Tag Archives: murders

Repeat offenders not being locked up

Mark 13:12 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Why Are Repeat Offenders Not Being Locked Up? These Two Murders Are Raising Public Concerns
  • From major cities to smaller regions, violent crime is spiking. The latest report comes from Montgomery County, Maryland, where year-end statistics show crime is up sharply including killings and carjackings, according to WTOP-TV.
  • There were 32 homicides and 67 carjackings in 2021 which is an 88% increase in homicides and 72% increase in carjackings, the county council’s public safety council was told Tuesday, according to the station.
  • With rising crime in the city’s subways, New York’s new Democratic mayor admits that even he doesn’t feel safe.

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Wave of trans murders sparks fear of ‘hunting season’ in Puerto Rico

By Oscar Lopez

MEXICO CITY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Puerto Rico has been hit by an “epidemic of violence” with five transgender murders in two months, LGBT+ activists said on Wednesday, adding that homophobic rhetoric from politicians and religious leaders may have fuelled the bloodshed.

Opposition lawmakers and campaigners called on the government to publicly acknowledge and investigate the violence, after the bodies of two trans women were found inside a charred car last week and another trans woman was killed in February.

“Trans people are living in fear, they are terrified,” said Pedro Julio Serrano, spokesman for the Broad Committee for the Search for Equality, an LGBT+ rights advocacy group.

“It’s as if they’ve opened hunting season against the LGBT+ community, and they’re hunting us, they’re looking for us and they are killing us,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Puerto Rican Governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Police commissioner Henry Escalera Rivera said that he had met with representatives of the LGBT+ community “to work together for a better Puerto Rico”.

“We have general orders and procedures that guide officers on how to intervene with members of the (LGBT+) community,” he said. “As always, we have our doors open to dialogue and discuss any proposal for the benefit of Puerto Rico.”

Two men were arrested in connection with the women killed last week, local media reported on Wednesday.

The February murder remains unsolved.

While many other Caribbean islands outlaw gay sex, the U.S. territory has introduced legal reforms, legalising same-sex marriage in 2015 and allowing trans people to change their gender on birth certificates in 2018.

But the predominantly Roman Catholic island has a history of violence and intolerance towards gay and trans people, with 10 LGBT+ people killed in less than 18 months in the latest crime wave, rights groups say.

HATE SPEECH

Serrano said anti-LGBT rhetoric from local politicians, religious leaders and the former head of state had contributed to the violence.

Governor Ricardo Rossello resigned in 2019 after hundreds of pages of group chat messages were leaked, including homophobic comments about gay pop singer Ricky Martin, who is Puerto Rican.

“That hate speech is pervading the minds of people in Puerto Rico and there is this resurgence of violence against LGBT+ people,” he said, adding that the failure to prosecute hate crimes made matters worse.

“If you have a government that does not investigate, that does not care that (LGBT+) people are being murdered … you are certainly sending a message as a society that these people are worth nothing.”

February’s killing of trans woman Alexa Negron Luciano made global headlines after a video circulated online, apparently showing her being shot dead while men laughed.

Ramon Luis Nieves, a former senator who is running for office again this year, said Puerto Ricans’ attitudes towards gay and trans people needed to change.

“While discrimination may have been eradicated from the law books … we still have a ways to go to eradicate discrimination and hatred from the minds and hearts of many,” he said.

(Reporting by Oscar Lopez @oscarlopezgib from Mexico City. Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)murders,

‘Under Siege’: desperate Mexico region uses guns, children to fend off cartels

By Alexandre Meneghini

RINCON DE CHAUTLA, Mexico (Reuters) – When the 56-year-old mother-in-law of David Sanchez Luna was tortured and killed after venturing out of her small Mexican community encircled by drug cartels, he let his seven- and ten-year-old daughters receive military-style weapons training.

Unable to send their children to school and too afraid to step out of their enclave of 16 mountain villages in the violence-plagued southwestern Guerrero state, residents say they have been left with little choice.

“They do this to prepare themselves to defend the family, their siblings and defend the village,” said Sanchez Luna, a corn farmer in a rugged region which five years ago formed a self-defense “community police” militia to protect itself.

The move by the villagers to offer arms training to school-age children shocked the nation and made global headlines last month after local media broadcast images of children as young as 6-years-old toting guns and showing off military maneuvers.

While elders in the mainly indigenous community near the city of Chilapa privately concede young kids would not be used to fight cartel gunmen, they say their gambit to get the help of far-away officials in Mexico City is borne of desperation.

Ten musicians from the area were ambushed and killed last month by suspected Los Ardillos cartel members after stepping out of the territory guarded by their self-defense militia, known as CRAC-PF. Their bodies were burnt, officials said.

The attack followed a spate of murders in recent year, including a beheading, that rattled the 6,500 residents whose lush land sits amid fertile poppy-growing farmland that feed Guerrero’s heroin trade and supply routes to the United States.

The grisly murders and siege-like conditions facing residents go to the heart of cartel power and state failure in modern Mexico, where runaway violence tears at society’s fabric.

“This is a public cry for help by a community that’s been cornered,” said Falko Ernst, an International Crisis Group (ICG) analyst. “They’ve been trying to get assistance by federal and state government, unsuccessfully, so they’re trying to escalate the language to try to negotiate and get help.”

President Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador said those who arm children “should be ashamed of themselves” and denounced the use of children to grab attention.

Lopez Obrador’s government has struggled to get a grip on gangs and violence, with a record 34,582 murders last year.

Residents remain deeply suspicious of regional authorities and the smattering of local policemen in their villages, who they accuse of being the eyes and ears of the Los Ardillos.

Parents say their children are forced to stop formal education once they reach about 12 years of age, as the middle schools are in territory controlled by the cartel.

Abuner Martinez, 16, stopped attending school a year ago after his father was kidnapped outside CRAC-PF territory, tortured, and then beheaded.

“I got scared at that moment. I didn’t want to go to school,” said Martinez, who now wields a shotgun as he guards a checkpoint.

The Los Ardillos want to extort the farmers and force them to grow opium for the cartel, said Sanchez Luna’s brother, Bernardino, who founded the CRAC-PF.

“We find ourselves under siege,” he said.

CRAC-PF repelled a major attack by Los Ardillos in January 2019, but residents live in fear of the siren, a community alarm system, going off again.

Farmers tend their corn fields with shotguns slung on their backs, while armed CRAC-PF militiamen keep guard and patrol their territory round the clock.

David Sanchez Luna’s wife, Alberta, sobbed as she described receiving her mother’s body riddled with torture marks.

“It’s terrible what’s happening to us,” she said, wiping away tears.

(Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Nine months after Lobo showed us an Amazon ambush site, he was killed in one

Nine months after Lobo showed us an Amazon ambush site, he was killed in one
By Max Baring

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Paulo Paulino Guajajara, also known as Lobo or “wolf”, was killed in an attack on Nov. 1, the latest fatality in an escalating battle between illegal loggers and indigenous tribes in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.

Lobo was part of a group called “Guardians of the Forest” that the Thomson Reuters Foundation met on a reporting and filming trip to the Araribóia reservation in northeastern Maranhao state in January this year, joining them on a patrol.

Araribóia is an island of forest that has become separated from the ever-shrinking mass that is the Amazon rainforest.

This constitutionally protected indigenous land is home to the Awá Guajá, known as Brazil’s most vulnerable uncontacted tribe, whose voluntary isolation is defended by the Guajajara, especially the Guajajara brigade of “Guardians of the Forest”.

Lobo and about 120 others make up the group that was set up in 2012 and works alongside other indigenous groups of “Guardians” that have emerged over the past decade in Brazil in response to ever increasing incursions by illegal loggers.

For months we had been looking for an opportunity to join the guardians on patrol in what has become a deadly clash.

Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council found 135 indigenous people were murdered in 2018, up almost 23% from 2017, with clashes increasing since President Jair Bolsonaro vowed this year to open up indigenous lands to economic development.

Finally, in January this year we set out, joining Lobo and his brigade of guardians in a village used as a base from which to launch patrols inside the Araribóia reserve.

UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS

We spent a day filming in the village and interviewing guardians and some of their families before setting out on patrol. This included Lobo, aged about 27 with one son.

Then the time came. Their motorbike-riding scout returned with news of illegal loggers setting up a new camp and preparations started, with the guardians painting their faces with jenipapo for camoflauge and protection from mother nature.

That night we travelled on dirt tracks and waited at the entrance to the Araribóia protected area to see if we could intercept any loggers moving their illegal hauls under cover of darkness.

Along the way we had two tense encounters with indigenous Guajarara whom the Guardians accused of selling out their area of Araribóia to illegal loggers.

It became evident that while most of the struggles are between the indigenous people and outsiders there is also a significant conflict developing within indigenous groups themselves, divided over what should happen to the rainforest.

It took two more days for us to arrive at a small logging camp deep where the group set fire to the sawn timber lying around the camp being prepared to be hauled out of the reserve.

They burned down the camp before we continued patrolling along the loggers’ trail through the already thinned-out forest on the edge of the reserve but there was no sign of the loggers.

Since the group started in 2012 at least three Guajajara guardians have been killed in conflicts with illegal loggers. Over that time the guardians have burned down about 200 illegal logging camps, according to Olimpio Guajajara, the leader of this brigade.

It was clear throughout the operation that the guardians felt they had no choice but to protect their land, feeling abandoned by the authorities while well aware of the risks.

Lobo spoke of the death threats that he already had from a man he described as a loggers’ “hired gun”.

He also spoke of a Guardian named Alfonso who had been killed in a conflict with loggers and complained that the police often sided with the illegal loggers, not the indigenous “Guardians of the Forest”, when conflicts arose.

In one of the last scenes to be cut during the editing of the documentary “Guarding the Forest”, Lobo comes across a slight, wooden structure in the bush next to the trail.

He explains to camera that this was an ambush structure where loggers lie in wait for the guardians to launch surprise attacks at close quarters.

“This is a trap for the guardians who pass here. He’ll stay seated there waiting for the guardians to pass so he can shoot,” Lobo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

On Nov. 1 came the news of Lobo’s death. Media India, a Brazilian indigenous media network, reported that he was shot in the face at close range while collecting water from a lake, in an attack near the area of Araribóia where we filmed him in February.

Indigenous leader Laercio Guajajara, also in our film, was seriously injured in the attack and was now recovering in hiding. He has pledged to continue fighting against illegal logging.

One of the loggers was also reportedly killed in the incident now being investigated by federal and state police.

(Reporting by Max Baring, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Mexico to send troops to stem violence after record 25,000 murders

A soldier stands guard next to a crime scene, where men were killed inside a home by unknown assailants, in the municipality of San Nicolas de los Garza, Mexico, January 27, 2018. Picture taken January 27, 2018.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican officials said on Sunday the government was set to unleash a new wave of troops to crack down on criminal groups in regions where a surge in violence led to more than 25,000 murders last year.

National Security Commissioner Renato Sales said federal police troops will work with local officials to round up known major criminals and bolster investigations.

The aim was “to recover peace and calm for all Mexicans,” he said. He did not provide details on the number of federal police to be deployed.

More than 25,000 murders were recorded last year as rival drug gangs increasingly splintered into smaller, more blood-thirsty groups after more than a decade of a military-led campaign to battle the cartels.

Violence is a central issue ahead of the presidential election in July. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party is trailing in third place in recent polls.

Sales said federal police troops would be deployed in the states of Colima and Baja California Sur, the resort town of Cancun and the border city of Ciudad Juarez, among others. He said more details would be forthcoming within days.

Earlier this month, the United States slapped its most stringent travel warnings on the states of Colima, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Guerrero, ranking them as bad as war-ravaged Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

At least 25 people were murdered in Mexico this weekend, according to officials and local media, including nine men who were executed at a house party in a suburb of the wealthy northern industrial city of Monterrey.

Masked gunmen burst into a home in San Nicholas de los Garza as a group watched a local soccer team play on television, according to state prosecutors. Seven were killed at the scene and two more died later at a hospital.

There were a wave of attacks in night spots late Saturday and early Sunday. A group of armed men killed three people in a bar in the resort city of Cancun, a Chilean tourist was killed in the Pacific beach resort of Acapulco, and two more were killed in a bar in the capital of Veracruz state.

Six more were killed in the border city of Ciudad Juarez and four more died in the border state of Tamaulipas, where at least 10 were killed during the week at outlaw road blockades and in shootouts, local media reported.

(Reporting by Michael O’Boyle and Diego Ore; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

New York City murders seen dropping below 300 in 2017

People walk along Sixth Avenue as a cold weather front hits the region in Manhattan, New York, U.S., December 28, 2017.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City is on track to record fewer than 300 murders in 2017, marking a steep decline since the early 1990s when the annual death toll exceeded 2,000 people.

As of Sunday, 284 people were murdered in the nation’s largest city, down from 329 in the same period in 2016, according to New York Police Department (NYPD) data released this week. All seven major crimes tracked by police, including rape, assault and robbery, showed declines.

Barring a spike in the final week of the year, the number of murders in the city will drop under the low of 333 in 2014.

Police officials emphasized that murders continued to decline even as the city’s population swelled to more 8.5 million.

“The homicide rate per capita is lower than anything we have ever seen,” J. Peter Donald, an NYPD spokesman, wrote on Twitter on Thursday. He compared the rate to levels last seen in the 1950s, when there were “1.5 million fewer people living in New York.”

The continued decline is in part vindication for Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who campaigned for the office in 2013 on his opposition to the NYPD’s widespread use of “stop and frisk” policy, which led to random searches for drugs and weapons.

That year, a federal judge ruled that the practise was unconstitutional because it disproportionately targeted black and Latino New Yorkers.

Under de Blasio, the tactic’s use has been sharply curtailed, and warnings by conservative critics that crime rates would creep back up have proved unfounded.

Fewer than 13,700 robberies have been reported so far in 2017, compared with 15,500 in 2016 and 100,280 in 1990. Serious assaults fell below 20,000, about half the number seen in 1990. Burglaries have dipped below 12,000, compared to 122,055 in 1990.

Police had recorded 1,416 rapes in the year through Sunday, one fewer than the same period last year but above the low in 2009 of 1,205.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Twenty tortured, then murdered in Pakistan Sufi shrine

Men gather as rescue workers move the bodies of victims, who were killed in a Sufi shrine, on the outskirts of Sargodha, Pakistan

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) – Twenty people were tortured and then murdered with clubs and knives at a Pakistani Sufi shrine, the police said on Sunday, in an attack purportedly carried out by the shrine’s custodian and several accomplices.

Four others were wounded during the attack on Sunday morning at the shrine on the edge of Sargodha, a remote town in the Punjab region.

The custodian of the shrine, Abdul Waheed, called on the worshippers to visit the shrine and then attacked them with his accomplices, said Liaqat Ali Chattha, deputy commissioner for the area.

“As they kept arriving, they were torturing and murdering them,” Chattha told Geo TV.

Pervaiz Haider, a doctor in a Sargodha hospital, said most of the dead were hit on the back of the neck.

“There are bruises and wounds inflicted by a club and dagger on the bodies of victims,” he told Reuters.

Police arrested Waheed. During his interrogation, the custodian told police he believed his victims were out to kill him, said Zulfiqar Hameed, Regional Police Officer for Sargodha.

 

Members of the police forensic unit (R) survey the scene outside a Sufi shrine, after an attack at the shrine, on the outskirts of Sargodha, Pakistan

Members of the police forensic unit (R) survey the scene outside a Sufi shrine, after an attack at the shrine, on the outskirts of Sargodha, Pakistan April 2, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

“Waheed told police that he killed the people because they had tried to kill him by poisoning him in the past, and again they were there to kill him,” Hameed told Reuters.

Reuters could not immediately find contact details for Waheed or any lawyer representing him.

With its ancient hypnotic rituals, Sufism is a mystical form of Islam that has been practised in Pakistan for centuries.

But in recent months, Sufi shrines have been targeted by extremist Sunni militants who consider them heretics, including a suicide bombing by Islamic State that killed more than 80 worshippers at a shrine in Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province.

Last November, an explosion ripped through another Sufi shrine, the Shah Noorani in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 52 people. Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack.

(Reporting by Mubasher Bukhari; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Randy Fabi)