Source: by Judith Miller FOXNews
October 27, 2009
Corruption indictments and convictions of law enforcement linked to drug-trafficking organizations, known in police parlance as DTOs, are popping up in FBI press releases with disturbing frequency. Some experts disagree about how deep this rot runs. Some try to downplay the phenomenon, dismissing the law enforcement officials who have succumbed to bribes or intimidation from the drug cartels as a few bad apples.
Washington is taking no chances. In recent months, the FBI’s Criminal Division has created seven multiagency task forces and assigned 120 agents to investigate public corruption, drug-related and otherwise, in the Southwest border region.
While the FBI task forces focus mainly on corruption along the border, cartel-related activity has spread much deeper into the American heartland. Consider New Mexico’s San Juan County, some 450 miles north of the border, where the U.S. Attorney’s office has recently prosecuted a startling corruption case that may be a portent of things to come.
October 27, 2009
Chilling are the signs that one of the worst features of Mexico’s war on drugs is the reality of Mexican police on the take from drug lords but this is also becoming an American problem as well.
Corruption indictments and convictions of law enforcement linked to drug-trafficking organizations, known in police parlance as DTOs, are popping up in FBI press releases with disturbing frequency. Some experts disagree about how deep this rot runs. Some try to downplay the phenomenon, dismissing the law enforcement officials who have succumbed to bribes or intimidation from the drug cartels as a few bad apples.
Washington is taking no chances. In recent months, the FBI’s Criminal Division has created seven multiagency task forces and assigned 120 agents to investigate public corruption, drug-related and otherwise, in the Southwest border region.
While the FBI task forces focus mainly on corruption along the border, cartel-related activity has spread much deeper into the American heartland. Consider New Mexico’s San Juan County, some 450 miles north of the border, where the U.S. Attorney’s office has recently prosecuted a startling corruption case that may be a portent of things to come.
