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 Americas & Beyond | May 2008 
Mexican Official Says Organized Crime Targeted
 Kelley Shannon - Associated Press
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 |  | These are much-needed tools to combat organized crime, and this is what we are debating in Mexico. The goal is to go after the financing of this organized crime.
- Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos |  | | | |
Austin — Mexico is attempting to combat organized crime through judicial system reforms while working with the U.S. to try to curb a security crisis on the border, a Mexican deputy attorney general said Wednesday.
Mexico's leaders are looking to establish public, oral trials and new roles for judges along with protection of crime victims, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, deputy federal attorney general for international affairs, told a border security conference in Austin.
"These are much-needed tools to combat organized crime, and this is what we are debating in Mexico," he said in Spanish, using an English interpreter. "The goal is to go after the financing of this organized crime."
He told of one suspected criminal who spent $190 million in Las Vegas, including $14 million in one night.
"This is the enemy that Mexico is confronting with all of its resources," Vasconcelos said. The country is spending $3.9 billion a year to fight organized crime, he said.
Money and weapons flowing from the United States fuel drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico, to the tune of some $10 billion per year, he said.
Gun battles involving rival drug cartels have become all too familiar in some Mexican border cities, spreading from major population centers even to smaller Mexican border communities. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers and federal police to confront the cartels, and drug lords have responded with more violence.
Vasconcelos told of efforts to cooperate with the United States to halt border crime. In response to an audience question, he said more security technology needs to be employed by Mexico.
"In reality, we don't have enough technology on the Mexican side of the border," he said, adding that the Mexican army is more focused on the number of soldiers present rather than technology.
Before his speech, Vasconcelos toured an exhibit hall filled with high-tech cameras and other electronic surveillance equipment from the private sector.
The Global Border Security Conference and Expo was sponsored by the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College along with private corporations, in part to give businesses a forum for sales of technology and equipment to the government for homeland security. Exhibits featured air and ground surveillance, unmanned aircraft and advanced biometrics.
In explaining to companies ahead of time why they should participate, corporate organizers said on their Web site: "The U.S. Senate has passed a $4 billion increase in Homeland Security spending focused on gaining control over the U.S. border with Mexico. Are you securing YOUR share of this market?"
Texas had been shopping for a border video camera surveillance system giving the public Internet access to the images to help spot illegal immigration and drug trafficking. But state officials withdrew the contract request this month, offering few details about that decision. They said the project would be rebid.
"The responses that we got back did too little and cost too much," said Allison Castle, spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry, who advocated the state camera system. "The governor is fully committed to the program, and technology remains a pivotal part of the governor's border security efforts."
Tom Cellucci, chief commercialization officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told conference attendees of the agency's work to develop and get security products from the private sector to the millions of first responders around the country.
The private sector has more brain power, experience and knowledge than government, he said. "Let's leverage it." |
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