Friday, January 31, 2014
Marijuana Mexico wants to follow lead of some U.S. States for Personal Consumption
The opposition party governing Mexico City said on Thursday it would propose raising the amount of marijuana residents of the capital can possess to seven times the current limit to help speed up drug liberalization in Mexico.
Since former President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on drug cartels seven years ago, Mexico has been wracked by gang-related violence, and there is growing pressure to explore regulation as a way of tackling the problem.
The leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has led the drive to liberalize Mexico's drug laws, and aims to use the capital, which it has governed since 1997, as starting ground.
Vidal Llerenas, a PRD member of the Mexico City assembly, said the initiative that is due to be presented in the next two weeks would increase the amount of marijuana local residents are allowed for personal consumption to 35 grams from 5 grams.
"The proposal basically ensures that people in possession of a reasonable quantity of marijuana will not be prosecuted," said Llerenas. "What can we do to lower the social costs of drug use? Part of the answer is regulation and part is decriminalization."
In 2009, Mexico made it legal to carry up to 5 grams (0.18 ounce) of marijuana, 500 milligrams (0.018 ounce) of cocaine and tiny amounts of heroin and methamphetamine's.
Cartel violence, however, is still a major problem in Latin America's second biggest economy, claiming the lives of more than 80,000 people over the past seven years.
In September, a group of prominent Mexicans including former ministers, businessmen, artists and Nobel Prize-winning scientist Mario Molina urged the government to decriminalize marijuana in an effort to reduce corruption and lower the income of cartels.
President Enrique Pena Nieto has resisted taking that step, but officials have said that he is closely watching developments elsewhere. Lawmakers have said that Mexico is likely to gradually change tack once a bigger section of the Americas has liberalized drug laws.
Immigration Principles a Fight within a Fight
House Republican leaders plan to outline broad immigration
principles, including legalization for the 11 million immigrants living
here illegally, to the GOP rank and file as they look to revive
long-stalled efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration system.
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other House GOP leaders will
measure the willingness of party members to tackle immigration in a
midterm election year when they unveil the principles Thursday at the
GOP caucus' annual retreat in Cambridge, Md.
"We're going to outline our standards, principles of immigration reform and have a conversation with our members, and once that conversation's over we'll have a better feel for what members have in mind," Boehner told reporters this week.
Boehner faces strong opposition from several conservatives who fear that legislation will lead to citizenship for people who broke U.S. immigration laws, are suspicious of President Barack Obama and his enforcement of any law and are reluctant to give the president a long-sought legislative victory.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, delivered a 30-page package to all 232 House Republicans on Wednesday that offered a point-by-point rebuttal to the expected principles.
Sessions warned of the negative impact of proposed changes in immigration policy on U.S. workers, taxpayers and the rule of law as the House leaders look at legalization for some of the 11 million immigrants living here illegally. Sessions and other opponents argue that legal status and work authorization amounts to amnesty and serves as a path to citizenship.
Responding to Obama's renewed call for immigration legislation and the positive signals from House GOP leaders, Sessions said Republicans "must end the lawlessness — not surrender to it — and they must defend the legitimate interests of millions of struggling American workers."
Separately, several lawmakers were working on legislation dealing with children of parents in the United States illegally and visas for guest workers.
Republicans insist that the party must pass reforms and address the issue of those in the country illegally to be competitive in presidential elections. In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who suggested that immigrants "self-deport," won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.
"It's no secret we have millions of people who are here, who are unlawful and we can't deny that, and I think that's something that has to be dealt with," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who has been working on legislation. "But a lot of components have to be dealt with."
The Senate last year passed a comprehensive, bipartisan bill that addressed border security, provided enforcement measures and offered a path to citizenship for those living here illegally. The measure stalled in the GOP-led House, where leaders want to take a more piecemeal approach.
Sessions' analysis said increasing the number of immigrants would hurt an already weak economy, lower wages and increase unemployment. He cited White House adviser Gene Sperling's comment earlier this month that the economy has three people looking for every job opening.
He said the House GOP leaders' plan that's taking shape would grant work permits almost immediately to those here illegally, giving them a chance to compete with unemployed Americans for any job. He said it would lead to a surge in the future flow of unskilled workers and would provide amnesty to a larger number of immigrants in the country illegally, giving them a chance to apply for citizenship through green cards.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Sessions' critique.
Notably, two members of the House leadership, Boehner and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., spoke about dealing with the broken immigration system in their responses to Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday that she spoke to Boehner about the principles but not specific legislation.
"I believe it is a good-faith effort to find common ground, and we look forward to seeing what they are," Pelosi said.
Diaz-Balart expressed cautious optimism, putting the odds of House action on immigration at 30 percent, up from 5 percent earlier.
"There's a consensus that the system is broken and I'm seeing more and more a desire to fix it," he said in an interview. "Speaker Boehner has been very clear, leadership has been very clear. We're going to do it methodically, that we're going to look at it case by case, step by step, we're not going to rush it."
It's no secret we have millions of people who are here, who are unlawful and we can't deny that, and I think that's something that has to be dealt with- Mario Diaz-Balart
"We're going to outline our standards, principles of immigration reform and have a conversation with our members, and once that conversation's over we'll have a better feel for what members have in mind," Boehner told reporters this week.
Boehner faces strong opposition from several conservatives who fear that legislation will lead to citizenship for people who broke U.S. immigration laws, are suspicious of President Barack Obama and his enforcement of any law and are reluctant to give the president a long-sought legislative victory.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, delivered a 30-page package to all 232 House Republicans on Wednesday that offered a point-by-point rebuttal to the expected principles.
Sessions warned of the negative impact of proposed changes in immigration policy on U.S. workers, taxpayers and the rule of law as the House leaders look at legalization for some of the 11 million immigrants living here illegally. Sessions and other opponents argue that legal status and work authorization amounts to amnesty and serves as a path to citizenship.
Responding to Obama's renewed call for immigration legislation and the positive signals from House GOP leaders, Sessions said Republicans "must end the lawlessness — not surrender to it — and they must defend the legitimate interests of millions of struggling American workers."
Separately, several lawmakers were working on legislation dealing with children of parents in the United States illegally and visas for guest workers.
Republicans insist that the party must pass reforms and address the issue of those in the country illegally to be competitive in presidential elections. In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who suggested that immigrants "self-deport," won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.
"It's no secret we have millions of people who are here, who are unlawful and we can't deny that, and I think that's something that has to be dealt with," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who has been working on legislation. "But a lot of components have to be dealt with."
The Senate last year passed a comprehensive, bipartisan bill that addressed border security, provided enforcement measures and offered a path to citizenship for those living here illegally. The measure stalled in the GOP-led House, where leaders want to take a more piecemeal approach.
Sessions' analysis said increasing the number of immigrants would hurt an already weak economy, lower wages and increase unemployment. He cited White House adviser Gene Sperling's comment earlier this month that the economy has three people looking for every job opening.
He said the House GOP leaders' plan that's taking shape would grant work permits almost immediately to those here illegally, giving them a chance to compete with unemployed Americans for any job. He said it would lead to a surge in the future flow of unskilled workers and would provide amnesty to a larger number of immigrants in the country illegally, giving them a chance to apply for citizenship through green cards.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Sessions' critique.
Notably, two members of the House leadership, Boehner and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., spoke about dealing with the broken immigration system in their responses to Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday that she spoke to Boehner about the principles but not specific legislation.
"I believe it is a good-faith effort to find common ground, and we look forward to seeing what they are," Pelosi said.
Diaz-Balart expressed cautious optimism, putting the odds of House action on immigration at 30 percent, up from 5 percent earlier.
"There's a consensus that the system is broken and I'm seeing more and more a desire to fix it," he said in an interview. "Speaker Boehner has been very clear, leadership has been very clear. We're going to do it methodically, that we're going to look at it case by case, step by step, we're not going to rush it."
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Good or Bad Thing Mexico wants to Train n Supervise Vigilantes
Mexico enlists army of hardened vigilantes to fight drug cartel
After months of tacit co-operation with rural vigilantes trying to drive out a cult-like drug cartel, the Mexican government has moved to permanently solve one of its toughest security problems with a plan to legalize the growing movement and bring it under the army’s control.
But the risks are high.To succeed, the government must enforce military discipline and instil respect for human rights and due process among more than 20,000 heavily armed civilians before returning them home to the western state of Michoacan.
In other Latin American countries, similar experiments have created state-backed militias that carried out massive human rights abuses as armed civilians turned to vengeance, or assisted in mass killings. The Mexican army itself has been accused of rights abuses during the more than seven-year war against organized crime that has seen it deployed as a police force in much of the country.
Vigilante leaders met Tuesday with government officials to hash out details of the agreement that would put avocado and lime pickers with AR-15 semi-automatic rifles under army command. The Mexican military has a century-old tradition of mobilizing “rural defence corps” of peasants to fight bandits and uprisings in the countryside.
If the latest experiment works, it will resolve one of the thorniest dilemmas of the barely year-old administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto: how to handle a movement that sprang up outside the law but successfully took on a pseudo-religious drug cartel, the Knights Templar, that Mexican authorities had been unwilling or unable to take on for years.
Over the last year, the vigilantes, many former migrant workers who spent years in the United States, have seized a dozen towns terrorized by extortion, killings and rapes at the hands of the cartel’s gunmen. Members of the Knights Templar have tried to portray themselves as soldiers in a reincarnation of a medieval religious order dedicated to Christianity and the expulsion of abusive police from their communities.
In many instances, Associated Press reporters have witnessed federal forces standing on the sidelines while the “self-defence” forces routed the cartel, and occasionally even aiding them by conducting joint patrols and manning highway checkpoints together.
Mexican experts so far have widely accepted of the government’s late-Monday move, calling it a smart way to maintain the movement’s momentum against the Knights Templar while protecting the government against charges it was ceding the rule of law in the “hot lands” of Michoacan, a rugged Pacific Coast state of rich agricultural land and mountains studded by marijuana fields and methamphetamine labs.
But in other parts of Latin America, the news stirred traumatic memories.
Claudia Samayoa, a human rights activist in Guatemala, said the thousands of deaths attributed to the army-backed Peasant Self Defence Patrols during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war are too fresh to allow for more paramilitary forces in the region.
“The cure is
going to be worse than the disease,” said Samayoa. “It would be better
not to go down that road, and instead strengthen law enforcement and the
justice and public safety systems.”
Margarita Solano, of the U.S. risk-analysis firm Southern Pulse, said Mexico’s vigilantes have awakened memories of her native Colombia’s experience with self-defence forces such as the “Convivir” movement that fought leftistrebels in the 1990s. While the groups were initially welcomed, some were later accused of rights abuses. “I’m finding differences and certain similarities that are frightening,” Solano said.
Mexican authorities are portraying the legalization of the “self-defence” forces as a stop-gap measure: unable to disarm the vigilantes because of the popular support they received after kicking the Knights Templar drug cartel out of much of the state, federal officials will now have to work with them to clean up the rest of the gang — and then convince the vigilantes to demobilize. The government has stressed the plan is temporary, and said vigilantes will have to register their guns.
With self-defence checkpoints on most major roads in Michoacan’s hot lands, and armed vigilantes often drinking beer or smoking marijuana at their posts, there are ample possibilities for abuses.
But many Mexicans are less concerned than outsiders about wrongdoing by the vigilantes-turned-rural forces. They note there are fundamental differences between Michoacan, where relatively prosperous farmers are funding the vigilantes to fight drug cartel extortions, and Guatemala, Colombia and Peru, where poor farmers were pressed by right-wing governments into fighting bitter wars against leftist rebels.
In the rich, flat lands of Michoacan, “there aren’t any leftist guerrillas or poor farmers,” said Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “Here there are well-off farmers fighting criminals.”
Unlike the vigilante movement in the neighbouring Mexico state of Guerrero, where self-defence forces are often anti-government, many of Michoacan’s vigilantes say they just want to get back the rich pasture and lime groves that the Knights Templar stole from them.
“The comparisons with Colombia, Peru or Guatemala are an aberration,” said Benitez. “Right now, the self-defence forces need the respect of the local residents and public opinion, so I think they are not going to commit any crimes now.”
Margarita Solano, of the U.S. risk-analysis firm Southern Pulse, said Mexico’s vigilantes have awakened memories of her native Colombia’s experience with self-defence forces such as the “Convivir” movement that fought leftistrebels in the 1990s. While the groups were initially welcomed, some were later accused of rights abuses. “I’m finding differences and certain similarities that are frightening,” Solano said.
Mexican authorities are portraying the legalization of the “self-defence” forces as a stop-gap measure: unable to disarm the vigilantes because of the popular support they received after kicking the Knights Templar drug cartel out of much of the state, federal officials will now have to work with them to clean up the rest of the gang — and then convince the vigilantes to demobilize. The government has stressed the plan is temporary, and said vigilantes will have to register their guns.
With self-defence checkpoints on most major roads in Michoacan’s hot lands, and armed vigilantes often drinking beer or smoking marijuana at their posts, there are ample possibilities for abuses.
But many Mexicans are less concerned than outsiders about wrongdoing by the vigilantes-turned-rural forces. They note there are fundamental differences between Michoacan, where relatively prosperous farmers are funding the vigilantes to fight drug cartel extortions, and Guatemala, Colombia and Peru, where poor farmers were pressed by right-wing governments into fighting bitter wars against leftist rebels.
In the rich, flat lands of Michoacan, “there aren’t any leftist guerrillas or poor farmers,” said Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “Here there are well-off farmers fighting criminals.”
Unlike the vigilante movement in the neighbouring Mexico state of Guerrero, where self-defence forces are often anti-government, many of Michoacan’s vigilantes say they just want to get back the rich pasture and lime groves that the Knights Templar stole from them.
“The comparisons with Colombia, Peru or Guatemala are an aberration,” said Benitez. “Right now, the self-defence forces need the respect of the local residents and public opinion, so I think they are not going to commit any crimes now.”
Mexico’s Olmec Civilization Before Christ
Mexico’s Olmec Civilization More Expansive than Previously Thought
A recent study and publication by Mexico’s Museum of National Anthropology (INAH) indicates the Olmec civilization was territorially more expansive than previously thought.
Studies conducted in the per-Colombian archaeological site of ‘La Venta’ indicate that the Olmec civilization existed beyond the Gulf of Mexico, in the states of Veracruz and Tabasco, where it was centered. Physical evidence from the La Venta site indicate that the Olmec’s, which thrived from 1,200 to 400 BCE, existed well beyond the Gulf of Mexico region into the southern Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca and all the way down into Guatemala.The ‘La Venta’ site contains the earliest known pyramid of Mesoamerica known as the “Great Pyramid.”
Archaeologists had found previous evidence that the Olmec influence went as far south as Nicaragua but this is the first time that the territorial expansion has been studied and proven with physical evidence.
The study was concentrated in the ‘4th Offering of La Venta’ an archaeological site located within ‘La Venta’ discovered in 1955 in Tabasco, containing 16 jade stone carvings of males and 6 jade columns.
Jade was one of the commonly traded goods of the Olmecs and often used in sculptures and paintings. The jade found in La Venta was also found in Guatemala’s Motagua River and minerals traces in Guerrero and Oaxaca.
La Venta was the second cultural center of the Olmecs, with San Lorenzo being the first. While San Lorenzo declined in importance La Venta surged around 900 BCE. The massive stone heads found throughout the Gulf of Mexico are the most iconic and widely recognized symbols of this ancient civilization.
The study and its conclusions have been documented in the book: “La ofrenda 4 de La Venta.”
Axolotl aka Water Monster or Mexican Walking Fish
Mexico's salamander-like axolotl, the 'water monster,' may have disappeared
The axolotl is known as the "water monster" and the "Mexican walking fish." Its only natural habitat is the Xochimilco network of lakes and canals — the "floating gardens" of earth piled on reed mats that the Aztecs built to grow crops but are now suffering from pollution and urban sprawl.
Biologist Armando Tovar Garza of Mexico's National Autonomous University said Tuesday that the creature "is in serious risk of disappearing" from the wild.
Describing an effort last year by researchers in skiffs to try to net axolotls in the shallow, muddy waters of Xochimilco, Tovar Garza summed up the results as "four months of sampling — zero axolotls."
Some axolotls still survive in aquariums, water tanks and research labs, but experts said those conditions aren't the best, because of interbreeding and other risks.
Growing up to a foot long (30 centimeters), axolotls use four stubby legs to drag themselves along the bottom or thick tails to swim in Xoxhimilco's murky channels while feeding on aquatic insects, small fish and crustaceans. But the surrounding garden-islands have increasingly been converted to illicit shantytowns, with untreated sewage often running off into the water.
The Mexican Academy of Sciences said in a statement that a 1998 survey found an average of 6,000 axolotls per square kilometer, a figure that dropped to 1,000 in a 2003 study, and 100 in a 2008 survey.
Tovar Garza said it is too early to declare the axolotl extinct in its natural habitat. He said that in early February, researchers will begin a three-month search in hopes of finding what may be the last free-roaming axolotl.
The searches "on almost all the canals have to be repeated, because now we are in the cold season, with lower temperatures, and that is when we ought to have more success with the axolotls, because it is when they breed," Tovar Garza said.
Alarmed by the creature's falling numbers in recent years, researchers built axolotl "shelters" in Xochimilco.
Sacks of rocks and reedy plants act as filters around a selected area, and cleaner water is pumped in, to create better conditions. The shelters also were intended to help protect the axolotls from non-native carp and tilapia that were introduced to the lake system years ago and compete with axolotls for food.
Mexico Drones Watching Tourist
TIJUANA, Mexico â?? Just across the border from the USA, police have
begun using drones carrying video cameras to patrol residential
neighborhoods and watch over parts of the city often visited by
Americans.
Tijuana's use of low-altitude unmanned aircraft for law enforcement surveillance, in darkness as well as daylight, appears to far exceed what state and local police agencies have been permitted to experiment with in the USA.
Unburdened by the sort of aviation restrictions and privacy concerns that have slowed domestic U.S. drone use, Tijuana police recently purchased three specially configured commercial drones and are testing their use in flight, said Alejandro Lares, the city's new chief of police.
He said he hopes to put them into full normal operation within weeks.
"How are we going to use them? Basically, it's preventing crime,'' said Lares, 35, who became secretary of public safety in December, a post that puts him in charge of the municipal police force where he had been an officer for eight years.
"What we're doing is implementing technology into our community law enforcement,'' he said in a recent interview. "We don't have any regulations or laws that don't permit us to use them.''
The Mexican drones are far smaller than the large military Predator drones the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agency has deployed along the border. The Border Patrol is one of the only agencies aside from the military allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly unmanned aircraft. A recent report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the Border Patrol flew 687 surveillance missions on behalf of other agencies, some of them police, from 2010 to 2012.
While the United States develops its drone laws, the experiment on its doorstep offers a glimpse of how domestic police could soon use the technology if permitted.
Tijuana's drones are off-the-shelf commercial units produced by 3D Robotics, a company with offices in Tijuana and the USA. They are equipped with video cameras and night-vision capability. The company confirmed the deal but offered few specifics.
"We sell an open source platform that is being used for a variety of innovative applications, but we remain agnostic on how our technology is being used,'' company spokeswoman Sue Rosenstock said.
Small enough to rest on a desktop, the drones have eight propellers and battery capacity allowing them to fly about 20 minutes at a time, Lares said. He said Tijuana police can fly them at altitudes over 1,300 feet â?? well above the 400-foot limit the Federal Aviation Administration has imposed for most U.S. domestic drones.
They can be piloted remotely by officers on the ground and can be programmed to fly in an automated route, he said. They beam live video images to the police command and control center in the Zona Rio section of the city, where staff monitor a giant bank of video screens with images from approximately 600 stationary surveillance cameras located around the city. Police store and keep the drones' digital imagery for possible review as well, he said.
They are used to patrol targeted high-crime areas, such as neighborhoods where burglaries and car thefts are common, and in areas where tourists frequent, such as Avenida Revolucion, the main tourism boulevard in Zona Centro, or downtown Tijuana, he said. Tijuana wants to use drones as a force multiplier for its officers.
"Right now, our No. 1 concern is house burglaries,'' Lares said. "Definitely we're going to use the drones to help us out. Eyes in sky â?? it's like having 20 officers on patrol or more.''
The small drones are relatively inexpensive, meaning cost is not an obstacle even for a force where staffing and salaries are smaller than in the USA. Lares said his force pays about $12,000 for the hardware, spare parts, enhanced batteries and a year's worth of maintenance and repair by the vendor. He has at least four officers assigned to operate the drones.
Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst and privacy expert with the American Civil Liberties Union, said U.S. police need written authorization from the FAA to fly a drone and must follow strict limitations, including flying below 400 feet above ground and operating in daylight only. He said only a few police agencies have pioneered drone use, such as Miami-Dade police, in limited experiments or specific missions.
He said pressure is mounting on both sides of the issue, from privacy advocates who want limits on drone use to police who want them as crime-fighting tools. Since last year, 43 states have considered legislation that would limit drone use, and nine states have enacted laws, Stanley said.
"We're in the very early days of drone deployments, but Congress has ordered the FAA to loosen the rules to make it much easier for police departments and others to fly drones,'' he said.
"There are a lot of privacy issues that can come up,'' he said. "The big concern is that we not find drones being used for pervasive suspicion-less surveillance of everyone all the time.''
Lares said the drones are effective
at helping police keep an eye on crime. He said they could even be used
to watch police officers if they are suspected of corruption or shaking
down citizens.
He said no one has raised objections to his force's use of drones.
"It's going to help me out,'' he said. "Even the bad guys ... they're going to know now there's something in the air that might be watching them.
"It's a big advantage,'' he said. "It may be a small step in community policing, but it's huge for our future.''
Tijuana's use of low-altitude unmanned aircraft for law enforcement surveillance, in darkness as well as daylight, appears to far exceed what state and local police agencies have been permitted to experiment with in the USA.
Unburdened by the sort of aviation restrictions and privacy concerns that have slowed domestic U.S. drone use, Tijuana police recently purchased three specially configured commercial drones and are testing their use in flight, said Alejandro Lares, the city's new chief of police.
He said he hopes to put them into full normal operation within weeks.
"How are we going to use them? Basically, it's preventing crime,'' said Lares, 35, who became secretary of public safety in December, a post that puts him in charge of the municipal police force where he had been an officer for eight years.
"What we're doing is implementing technology into our community law enforcement,'' he said in a recent interview. "We don't have any regulations or laws that don't permit us to use them.''
The Mexican drones are far smaller than the large military Predator drones the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agency has deployed along the border. The Border Patrol is one of the only agencies aside from the military allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly unmanned aircraft. A recent report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the Border Patrol flew 687 surveillance missions on behalf of other agencies, some of them police, from 2010 to 2012.
While the United States develops its drone laws, the experiment on its doorstep offers a glimpse of how domestic police could soon use the technology if permitted.
Tijuana's drones are off-the-shelf commercial units produced by 3D Robotics, a company with offices in Tijuana and the USA. They are equipped with video cameras and night-vision capability. The company confirmed the deal but offered few specifics.
"We sell an open source platform that is being used for a variety of innovative applications, but we remain agnostic on how our technology is being used,'' company spokeswoman Sue Rosenstock said.
Small enough to rest on a desktop, the drones have eight propellers and battery capacity allowing them to fly about 20 minutes at a time, Lares said. He said Tijuana police can fly them at altitudes over 1,300 feet â?? well above the 400-foot limit the Federal Aviation Administration has imposed for most U.S. domestic drones.
They can be piloted remotely by officers on the ground and can be programmed to fly in an automated route, he said. They beam live video images to the police command and control center in the Zona Rio section of the city, where staff monitor a giant bank of video screens with images from approximately 600 stationary surveillance cameras located around the city. Police store and keep the drones' digital imagery for possible review as well, he said.
They are used to patrol targeted high-crime areas, such as neighborhoods where burglaries and car thefts are common, and in areas where tourists frequent, such as Avenida Revolucion, the main tourism boulevard in Zona Centro, or downtown Tijuana, he said. Tijuana wants to use drones as a force multiplier for its officers.
"Right now, our No. 1 concern is house burglaries,'' Lares said. "Definitely we're going to use the drones to help us out. Eyes in sky â?? it's like having 20 officers on patrol or more.''
The small drones are relatively inexpensive, meaning cost is not an obstacle even for a force where staffing and salaries are smaller than in the USA. Lares said his force pays about $12,000 for the hardware, spare parts, enhanced batteries and a year's worth of maintenance and repair by the vendor. He has at least four officers assigned to operate the drones.
Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst and privacy expert with the American Civil Liberties Union, said U.S. police need written authorization from the FAA to fly a drone and must follow strict limitations, including flying below 400 feet above ground and operating in daylight only. He said only a few police agencies have pioneered drone use, such as Miami-Dade police, in limited experiments or specific missions.
He said pressure is mounting on both sides of the issue, from privacy advocates who want limits on drone use to police who want them as crime-fighting tools. Since last year, 43 states have considered legislation that would limit drone use, and nine states have enacted laws, Stanley said.
"We're in the very early days of drone deployments, but Congress has ordered the FAA to loosen the rules to make it much easier for police departments and others to fly drones,'' he said.
"There are a lot of privacy issues that can come up,'' he said. "The big concern is that we not find drones being used for pervasive suspicion-less surveillance of everyone all the time.''
Lares said the drones are effective
at helping police keep an eye on crime. He said they could even be used
to watch police officers if they are suspected of corruption or shaking
down citizens.He said no one has raised objections to his force's use of drones.
"It's going to help me out,'' he said. "Even the bad guys ... they're going to know now there's something in the air that might be watching them.
"It's a big advantage,'' he said. "It may be a small step in community policing, but it's huge for our future.''
Friday, January 24, 2014
CBP Agent Kills Mexican Migrant
Mexico's government says it's "profoundly worried" by the killing of a
Mexican migrant who was shot last week by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in
Arizona.
The Foreign Relations Department said in a statement Thursday that it has asked for a thorough investigation into the slaying of Gabriel Sanchez Velazquez.
It said Sanchez Velazquez was shot on Jan. 16 near the border city of Douglas, Arizona.
The Mexican government said "it strongly reaffirms that the disproportionate use of lethal force in immigration control tasks is unacceptable."
It added that 20 migrants have been shot to death by U.S. Border Patrol agents since 2010 and it urged the U.S. government to adopt the recommendations of a government-commissioned review to end the use of deadly force.
The Foreign Relations Department said in a statement Thursday that it has asked for a thorough investigation into the slaying of Gabriel Sanchez Velazquez.
It said Sanchez Velazquez was shot on Jan. 16 near the border city of Douglas, Arizona.
The Mexican government said "it strongly reaffirms that the disproportionate use of lethal force in immigration control tasks is unacceptable."
It added that 20 migrants have been shot to death by U.S. Border Patrol agents since 2010 and it urged the U.S. government to adopt the recommendations of a government-commissioned review to end the use of deadly force.
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