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MEXICO
BORDER
President wants police reform
Paisanos advised
Municipal cops would be under state control By MARK STEVENSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s most corruption-plagued municipal police forces would be replaced by state police within two years under a bill President Enrique Peña Nieto has submitted to Congress. Municipal police in the states of Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Jalisco and Michoacan would be placed under state control quickly, because “these are the states most urgently in need of attention,” according to the bill submitted late Monday. In September, a drug cartel-infiltrated municipal police force in the Guerrero state city of Iguala detained 43 students and turned them over to the gang, which reportedly killed them. The city’s mayor and many of his police officers have been arrested. In the northern border state of Tamaulipas, many municipal police forces have already been effectively dissolved, because they were unable to face up to warring drug cartels or had been coopted by them. In Michoacan, civilian vigilantes were invited to join a state rural police force that has taken over security duties in many towns in the state’s hot lands region. The rest of Mexico’s 31 states would have presumably more time to implement the reforms. However, analysts and experts warned that state police are not always more trustworthy than city or town cops. According to a report by the Common Cause civic group, more state police (20,521) have failed background or vetting tests than municipal police (18,177) in recent years. Analyst Alejandro Hope said that state police forces “with a few exceptions, are deformed institutions, deeply vulnerable to corruption and intimidation.” In a column in the El Universal newspaper, Hope wrote that most state forces are relatively small, and only five have internal affairs offices to investigate misconduct by their officers. The plan also will be expensive. The state with the most effective record in creating a new statewide police force, the northern border state of Nuevo Leon,
See POLICE PAGE 11A
Program teaches dangers of nationalization fraud By PHILIP BALLI THE ZAPATA TIMES
The Webb County District Attorney’s Office is warning paisanos passing through Laredo into Mexico to be aware of fraudulent scams regarding the nationalization process of importing their vehicles into Mexico. District Attorney Isidro “Chilo” Alaniz, in conjunction with the Consul General of Mexico in Laredo, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and local law enforcement, announced Monday the fifth year of Bienvenido Paisano, a program dedicated to educating paisanos so they will not fall victim to the scams.
Photo by Cuate Santos | The Zapata Times
Webb/Zapata County District Attorney Isidro R. Alaniz, at podium, invited law enforcement, U.S. Customs and Mexican Counsulate officials to participate in a press conference Monday morning at the Webb County Justice Center.
See FRAUD PAGE 11A
SAN YGNACIO
HISTORIC HOME TOUR
Courtesy photo | Angelina Castillo
On Sunday Arturo L. Benavides Elementary School will organize a tour route for historic houses and buildings in San Ygnacio. The event will begin at 1:30 p.m.
School organizes Sunday’s traditional event By MALENA CHARUR THE ZAPATA TIMES
S
unday’s tour of historic homes and buildings in San Ygnacio, the oldest settlement in Zapata County, will allow one a
glimpse into the past. Arturo L. Benavides Elementary School is the organizer for this traditional event. “The tour includes visiting houses from a historical perspective. There are houses that have kept the original ma-
terial they were built with. Almost all are built with stone,” explained school Principal Ana Mariela Martinez. Martinez said the tour runs from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. “Visitors are welcomed. You’ll receive a map and a bro-
chure describing the sights, and it usually lasts from one to two hours,” she said. Martinez said the tour begins at the school because it features facades of houses typ-
See TOUR PAGE 10A
FEDERAL APPEALS COURT
Attorneys: Condemned killer is delusional, should be spared By MICHAEL GRACZYK ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Scott Coomer/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | AP file
In this Nov. 19, 1999 file photo, Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti talks during a prison interview in Huntsville, Texas, where he is on death row for the 1992 murder of his wife’s parents.
HOUSTON — A federal appeals court is considering whether a condemned killer in Texas should be spared from execution today so he can undergo new mental competency examinations to support arguments he’s too delusional to understand why he’s being punished. Scott Panetti, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia some
14 years before killing his estranged wife’s parents, “stands on the razor’s edge of competency” and needs psychological evaluations to illustrate that his severe mental illness has worsened since he last was examined seven years ago, the prisoner’s attorneys argued to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. State attorneys contended Panetti’s condition “has not markedly changed” and he should not be given a reprieve from le-
thal injection. No court has ruled Panetti mentally incompetent or insane. The 56-year-old Hayward, Wisconsin, native was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1978 and had been hospitalized more than a dozen times for treatment in the decade before fatally shooting Joe and Amanda Alvarado at their home in
See KILLER PAGE 11A