2008 - THE YEAR IN NUMBERS

UNCLAS CIUDAD JUAREZ 000022

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ASEC PGOV CASC SNAR MX
SUBJECT: 2008 - THE YEAR IN NUMBERS


1. (SBU) Summary: The incidence of violent crime in Ciudad
Juarez this past year was high by any standard. There were
1,633 murders in and around Juarez, a figure that represented
more than one quarter of all homicides registered in Mexico
during 2008, and five times the number recorded in the city in

2007. Police officers died at a rate that would be unacceptable
most anywhere else; at least 71 peace officers were killed
during the year. Simple car theft and carjacking, bank robbery,
kidnapping and extortion numbers all hit levels that made
comparison to earlier years all but meaningless. To the extent
the Juarez city government attempted to use its own resources to
stem the tide of violence, its efforts were futile. The
Chihuahua state government's police and criminal justice
structure also had little impact on the incidence of
criminality, and despite the federal government's promise of
action as represented by `Joint Operation Chihuahua', the army
and federal police rarely engaged directly with the cartels and
street gangs. Many people who exercise political and economic
power in the city, including Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, have moved
to El Paso. Amidst the breakdown in law and order, most Juarez
residents continue to go about their normal business of work,
school and homemaking as in the past, albeit while increasingly
limiting their outdoor activities to daylight hours. Others,
however, may be taking the law into their own hands. End
Summary.

A STATISTICAL RECAP


2. (U) The following is a summary of the most notorious forms
of criminality experienced by residents of Ciudad Juarez and its
outlying towns in 2008.

Homicide
2008 - 1,633
2007 (for comparison) - 316

Bank robbery
2008 - 86
2007 - 6

Car theft
2008 - 16,929
2007 - 9,163 (For 2006, the figure was 5,804)

Carjacking (a subset of the car theft figure provided above)
2008 - 1,650
2007 - 327

Extortion
2008 - 563 (Note: see below)

Kidnapping
2008 - 41 (Note: see below)

Major arson
2008 - 22 (Note: see below)

Note: recorded incidents in these last three categories of
crime were negligible in past years.

THE KINDS OF THINGS THAT MAKE LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS WORRY


3. (U) Residents of Ciudad Juarez, while deeply discouraged by
circumstances in their city, recognize that most murder victims
are either directly involved in the drug trade, or were with
someone directly involved in the drug trade when that person was
attacked. Indeed, one published figure suggests that more than
1,400 of the murders in and around Juarez this past year
involved the specific targeting of people involved in narcotics
trafficking. Juarez residents have sought to limit their
potential exposure to this violence by "self-curfewing,"
limiting their outdoor activities at night and their patronage
of restaurants, bars and nightclubs, but otherwise they continue
to go about their normal daily activities.


4. (SBU) Perhaps more than a fear of being in the wrong place
at the wrong time when cartel hit squads go after a target,
Juarez residents are troubled by the increase in the levels of
kidnapping and carjacking. Prior to mid-2008, kidnapping was
rare in Ciudad Juarez. Around mid-year, reports of kidnappings
of junkyard owners began to hit the news. While there was
commotion in the press over this phenomenon, there was also a
perception that cash-strapped, cartel-affiliated gangs were
going after soft target individuals who were operating on the
fringes of legality anyway. (Note: many of the junkyards are
"chop shops" for cars stolen by the gangs themselves.) Ransoms
also tended to be relatively low; families could often retrieve
a loved one for 30,000 dollars or less. Over the past few
months, however, as the twin crimes of extortion and kidnapping
became more widespread, the level of concern has increased. The
kidnapping on January 13 of a Lear Corporation manager, as he
left a Juarez maquila plant at 7:00 a.m., and the subsequent

reported demand for 1.5 million dollars in ransom, appears to
have taken this crime to a new level. (Note: the Lear manager
was reported rescued by Mexican army troops on January 19.)


5. (U) The other crime that most concerns law-abiding Juarez
residents is carjacking. Figures for non-violent and violent
(that is, carjacking) car theft over the past twelve months
paint a troubling picture.

January
Non-violent car theft - 921
Violent car theft - 57
Total - 978

February (figures provided as described for January)
1,022 / 41 / 1,063

March
1,111 / 72 / 1,183

April
1,246 / 54 / 1,300

May
1,416 / 94 / 1,510

June
1,339 / 104 / 1,443

July
1,582 / 126 / 1,708

August
1,645 / 154 / 1,799

September
1,418 / 188 / 1,606

October
1,234 / 218 / 1,452

November
1,111 / 249 / 1,360

December
1,234 / 293 / 1,527


6. (U) What these published figures suggest is that while the
total number of cars stolen in Juarez appears to have reached a
plateau of 1,500 to 1,800 per month, the chances that a car
thief will physically threaten the car's owner and demand the
keys is now much higher than in the past. What is worse is that
while being the victim of a carjacking would be traumatic at the
best of times, Juarez residents' awareness that hundreds of hit
men are abroad in the city means that when a group of gunmen
surrounds a target in traffic, the target cannot know whether
the team simply wants the car, or whether the team has come to
kill the target.

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENT, BUSINESSES AND INDIVIDUALS DOING ABOUT IT?


7. (SBU) As previously reported by the Consulate, at the close
of the first 100-plus murder month on record in Ciudad Juarez,
in late March 2008 the three levels of Mexican government
announced the start of `Joint Operation Chihuahua'. To great
fanfare, 2500 Mexican army soldiers and federal police officers
flew into Juarez with the promise of ending the bloodshed. The
homicide numbers dropped somewhat in April, while the cartels
fighting for the Juarez "plaza" took measure of the army's
tactics, and then the violence resumed and accelerated
throughout the rest of the year. The view is widely held that
the army is comfortable letting the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels
diminish each other's strength as they fight for control of the
"plaza" (with a corollary theory being that the army would like
to see the Sinaloa cartel win).


8. (SBU) At the city government level, 400 police officers were
fired after they failed background checks conducted by federal
authorities. (Note: earlier in 2008, Mayor Reyes Ferriz told
consulate officers that 100 percent of the municipal police
force was corrupt to a greater or lesser extent. When the 400
were fired, there was some skepticism in the city that these
were the worst of the lot.) The city police force of 1600
officers was further reduced by deaths and resignations. Mayor
Reyes Ferriz says that he plans to rebuild the police force to a
strength of 2200 officers by summer 2009.


9. (SBU) The mayor also wants to contract with a private
security company to establish a 2000 member police auxiliary to
guard banks, maquilas and other businesses. During the summer
of 2008, convenience stores and other small private businesses
hired off-duty police officers to guard their premises. The

police/security guards foiled several store robberies, including
through the use of lethal force, and thereafter the level of
this kind of crime dropped significantly. The mayor hopes to
replicate this result, at a lower cost in salaries and benefits
than represented by the use of plain-clothes regular police
officers.


10. (SBU) Finally, on January 8 the city announced that its 392
transit police officers were once again authorized to carry
weapons on duty. The transit police had been disarmed in April
2008 by federal authorities, reportedly due to the agency's
failure to properly account for the officers' side arms.
(Comment: that it took nine months to resolve this issue on
behalf of the transit officers is indicative of the lack of
urgency with which city and federal officials have approached
police officer safety.)


11. (SBU) Other businesses have taken a short-term approach to
dealing with specific, short-term problems. For example, when
extortionists targeted teachers in November and December in
anticipation of the payment of the teachers' year-end bonuses
(aguinaldos),many schools simply closed early for the year.
One school that did so was the Colegio Iberamericano, which is
attended by eight consulate children (six children of officers,
two children of Locally Engaged Staff).


12. (SBU) Long before the January 13, 2009 kidnapping of the
Lear Corporation manager, maquilas and their parent companies
had taken steps to limit their vulnerability. Thanks in large
part to a reduction in travel by trainers and corporate
executives, Juarez occupancy rates have dropped more than ten
percent, to less than 40 percent on average.

VIGILANTISM


13. (SBU) In addition to the steps highlighted above, there
have been indications that local businesses are taking a
different approach to self-protection, that of vigilantism. In
October, the press carried stories of business people forming
paramilitary groups to protect themselves from extortionists and
kidnappers. On November 28, seven men were shot dead outside a
school a few blocks from the Consulate, and placards were hung
over their bodies (a fact not reported to the public) claiming
that the executions were carried out by the `Yonkeros Unidos
(United Junkyard Owners of Juarez)'. In another notorious
incident, a burned body was left outside a Juarez police station
with its amputated hands each holding a gas fire starter, and
with a sign saying that this would be the penalty paid by
arsonists. During the week of January 11 an email circulated
through Juarez, claiming that a new locally funded group called
the `Comando Ciudadano por Juarez (Juarez Citizen Command, or
CCJ)' was going to "clean (the) city of these criminals" and
"end the life of a criminal every 24 hours."


14. (SBU) City and state government officials have argued that
there exists no evidence of a vigilante movement in Ciudad
Juarez, and that the messages by the CCJ are a hoax. A
Consulate contact in the press, however, suggests that the CCJ
is a real self-defense group comprised of eight former `Zetas'
hired by four Juarez business owners (including 1998 PRI mayoral
candidate Eleno Villalba). According to the contact, the former
`Zetas' paid a visit on local military commanders when they
arrived in Juarez in September 2008, and purchased previously
seized weapons from the army garrison. According to the
contact, the former `Zetas' pledged not to target the army, and
made themselves available to the army for extrajudicial
operations.

COMMENT


15. (SBU) In theory, the Mexican federal police should be
taking the lead here in going after the cartels, and so create a
security environment in which the city could work to prevent
other forms of criminality, and in which the state government
could investigate and prosecute those crimes committed outside
the organized crime structure. The mayor's police hiring plans
notwithstanding, to date not much has been accomplished along
these lines. While Consulate officers have not yet been able to
determine whether the `Yonkeros Unidos' or the CCJ exist as new
and independent organizations, it is the absence of effective
law enforcement that creates an environment in which vigilantism
could take root, along the lines seen in Colombia with the
`Pepes' in the early 1990s. In theory, a vigilante group
comprised of or in league with Mexican army elements could
resolve an ongoing frustration of the garrison, which is that
while they can seize weapons and drugs, their lack of police
authority and training has generally resulted in alleged
criminals going free under orders from a court of law.


16. (SBU) With regard to violence between the cartels
themselves, there was evidence of a temporary truce between the
Juarez and Sinaloa Cartels that lasted from mid-December 2008 to

mid-January 2009. That truce has now been broken. In the
meantime, apart from bank robberies (which appear to be largely
the work of small time criminals who settle for what they can
get out of a counter cash drawer),the other types of crime are
also often the work of the cartels and their affiliated street
gangs. That the cartels are branching out into racketeering,
kidnapping, arson and car theft appears not only to reflect
their desire to intimidate their enemies, but also the need to
meet payroll and other continuing expenses in the face of a more
difficult smuggling environment. In this light, it is difficult
to predict how long the extraordinary levels of violence and
general criminality will continue, but no one is betting that
crime will soon return to 2007 levels.
MCGRATH