OUTGOING MAYORS SPEAK ON THREATS FROM ORGANIZED CRIME;

232351 2009-10-30 18:29:00 09MONTERREY411 Consulate Monterrey CONFIDENTIAL VZCZCXRO5071 PP RUEHCD RUEHGD RUEHHO RUEHNG RUEHNL RUEHRD RUEHRS RUEHTM DE RUEHMC #0411/01 3031829 ZNY CCCCC ZZH P 301829Z OCT 09 FM AMCONSUL MONTERREY TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4062 INFO RUEHME/AMEMBASSY MEXICO PRIORITY 5142 RUEHXC/ALL US CONSULATES IN MEXICO COLLECTIVE RHMFISS/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC RUEFHLC/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WASHINGTON DC RHMFISS/FBI WASHINGTON DC RUEABND/DEA HQ WASHDC RHMFISS/HQ USNORTHCOM RUEHMC/AMCONSUL MONTERREY 9680 C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MONTERREY 000411 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/30/2019 TAGS: KCRM KCOR ASEC SNAR PHUM PGOV MX SUBJECT: OUTGOING MAYORS SPEAK ON THREATS FROM ORGANIZED CRIME; LOCAL CONSULTANT CALLS FOR TARGETED ACTION AGAINST COMMON CRIME MONTERREY 00000411 001.2 OF 003 CLASSIFIED BY: Bruce Williamson, Consul General. REASON: 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (C) Summary: During separate conversations with Consul General, two outgoing Mayors briefed us on threats they had received from narcotraffickers during their tenure. The worst instance involved armed sicarios who stormed into one mayor's city hall office and demanded that he stop resisting their dictates. Meanwhile, a Monterrey-based security consultant told PolOffs on October 23 that he was frustrated by the state of Nuevo Leon's delay in adopting a security proposal that had garnered positive results in Sonora. His approach involves public release of common crime statistics and significant community involvement. He criticized efforts by new State Secretary of Public Security (SSP) Carlos Jauregui Hintze to weed out police corruption before tackling escalating crime rates and called for state authorities to expand the release of crime statistics. End Summary. Outgoing Mayors Depart the Pressure-cooker -------------- ¶2. (C) During the past few weeks, Consul General spoke with the mayors of four Monterrey region municipalities, all of whom expressed relief that their terms were ending October 31 given the pressure they were under from organized crime. Rafael Paz, the Mayor of Santiago, a suburban city south of Monterrey, painted the clearest picture of the situation he had faced. He stated that during his three year term he: --- Had been threatened by narco-traffickers in the presence of the written and broadcast press; --- Had been confronted by an armed group of narco-gunmen which burst into his city hall office demanding that he stop resisting their demands. (Per the Mayor, he was told "they're 200 of us and only 9 on you security detail; who do you think is going to win?" --- Had the military raid a kidnapper's safe house several doors away from his home; and --- Had received telephone threats from the Zetas threatening to kill him and take his decapitated head to his wheelchair bound spouse. ¶3. (C) Paz recognized that his police force had been thoroughly penetrated by the narco-traffickers, pointing out that his municipal Secretary for Public Security had been detained by military and state authorities and had subsequently confessed. However, he felt that the narco-traffickers focus upon him was because the municipality had begun to sell land tracts and an unexpected rush of potential buyers, with pockets full of cash, wanted to buy the plots. Paz had refused some offers (in one case, an interested buyer sought to pay 25 percent in cash for a 95 million peso property) due to his suspicions of money laundering. ¶4. (C) Outgoing San Pedro Mayor Fernando Margain Berlanga has also faced difficulties, although not as severe as Paz. Margain's challenge has been how to deal with several notorious night clubs which have become centers for drug-dealing. While the city has mandated closing times, in practice the clubs don't close on time because the gangsters frequenting these establishments don't let that happen. City efforts to shut down the clubs have faltered as club owners have gotten federal injunctions allowing them to continue doing business. For his trouble, Margain has received implicit and explicit telephone threats. Security Program Lacks Traction -------------- ¶5. (C) In an October 23 meeting, security consultant Santiago Roel told PolOffs that the State of Nuevo Leon had yet to implement fully a crime prevention program similar to one in Sonora that had significantly reduced many common crimes there. Roel, a private consultant who designed the Sonora program, uses traffic lights, "semaforos," to indicate if a particular crime statistic has reached a target reduction percentage. (Note: Green signals that crime rates are at or below a predetermined goal, red that crime rates have risen above historical averages, and yellow that the statistics are in-between.) Roel's program also involves citizen and government participation in weekly meetings to discuss publicly released crime statistics, broken down by individual police districts. Citizen groups hold police officials accountable for failing to reduce criminal activities in their districts. ¶6. (C) Based on his observations, organized crime has more heavily infiltrated the Nuevo Leon state police than Sonora's state police. Even so, he believes the Nuevo Leon police situation is salvageable. In the Monterrey metro area, Roel has MONTERREY 00000411 002.2 OF 003 targeted the suburbs of San Pedro, San Nicolas and Guadalupe as initial candidates for his program. He said he refused to work with the suburb of Apodaca after the city's police chief confided to him that he has no control over his police force. Semaforos Incorporated -------------- ¶7. (C) Roel explained that public pressure had forced the previous Nuevo Leon state administration to accept the semaforo indicators, but the state had not incorporated any of the other elements of his program, which he judged key to success. Former Nuevo Leon Governor Jose Natividad Gonzales Paras had opposed his program, he stated. While new governor Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz has been supportive of his initiative, the state has yet to implement his full program. Real reform, he noted, requires the support of the Citizen's Councils for Public Safety. State Approach Needs Reform -------------- ¶8. (C) Roel said he believed the state's new Secretary of Public Security (SSP),Carlos Jauregui Hintze, had good intentions, but was hampered by a corrupt police organization and opined that Jauregui has taken the wrong approach by initially attempting to weed out corruption instead of reduce crime. He pointed out that the state police also have jurisdiction in part of Monterrey, which dilutes the organization's focus and efficacy. The State police, he recommended, should return control of the city to the municipal police and focus 80 percent of their activities on prevention instead of reaction, as he said was currently the case. ¶9. (C) Criticizing the state's emphasis on a "top-down" control system, he explained that crime reduction requires an inverse approach - active participation by citizens and district police units to help calibrate law enforcement activities at a local level. Unlike Sonora, Nuevo Leon has not broken down crime statistics to the degree where authorities can use them to identify crime rates at the community level. Doing so would help assign responsibility for underperforming geographical areas and political subdivisions. Roel opined that Jauregui was trying to emulate federal Secretary of Public Security Jorge Tello's method of exerting central control over police, instead of tailoring police actions to the needs of neighborhoods. The Way Forward -------------- ¶10. (C) Any program to address corruption must have support at the top and offer a mechanism for accountability, Roel said. His approach would identify specific geographical areas and, by association, those who were responsible for either good or bad outcomes. Roel noted that, based on his Sonora experience, it becomes readily apparent where the problems are after analyzing the statistics at the neighborhood level. In Sonora, he said, the state focused on those 20 percent of the geographic areas where 80 percent of all crimes occurred. ¶11. (C) He pointed out that some crimes, such as car theft, are good indicators of corruption in a political subdivision, because this type of crime requires a sophisticated distribution network. Collusion by public authorities is usually necessary for this type of crime to flourish. Roel's strategy involves establishing accountability, publishing and widely disseminating crime statistics, publically announcing crime reduction goals and involving civil society groups along with local and federal police authorities in the process. He would expand this to all 11 political subdivisions in the Monterrey area. Roel emphasized that authorities can quickly reduce crimes such as domestic violence, rape and sexual assault by focusing on problematic communities and releasing targeted statistics. Often, the statistics alone are enough to generate positive community action. Comment -------------- ¶12. (C) While Roel is clearly trying to sell his consultancy services, he does have an impressive track record in Sonora. He notes that, while using his program, that state reduced rape by 26 percent, domestic violence 34 percent, robbery 30 percent, house breaking 22 percent and assault 17 percent. While he is eager to tout his success in Sonora, Roel is clearly nervous about associating his efforts with operations against organized crime, quickly declaring to PolOffs that his operations did not MONTERREY 00000411 003.2 OF 003 target cartel activity. Roel was highly critical of San Pedro municipal authorities, who he claimed, refused to heed his advice. Indeed, Roel is a vocal member of the local San Pedro Citizen's Security Council and that body has engaged in a long-running debate as to whether to emphasize Roel's strategy or state Public Security Secretary Jauregui's current approach of trying to weed out corruption before addressing local crime rates. Fellow Council member Mauricio Ramos Pons, a former security chief for the Monterrey-based multinational ALFA corporation, has argued just as persuasively that ensuring that local police forces are reliable, honest, and well-motivated and well-trained is the most important goal to be pursued. Clearly both need to be done, but the difficult question that must be answered is which should have a higher priority. ¶13. (SBU) Roel, 52, is a forthright and self-assured interlocutor. He began as a government consultant in the early 1990s, but did not address security issues until the latter part of the decade. In addition to his consulting business, he is a residential real estate developer, rents vacation properties, and runs a call-center software company. Roel has a law degree from the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, an MBA from Monterrey TEC and has done post-graduate studies at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School. WILLIAMSONB