcano's request. In recent years, cartels have expanded their operations from drug trafficking and cultivation of marijuana and opium poppies or manufacture of methamphetamine to human trafficking, video and software piracy or illegal logging.

SINALOA- The police chief in the northern Sinaloa town of Choix was shot and killed by gunmen during an event marking Police Day last weekend. Chief Hector Echavarria was killed while Mayor Juan Carlos Estrada emerged from the attack unharmed. The attack came just days after locals discovered six bodies in a clandestine gravesite in the remote hills in the northern part of Sinaloa near Copper Canyon. The bodies are thought to have been from two seperate shootout between cartel gunmen and security forces in April near the city of Choix.

Although the territory is controlled by fugitive billionaire drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, organizations such as Los Zetas or La Linea have attempted to encroach on remote territory considered ideal for cultivating opium poppies or marijuana. The Borderland Beat blog is reporting that scores of ranchers and rural families have been displaced by the ongoing fighting in the mountainous regions of Sinaloa.

ARIZONA- Police and Federal agents in Arizona announced the arrest of 20 drug trafickers alleged to have ties to the Sinaloa cartel and the seizure of weapons, and airplane, 30 pounds of methamphetamine and 3 tons of marijuana. The operation reportedly smuggled the drugs across the border from Mexico in hidden compartments of tractor trailers and were warehoused in the Phoenix area before being distributed to New York, Los Angeles or Alabama. The DEA dubbed the operation 'Nayarit Stampede'.