Tag Archives: Crime

El Salvador prosecutors order nearly 600 arrests to stem crime spree

El Salvador's Attorney General Douglas Melendez in San Salvador, El Salvador, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – Prosecutors in El Salvador ordered the arrests of some 593 people nationwide on suspicion of crimes like homicide and extortion, an action that appeared to be a major strike against gangs that have turned the Central American country into one of the deadliest in the world.

Attorney General Douglas Melendez said in a statement on Wednesday that all the detention orders were based on investigations. Other charges filed against the suspects included crimes such as terrorism, fraud, rape, kidnapping and drug possession.

So far, 337 suspected gang members had been arrested, police chief Howard Cotto said in a news conference, and efforts are ongoing to arrest the remaining suspects.

State security forces in Central America and Mexico are often accused of arbitrary detentions by human rights groups.

Violence has surged in El Salvador since a 2012 truce between the Barrio 18 gang and its rival Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, began to unravel in 2014.

The majority of those arrested so far were from MS-13 and suspected of committing crimes against the police, Cotto said.

Violent crime in El Salvador and other countries in the region is one of the main reasons why people seek to emigrate, often moving northward through Mexico to the United States.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; editing by Grant McCool and G Crosse)

Mexico City spike in crime, violence sparks fears of cartel warfare

Police vehicles patrol the streets, after suspected gang members were killed on Thursday in a gun battle with Mexican marines in Mexico City, Mexico, July 21, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

By Gabriel Stargardter

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The sight of vehicles set ablaze by cartels has mostly been confined to lawless stretches of Mexico’s provinces, so the appearance of burning buses in Mexico City this week has stoked fears that the drug gangs’ violence is spreading to the capital.

The so-called narco-blockade on Thursday in the tough Mexico City suburb of Tlahuac occurred after Mexican marines gunned down eight suspected gangsters in broad daylight, a highly unusual incident that underlined a recent spike in violent crime.

“The city’s authorities have lost control of the situation,” said Jose, a veteran Mexico City policeman who spoke on the condition his surname be withheld.

“Now the cartels are getting stronger, they can’t control them any more. That’s why they asked the marines to come in.”

All told, 206 murder investigations were opened in Mexico City between May and June, making it the bloodiest two month-period on record in the capital, official data show.

Mexico City and its urban sprawl form the economic heart of the country, accounting for roughly a quarter of gross domestic product, according to the OECD, and the rise in violence is a major embarrassment for the Mexican government.

The crime spree mirrors a rising tide of violence nationally that has exposed major law and order shortcomings by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, less than a year before the next presidential election.

Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, who harbors his own presidential ambitions, has also come under fire for not doing enough to protect the capital, and for saying repeatedly that drug cartels do not operate in the city.

In a news conference on Friday, Mancera said the suspects belonged to a “a big, violent criminal organization whose operations were no longer confined to Tlahuac,” noting they traversed the city in armed convoys.

“From my point of view, they didn’t have the structures and size that we associate with cartels,” he added.

Mexico’s criminal underworld has mutated in recent years, thanks to a prolonged military-led assault that smashed the cartels into hundreds of informal crews with little experience in cross-border trafficking.

As these smaller groups jostle over the kidnapping and extortion rackets, violence has soared. The country’s murder tally this year is on track to post the highest since modern records began in 1997.

Various factors are seen behind the capital’s rise in violence.

Weak economic growth and chronically low wages drive youths in poor neighborhoods into crime. These troubled youths often extort small business owners, eventually shuttering them which makes jobs even harder to come by, according to local policeman Jose.

He also dismissed the idea that criminal gangs were not in the city, saying both La Familia Michoacana and the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel operate in the capital.

Francisco Rivas, director of the National Citizen Observatory, a civil group monitoring justice and security in Mexico, said regardless of what constitutes a cartel, the days of the capital being isolated from the drug violence were over.

“What’s happening in Mexico City reflects the national outlook,” he said. “We have a crisis of organized crime.”

(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz and Ana Isabel Martinez; editing by Dave Graham, G Crosse)

U.S. attorney general says to hire 300 prosecutors to fight crime

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers opening remarks at the Justice Department's 2017 Hate Crimes Summit in Washington, U.S., June 29, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

(Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Wednesday the Justice Department plans to hire 300 additional assistant U.S. attorneys to help fight a recent national increase in crime, including a focus on transnational gangs such as MS-13.

“As you all know, we have a multi-front battle in front of us right now: an increase in violent crime, vicious gangs, an opioid epidemic, threats from terrorism and human traffickers,” Sessions said in a speech in Las Vegas.

Referring to so-called sanctuary cities, Sessions said one problem is the refusal of 300 U.S. jurisdictions to hand over illegal immigrants who commit crimes to federal immigration authorities. “These jurisdictions are protecting criminals rather than their law-abiding residents,” he said.

Sessions noted the U.S. murder rate had risen 10 percent nationwide in just one year, marking the largest increase since 1968. The increase was from 2014 to 2015, the latest figures available. Murder and crime rates generally in the United States have fallen over the last several decades.

President Donald Trump had made the restoration of law and order one of the planks of his election campaign.

(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Trump says he is sending federal help to fight Chicago crime

FILE PHOTO - Chicago police officer investigate a crime scene of a gunshot victim in Chicago, Illinois, United States, July 5, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young

By Timothy Mclaughlin and Doina Chiacu

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday he was sending federal help to fight crime in Chicago that has reached “epidemic” proportions.

The government is sending federal agents to Chicago and plans to prosecute firearms cases aggressively, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News when asked about Trump’s statement about the plan in an early-morning Twitter post.

“Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The president has regularly singled out Chicago’s violent crime problem and in January decried the high crime rate in the third-most populous U.S. city as “carnage.”

In 2016, the number of murders in Chicago exceeded 760, a jump of nearly 60 percent, and was more than New York and Los Angeles combined. There were more than 4,300 shooting victims in the city last year, according to police.

The number of murders, shootings and shooting victims have all decreased slightly this year in the city of 2.7 million. There have been 320 murders, down from 322 over the same period last year. There have been 1,703 shooting victims, down from 1,935, according to police figures.

Sessions said the anti-crime policies in Chicago have not worked and police “have been demoralized in many ways.”

The federal assistance will come in the form of the Chicago Crime Gun Strike Force, a collaboration between the police and the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The group, including police officers, federal agents and intelligence analysts, will work to impede the flow of illegal guns throughout Chicago and target repeat gun offenders.

“The Trump Administration will not let the bloodshed go on; we cannot accept these levels of violence,” Sessions said in a statement on Friday afternoon. The group became operational on June 1, Sessions said.

It will “significantly help our police officers stem the flow of illegal guns and create a culture of accountability” for the gangs that drive violence in the city, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a statement.

On Monday, the Chicago police announced that the ATF’s mobile ballistics lab had arrived in the city to help process shooting scenes.

“Six months ago we made it clear that we would welcome additional federal support, and six months later we appreciate the 20 new ATF agents that are now arriving,” Adam Collins, a spokesman for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, said.

“But the progress CPD (Chicago Police Department) has made this year has happened without any of the new resources from the federal government we requested.”

Chicago is also in the midst of reforming its police department after a federal investigation found officers routinely violated the civil rights of people, citing excessive force and racially discriminatory conduct.

Joseph Ferguson, the city’s inspector general, called on Chicago officials to agree to a consent decree to oversee changes to the department at a committee meeting on Tuesday – splitting with the mayor, who has said a court-enforced settlement is not necessary for reform.

In response to questions about Ferguson’s comments, Emanuel told reporters on Wednesday that the Justice Department has “walked away” from doing consent decrees, and so the city has sought a different strategy.

“There are multiple roads that allow you to make sure you make the changes and reform,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Julia Jacobs in Chicago; Editing by JS Benkoe and Matthew Lewis)

U.S. immigration targets some Iraqis for deportation in wake of travel ban deal

The badge of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Fugitive Operations team is seen in Santa Ana, California, U.S

By Mica Rosenberg

(Reuters) – U.S. immigration authorities are arresting Iraqi immigrants ordered deported for serious crimes, the U.S. government said on Monday, after Iraq agreed to accept U.S. deportees as part of a deal to remove it from President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

“As a result of recent negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq, Iraq has recently agreed to accept a number of Iraqi nationals subject to orders of removal,” said Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Christensen said the agency recently arrested a number of individuals, all of whom had criminal convictions for violations ranging from homicide to drug charges and had been ordered removed by an immigration judge. She declined to give more details, citing the ongoing nature of the operation.

Trump has said more countries need to take back nationals ordered deported from the United States and has pledged to increase immigration enforcement.

Al-Hamza Al-Jamaly, the attache at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington said Iraqi diplomatic and consular missions would coordinate with U.S. authorities to issue travel documents for the deportees “that we can prove to be ‘Iraqi’ based on our records and investigation.”

Attorneys, activists and family members told Reuters that ICE officials had arrested dozens of people in the Chaldean Catholic community in Detroit, Michigan and Kurdish Iraqis in Nashville, Tennessee over the weekend and last week.

Many in the communities have been in the United States for decades and were blindsided by the roundups.

Reuters could not independently confirm all of the cases.

The moves come after the U.S. government dropped Iraq from a list of countries targeted by a revised version of Trump’s temporary travel ban issued in March.

The March 6 order said Iraq was taken off the list because the Iraqi government had taken steps “to enhance travel documentation, information sharing, and the return of Iraqi nationals subject to final orders of removal.”

There are approximately 1,400 Iraqi nationals with final orders of removal currently in the United States, according to U.S. officials.

Iraq had previously been considered one of 23 “recalcitrant” countries, along with China, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and others, that refused to cooperate with ICE’s efforts to remove its nationals from the United States, according to congressional testimony by ICE Deputy Director Daniel Ragsdale.

Christensen said a deal was struck on March 12 of this year and since then, eight Iraqi nationals had been removed to the country.

At least some of the people who were picked up came to the United States as children, got in trouble years ago and already served their sentences, according to immigration attorneys and local activists. They had been given an effective reprieve from deportation because Iraq would not take them back.

“Suddenly after years of living their lives, and getting past that, they’re being greeted by ICE at the door saying that they’re going to be deported to Iraq,” said Drost Kokoye, a Kurdish-American community organizer in Nashville, home to the largest Kurdish population in the United States.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS

Some of the weekend arrests took place in Michigan’s Macomb County, which Trump won by 53.6 percent in the 2016 Presidential race, backed by many in the Iraqi Christian community.

At least one family of Trump supporters has been affected by the recent enforcement actions.

Nahrain Hamama said ICE agents came to her house on Sunday morning and arrested her 54-year-old husband Usama Hamama, a supermarket manager who goes by “Sam.” He has lived in the United States since childhood and has four U.S.-born children. During the election, all his U.S. citizen relatives were Trump supporters, Hamama said.

“He forgot his language, he doesn’t speak Arabic anymore. We have no family there on both sides. Where would he go? What would he do? How would he live?” Hamama said. She fears for his health and that he will be targeted by groups in Iraq because of his religion, made more visible because of a cross tattooed on his wrist.

Sam got in trouble with the law in his 20s, in what his wife called a “road rage” incident where he brandished a gun during a fight in traffic. He served time in prison and was ordered deported after being released. For the past seven years he has regularly checked in with immigration officials, his wife said. “It is a shame that for one mistake, that he paid for legally, now he has to pay with his own life.”

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Washington, Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago, and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Andrew Hay)

Number of migrant criminal suspects in Germany surged in 2016

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (R) and his Saxony state counterpart Markus Ulbig present the German crime statistics for 2016 during a news conference in Berlin, Germany

BERLIN (Reuters) – The number of migrant criminal suspects in Germany soared by more than 50 percent in 2016, data from the Interior Ministry showed on Monday – a statistic that could boost support for the anti-immigration party five months ahead of a federal election.

More than a million migrants have arrived in Germany in the last two years. Fears about security and integration initially pushed up the poll ratings of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), but the party’s support has slipped as the rate of arrivals has slowed.

The number of suspects classed as immigrants – those applying for asylum, refugees, illegal immigrants and those whose deportation has been temporarily suspended – rose to 174,438, 52.7 percent more than the previous year.

The number of German suspects declined by 3.4 percent to 1,407,062.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said crimes committed by refugees had “increased disproportionately” last year and warned: “Those who commit serious offences here forfeit their right to stay here.”

But he said some migrants committed multiple offences, distorting the statistics, and that most migrants lived peacefully and obeyed German law.

Migrants accounted for 8.6 percent of all crime suspects in Germany in 2016, up from 5.7 percent the previous year.

De Maiziere said one reason for the high crime rate among migrants was likely to be their accommodation situation. In 2016 many were living in makeshift shelters or sharing crowded rooms.

The number of attacks on refugee homes has declined for the first time since data started being collected in 2014. Some 995 were carried out in 2016, compared with 1,031 the previous year.

Crimes motivated by Islamism increased by 13.7 percent, the report showed. In December a failed Tunisian asylum seeker who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; editing by Andrew Roche)

Suspect in Stockholm truck attack admits terrorist crime

Policemen guard next to the court before the detention hearing of suspect in Friday's attack in Stockholm, Sweden April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Anna Ringstrom

By Anna Ringstrom and Johannes Hellstrom

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A failed asylum-seeker accused of ramming a truck into a Stockholm crowd last week, killing four people, has confessed to committing a terrorist crime, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Uzbekistan man Rakhmat Akilov, wanted for deportation at the time of Friday’s attack, made his first court appearance, entering the heavily guarded courtroom with a green sweater over his head and flanked by his lawyer and a translator.

Police say they believe the 39-year-old hijacked a beer truck and drove it into a busy pedestrian street in the Swedish capital before crashing into a department store.

Two Swedes, a British man and a Belgian woman were killed in the attack. Fifteen were injured. Eight people remain in hospital, including two in intensive care.

The attack has shattered any sense Swedes had of being insulated from the militant violence that has hit other parts of Europe, but has prompted defiance from Prime Minister Stefan Lofven who says Sweden will remain an open, tolerant society.

Akilov, who was asked by the judge to remove the sweater from his head, made no comment at the start of the hearing. His lawyer, Johan Eriksson, told the court that his client had admitted the crime. The judge then ordered the hearing to proceed behind closed doors.

Eriksson later told reporters outside the court that Akilov has described his motives to authorities, but the judge had ordered the lawyer not to discuss details of the case in public.

“He has not just confessed. He has provided information, he is answering questions,” Eriksson said.

Akilov was arrested just hours after the truck attack on the highest level of suspicion in the Swedish legal system. He had already been wanted by police for failing to comply with a deportation order after being denied permanent residency.

The judge on Tuesday remanded Akilov in custody for a month. Police have said it could take up to a year to complete the initial investigation into the attack.

Police say Akilov has expressed sympathies with extremist organisations. Security services have said that he had figured in intelligence reports but they had not viewed him as a militant threat.

A Facebook page appearing to belong to him showed he was following a group called “Friends of Libya and Syria”, dedicated to exposing “terrorism of the imperialistic financial capitals” of the United States, Britain and Arab “dictatorships”.

Legal documents show Akilov had asked for Eriksson to be replaced by a Sunni Muslim lawyer, but the court denied his request.

“We have a good relationship and we are working together in this case,” Eriksson said on Tuesday.

Sweden’s prosecution authority said on Tuesday it had revoked the arrest of a second, unidentified suspect in connection with the truck attack.

However, this man would remain in custody due to an earlier decision that he be expelled from Sweden, the authority said.

“According to the prosecutor, the suspicions have weakened and there is, therefore, no ground to apply for a detention order,” it said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Mark Bendeich)

New York City crime fell to historic low in 2016

New York City Buildings

By David Ingram

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Crime in New York City fell to a historic low last year, the police said on Wednesday in a report showing that the largest U.S. city avoided the spike in murders that has battered other major American cities, including Chicago.

Overall, there were 101,606 crimes that police said they knew about during 2016, down 4 percent from 2015, police said.

There were 335 murders reported last year, down 5 percent from the 352 murders a year earlier, police said. The record for the fewest since the city started keeping reliable numbers in 1963 was 328 murders in 2014.

By way of comparison, Chicago, which has about one-third as many residents as New York’s 8.6 million people, recorded 762 murders last year, more than twice as many killings as in New York.

That spike prompted President-elect Donald Trump to suggest on Monday that the city needed federal help.

The trendlines in New York pointed downward in nearly all categories of reported crime, as shootings fell 12 percent, rapes fell 1 percent, robberies fell 9 percent and burglaries fell 15 percent.

Reports of felony-level assaults were up 2 percent, while reports of grand larcenies were flat, according to police numbers.

Police, politicians and criminologists have hotly debated the reasons behind the sharp drop in U.S. crime since the early 1990s, when New York City had more than 2,000 murders a year.

They have put forward explanations such as changing tactics, better data collection or even a reduction in lead poisoning.

New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill credited last year’s reductions to a “laser-like precision” on gangs and to the department’s neighborhood policing program, which is aimed at improving relations between officers and the communities they patrol.

In a statement, O’Neil said, “2016 was the safest year ever in the history of New York City.”

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)

French tourism companies want special police force amid safety fears

French Army soldiers secure the area of the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica in Marseille, France,

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s tourism sector on Tuesday urged French authorities to set up a special police force in Paris to fight crime targeting tourists as safety fears curb the number of visitors to the French capital.

Foreign tourist arrivals to France could fall 4-5 percent this year following Islamic militant attacks and repeated robberies against Asian tourists, warned Alliance 46.2, a group representing firms that rely on foreign visitors.

Its members include department store chain Galeries Lafayette and holiday group Club Med and AccorHotels.

“The image of France has deeply deteriorated and it’s likely that 2017 will still feel the impact. The recovery may therefore be long,” it said.

Armed French police stand guard during the18th edition of the Techno Parade music event in Paris

An armed French policeman maintains a security presence during the18th edition of the Techno Parade music event in Paris, France, September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

 

An armed robbery against reality TV star Kim Kardashian on Monday only exacerbates the situation.

The decline in visitor figures, if confirmed, would be the steepest in 40 years and put up to 30,000 jobs at risk in the struggling French tourism sector, the statement said.

Foreign tourists have avoided France since Islamic State gunmen killed 130 people in an attack in Paris last November. In July, a gunman drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on July 14 in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 86.

Repeated robberies against foreign tourists, notably Asian tourists, have also added to safety worries, Alliance 46.2 said.

The tourism sector represents 7-8 percent of France’s gross domestic product and employs about 2 million people.

The French government last month pledged more aid to the sector, bringing to 10 million euros its contribution to a campaign to promote the country abroad.

France is the most-visited country in the world, with almost 85 million foreign tourists last year. France is still targeting 100 million foreign tourists by 2020.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Motive sought in fatal shooting at Washington state mall after arrest

Authorities at the Cascade Mall

(Reuters) – Investigators were working to determine what led a gunman to open fire and kill five people in a department store at a Washington state mall, police said on Sunday after arresting a 20-year-old suspect in the deadly rampage.

Police took Turkish-born Arcan Cetin into custody on Saturday evening in Oak Harbor, about 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Burlington where the shooting occurred on Friday night.

Cetin’s demeanor when apprehended was “zombie like,” police said at a news conference. He was unarmed and did not run from officers, they said.

A motive for the rampage remains unclear and Cetin, who is due to appear in court on Monday, has not been charged.

The FBI said while they had no indication the attack was a “terrorism act,” it could not rule out that possibility.

Cetin, who police said is a legal, permanent resident of the United States, is accused of opening fire in the cosmetics section of a Macy’s department store at Cascade Mall, killing four women and a man.

Surveillance video showed the suspect entering the mall without a rifle but he was later spotted on video in the store brandishing a weapon, police said. The rifle was recovered at the mall.

The attack followed a series of violent outbursts at shopping centers across the United States, including the stabbing of nine people at a Minnesota center last weekend.

It comes at a time of heightened tensions in the United States after a succession of seemingly random attacks in public places, ranging from a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

Investigators planned to search Cetin’s Oak Harbor residence, vehicle and interview witnesses on Sunday to collect evidence and “build as good as a case as you can,” said Sergeant Mark Francis, a spokesman for the Washington State Police.

Police have reports that Cetin’s ex-girlfriend worked at the Macy’s, Francis said. The possible connection was under investigation.

Cetin has a criminal record that includes three domestic violence charges in which his stepfather was the victim, the Seattle Times reported, citing court records.

He also was arrested for drunken driving and barred by a judge in December from possessing a firearm, the newspaper reported without providing details. Reuters was unable to confirm the reports.

Police did not identify the victims but local media said they ranged in age from mid-teens to mid-90s, and included a mother and her daughter. The Skagit County Coroner’s Office said it planned to release information about shooting victims on Monday.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco and Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Louise Heavens and Bill Trott)