Jose Filiberto Parra Ramos is allied with Teodoro Garcia Simental, who is believed to be waging a bloody battle against reputed Arellano Felix cartel

Jose Filiberto Parra Ramos appears in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration poster of 10 men it believes have been locked in a violent power struggle since a split in the Arellano Felix cartel last year.Soldiers captured Parra and three other drug suspects Wednesday in Tijuana using unspecified intelligence, the Defense Department and the Attorney General's Office said in a statement.The department said Parra is allied with Teodoro Garcia Simental, who is believed to be waging a bloody battle against reputed Arellano Felix cartel leader Fernando Sanchez Arellano, reputed heir to the Arellano Felix cartel.Masked soldiers led a handcuffed and scowling Parra off an airplane that landed in Mexico City from Tijuana, and paraded him in front of reporters at the airport.Parra led a group of armed men an April 2008 battle between the sides that left 13 people dead, the statement said. He also allegedly killed two federal police agents whose bodies were found at a ranch in the Baja California state town of Tecate that same month.According to Mexican authorities, Garcia left after the April 2008 battle to join forces with the powerful Sinaloa cartel and returned to Tijuana with a vengeance in September, sparking more than three months of intense bloodshed.The Defense Department says battles between the two gangs last year left 749 people dead.The army almost caught Parra twice at parties early this year, Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica, the top army commander in Tijuana, told The Associated Press in February.At a three-day bash in January, Parra and Garcia, known as "El Teo," barely escaped onto a beach. Instead, soldiers found Santiago Meza Lopez, nicknamed the "Pozole Maker," after a Mexican stew, because he is accused of disposing hundreds of bodies by disolving them in a corrosive material.Parra and another suspected trafficker, Reydel Lopez Uriarte, were close with Garcia but stayed on good terms with Sanchez Arellano after Garcia fled Tijuana last year, Duarte Mugica said. When Garcia returned to Tijuana in September, they joined him.Mexico has captured several high-profile cartel suspects since President Felipe Calderon launched a national crackdown on cartels in 2006 by sending troops to Michoacan, his home state. But drug violence has surged, claiming more than 10,800 lives since.On Thursday, gunmen opened fire and tossed a grenade at a crowded taco stand in the central Mexican city of Uruapan, killing a police officer and a 15-year-old boy, a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office said n condition of anonymity because his office does not allow him to give his name.The policeman was shot while eating with a fellow officer, the spokesman said. Before fleeing, the assailants shot two tanks of cooking gas that exploded, burning the teenage taco stand worker to death. Four other people were injured.Investigators said the attack apparently targeted the two officers.

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Shooting deaths of five young people whose bodies were found Tuesday off a dirt road in a rural section of Tijuana

The shooting deaths of five young people whose bodies were found Tuesday off a dirt road in a rural section of Tijuana are being linked to their suspected gang involvement, authorities said.
“It makes us very sad, because of their youth, but the initial information that we've received indicates they weren't exactly white doves,” said Alberto Capella Ibarra, Tijuana's secretary of public safety. A passer-by spotted their bodies about 8 a.m. near Bulevar 2000, a new thoroughfare linking eastern Tijuana with the coast, authorities said. The youngest victim was a girl, between 16 and 18, according to the Baja California Attorney General's Office. Three of the four male victims ranged in age from 18 to 22, while the fourth appeared to be between 25 and 30, according to a statement the office released Tuesday. The Attorney General's Office had not identified the victims by Tuesday evening. They had been dead between three and six hours when they were found, according to the statement. The discovery comes a day after soldiers and federal police took on members of a kidnapping ring in a seven-hour gunbattle in a well-to-do hillside neighborhood in the central La Mesa district. The operation claimed one suspect's life, but resulted in the release of a kidnapping victim, the son of a prominent businessman, who was being held at the residence, Capella said. “In the business sector, there is much satisfaction” over the victim's rescue, Capella said.
Violence has increased in the region in recent months even as federal, state and municipal authorities have pledged a united front against organized crime and the Mexican military has taken on a unprecedented role in fighting criminal groups.
“We're in a new era, there's no doubt,” said Victor Clark, a Tijuana human rights activist who has followed crime trends in the city for years.
The stepped-up effort comes as the grip of the Arellano Felix cartel has weakened, and smaller criminal cells have been operating with less control, Clark said.
The complexity of the battle was evident Tuesday, as Gov. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan called on federal prosecutors to present better cases, lamenting that a judge released a group of suspects who had been detained by the military, citing lack of evidence. Ricardo Gonzalez Saba, national president of the influential business group COPARMEX, urged continued efforts against crime when he spoke in Tijuana Tuesday to business leaders and government officials. The issue of crime “is not ending, it is increasing in strength and virulence,” he said. One way or another, the crime issue has touched all sectors of society, and the image of violence has badly harmed tourist areas such as Avenida Revolucion and Rosarito Beach. State and municipal officials have taken measures to decrease police corruption, and say such reports have dropped drastically. This week's violence in Tijuana occurred far from tourist areas, and the incidents “have nothing to do” with foreign visitors to the city, Capella said. “Why not ask about all the gang-related shootings that take place in San Diego and Los Angeles,” he said, “and how this affects Mexicans who travel as tourists to California.”

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gunbattle between federal troops and members of a suspected kidnapping ring

gunbattle between federal troops and members of a suspected kidnapping ring sent residents of a well-to-do neighborhood diving for cover late Sunday and early yesterday for about seven hours. Soldiers guarded the eastern Tijuana neighborhood of Villa Floresta yesterday after a shootout left one person dead at the second house from the left.
One person died inside a house, where soldiers found an arsenal that included rifles, shotguns, handguns, ammunition, bullet-resistant vests, ski masks and uniforms with the insignia of various Mexican police agencies. They also found a blue jacket labeled “ICE,” the acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The shooting started when the suspects, barricaded inside the house, began shooting at soldiers patrolling the area, army Col. Sergio López said in a statement last night. The confrontation was the second extended shootout this year in a residential neighborhood in Tijuana. Soldiers and federal, state and municipal police engaged in a three-hour gunbattle Jan. 17 with men inside a house in the La Mesa district. Federal officials show off the cache of weapons and ammunition found in a Tijuana house after a long gunbattle.
The region has suffered a spike in violence in recent weeks, as municipal, state and federal officials have joined to fight organized crime, and the Mexican military has been taking an increasingly visible role. The latest shootout shattered the calm of the hillside neighborhood in eastern Tijuana known as Villa Floresta. Residents on the street Calle Jicama said the shooting began about 10 p.m. and ended before daybreak. Hours later, their block was so quiet that birds could be heard chirping as residents recalled huddling inside their houses, behind locked gates, waiting for the bullets to stop flying. “They'd be shooting for an hour, then stop for half an hour,” said a 15-year-old high school student who took refuge in the back of his house with his mother and 16-year-old sister. “I was trying to calm down my mother, who was crying.” The shootout caused the cancellation of classes yesterday at a private school about a block away. The street remained under military guard yesterday, but most residents were reluctant to talk and didn't want to give their names. Two men were taken into custody, according to a statement read last night at a military base near downtown Tijuana. López said he could not verify whether the dead man or the detainees were suspects or victims. federal source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, said the dead man and one detainee were members of a kidnapping ring, and the other man was a kidnap victim being held inside the residence.
The incident was across the street from another house where law enforcement agents rescued a kidnap victim Friday. López would not say whether the incidents were linked.

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Shooting deaths of five young people

The shooting deaths of five young people whose bodies were found Tuesday off a dirt road in a rural section of Tijuana are being linked to their suspected gang involvement, authorities said.
“It makes us very sad, because of their youth, but the initial information that we've received indicates they weren't exactly white doves,” said Alberto Capella Ibarra, Tijuana's secretary of public safety. A passer-by spotted their bodies about 8 a.m. near Bulevar 2000, a new thoroughfare linking eastern Tijuana with the coast, authorities said. The youngest victim was a girl, between 16 and 18, according to the Baja California Attorney General's Office. Three of the four male victims ranged in age from 18 to 22, while the fourth appeared to be between 25 and 30, according to a statement the office released Tuesday. The Attorney General's Office had not identified the victims by Tuesday evening. They had been dead between three and six hours when they were found, according to the statement.

The discovery comes a day after soldiers and federal police took on members of a kidnapping ring in a seven-hour gunbattle in a well-to-do hillside neighborhood in the central La Mesa district. The operation claimed one suspect's life, but resulted in the release of a kidnapping victim, the son of a prominent businessman, who was being held at the residence, Capella said.



Advertisement “In the business sector, there is much satisfaction” over the victim's rescue, Capella said.
Violence has increased in the region in recent months even as federal, state and municipal authorities have pledged a united front against organized crime and the Mexican military has taken on a unprecedented role in fighting criminal groups.

“We're in a new era, there's no doubt,” said Victor Clark, a Tijuana human rights activist who has followed crime trends in the city for years.

The stepped-up effort comes as the grip of the Arellano Felix cartel has weakened, and smaller criminal cells have been operating with less control, Clark said.

The complexity of the battle was evident Tuesday, as Gov. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan called on federal prosecutors to present better cases, lamenting that a judge released a group of suspects who had been detained by the military, citing lack of evidence. Ricardo Gonzalez Saba, national president of the influential business group COPARMEX, urged continued efforts against crime when he spoke in Tijuana Tuesday to business leaders and government officials. The issue of crime “is not ending, it is increasing in strength and virulence,” he said. One way or another, the crime issue has touched all sectors of society, and the image of violence has badly harmed tourist areas such as Avenida Revolucion and Rosarito Beach. State and municipal officials have taken measures to decrease police corruption, and say such reports have dropped drastically. This week's violence in Tijuana occurred far from tourist areas, and the incidents “have nothing to do” with foreign visitors to the city, Capella said. “Why not ask about all the gang-related shootings that take place in San Diego and Los Angeles,” he said, “and how this affects Mexicans who travel as tourists to California.”

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