Current Event 10/20/2010

[Mr. Primeaux's Discussion Board]

Student, 20, named police chief of violent Mexican border town
Guadalupe
Note: This article is from the Australian newspaper The Herald Sun.

(from HeraldSun.com.au) AFP - A 20-Year-old female criminology
student
has been named police chief of a northern Mexican border town plagued
by drug violence because no one else wanted the job.


Marisol Valles became director of municipal public security of
Guadalupe "since she was the only person to accept the position", the
mayor's office of the town of some 10,000 people near the US border
told local media yesterday.


Ms Valles is studying criminology in Mexico's most violent city of
Ciudad Juarez, some [37 miles] west of Guadalupe.


Raging turf battles between rival drug gangs have left some 6500
people dead in Ciudad Juarez alone in the past three years.


Much of Chihuahua state has suffered from the spiral of drug
violence,
including in Guadalupe, where the mayor was murdered in June and
police officers and security agents have been killed, some of them
beheaded.


Last week alone there were at least eight murders in Guadalupe, in an
area deemed a high-traffic transit point for illegal drugs across the
border into the US state of Texas.


More than 28,000 people have died nationwide in suspected drug
violence since December 2006, when the Mexican government launched an
offensive against its criminal gangs with the deployment of some
50,000 troops.


The Guadalupe mayor's office has only one police patrol car and
receives security assistance from the army.


Questions to Think about


1. What do you think of Ms. Valles' decision to take the job of
police
chief in the violent town of Guadalupe? Be specific.


2. What do you think of the town's decision to hire Ms. Valles?


3. More than 28,000 people have died due to suspected drug violence
in the past 3 1/2 years in Mexico. How do you think the Mexican
government should be handling this huge problem in Mexico?