The Nuevo Laredo quagmire continues

Houston Chronicle:

Ricardo Guzman careened through Nuevo Laredo traffic in his beat-up Honda, squealing around corners and blowing through red lights on his way to the scene of the crime.

He made it just in time.

The latest victim of gangland violence lay slumped in a bullet-riddled truck just outside town. And Guzman, a police reporter for a local tabloid, was getting paid to capture the scene at its gory worst.

"If there's no body, we don't sell. You get used to it," he said with a shrug.

Lately, Guzman has had no shortage of material. A bloody turf war between rival drug cartels has left at least 58 people dead this year in the city of 330,000 across the border from Laredo.

Suspected traffickers gunned down their latest victim, Juan Pablo Rodriguez, 17, and wounded a passenger as they were headed out of the city Thursday evening.

The death toll is up from 23 during the same period last year. And the violence is getting worse. Wednesday, police found three charred bodies dumped in a shallow hole on the roadside. Hours later, the city's beleaguered police chief, Omar Pimentel, handed in his resignation, citing "personal reasons."

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"No one wants the job," said Mauricio Gonzalez, a city police commander.He speculated that Pimentel might have quit rather than lead the latest cleanup of the municipal police force, which is notorious for its links to organized crime.

In June, after Dominguez's slaying, more than 1,000 federal police took control of the city as part of a crackdown dubbed Operation Secure Mexico. All 700-odd municipal police were suspended, with three dozen officers imprisoned in Mexico City and hundreds more fired.

But the gangland violence continued. The American consulate closed for a week in July after suspected gangsters shot up an upscale neighborhood and launched grenades. Then in August, teenage shooters killed the city councilman who oversaw public security and his bodyguard, a municipal police commander. For Pimentel, the breaking point may have come March 16, when four federal agents were slain in broad daylight. A spokesman for President Vicente Fox said corrupt municipal agents were the most likely culprits.

Pimentel "was taking a lot of heat from all sides, from the Sinaloa cartel, the feds, his own administration and the media," a U.S. law enforcement official said. "He's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't."

Residents worry about the future of their city — and themselves. "We're all afraid," said a criminal lawyer who, like most people in this town, spoke on condition of anonymity. He said he received death threats after publicly denouncing police corruption. "I used to speak out. Not anymore."

He's not the only one who's feeling intimidated. After a spate of attacks on journalists during the past two years, most newspapers have drastically limited coverage of drug crimes, and many reporters have stopped putting bylines on stories.

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There is more.