Police swarm Mexico City barrio in anti-drug push
Source: Reuters
By Greg Brosnan MEXICO CITY, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Heavily armed Mexican police, backed by helicopters, locked down the capital's most notorious neighborhood on Tuesday as part of the latest offensive against rampant drug trafficking. Hundreds of officers with assault rifles lined the Tepito neighborhood's main artery, searching passing motorists. Police had stormed the district, a warren of scruffy homes and market stalls, last week and seized a tenement complex known as "The Fortress" -- reputedly a major cocaine and marijuana distribution center. President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to fight drug gangs in their strongholds along the Pacific coast and near the U.S. border since he took office in December. The Mexico City operation was run by a political rival, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who vowed to fight drug selling in the often chaotic metropolis. "We're going to do it everywhere. We have to start in the most difficult place," Ebrard told reporters. "We don't want them bringing drugs in and poisoning young people." "The Fortress" and another housing complex expropriated by the city were like drug malls where dealers operated freely, he said. City hall plans to turn the complexes into a creche, drug rehabilitation center and school. As police blocked the entrance to "The Fortress" on Tuesday, angry neighbors barraged officers with threats. Sitting on bicycles as they talked on cellphones, youths in sunglasses glared at the police and smoked marijuana openly within steps of officers searching passing motorcyclists. DEADLY TRADE More than 2,000 people died throughout Mexico last year in a fight between two rival gangs for control of the domestic drug market and trafficking routes to the United States. Washington has expressed strong support for the crackdown on cartels that ship heroin, South American cocaine and methamphetamine across the U.S.-Mexican border. But the United States has stayed largely on the sidelines of Mexico's drug war, unlike in Colombia where it gives hefty financial support to military campaigns against cartels and rebels who smuggle narcotics. While drug sales in Tepito are small compared with amounts moved by the main cartels, the neighborhood is also a hub for pirated DVDs and CDs, as well as illegal weapons. "Here, drugs and firearms are moved on motorbikes, and murders are committed from the backs of motorbikes," said a senior police officer, Julio Cesar Sanchez, after his men took away a suspect found with a small amount of marijuana wrapped in newspaper. Sanchez said most residents of Tepito, also renowned for producing some of Mexico's best boxers, were hard-working sellers of legal goods and that most of the drug-running was the work of outsiders. Taco vendor Maria Hernandez, standing beside a vat of sizzling meat and offal, said she was glad the police had come down hard on the traffickers but that days with officers in the streets had also hurt sales by honest merchants. "It's good that they're catching the dealers," she said. "But this affects us all."
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