Sorry to drop the F-bomb on the Lord’s day of rest, but there it is: retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective and writer Richard Valdemar’s [above] assessment of Mexican drug thugs’ opinion of U.S. law enforcement efforts. The legal Arizona immigrant says the drug cartels are tooled-up with military-grade weaponry, and they’re not afraid to use it. “This militarization—and the apparent end to the taboo against killing American law enforcement—requires a strong response to stop incursions at our border,” Valedmar told tucsonweekly.com. “Instead, he says, we erect signs warning citizens about traveling on heavily trafficked federal lands, or we close lands to the public because of the danger . . .
To the cartels, that’s weakness,” Valdemar says. “They already think we’re decadent, soft and unmanly. Then to cede parts of our own country only encourages them to be more violent. They think we’re fucking punks.
Clearly, the Obama administration has continued the Bush administration’s weakness on border security.
In fact, Obama’s minions have supplied the cartels with weaponry (via the ATF’s abortive Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious). And they’ve singularly, spectacularly failed to up their game (i.e. change tactics) to reflect the rising tide of violence spilling over into the U.S.
The recent murder of Border Patrol Agent Terry is a perfect case in point. We now know for a fact that Terry’s team fired non-lethal beanbag rounds at a gang of rifle-wielding drug thugs. The question about the rules of engagement are ongoing, but check this from tusconweekly.com:
[Ron] Colburn is one of the founders of the 27-year-old BORTAC unit [Border Patrol Tactical Unit] and one of its first agents. He also served as a BORTAC team leader on numerous tactical missions, including some in the rugged Peck Canyon smuggling corridor . . .
Colburn says BORTAC agents typically fire nonlethal devices, simultaneous to shouting for their targets to drop their weapons. This could be beanbags or flash bangs, which explode and emit a disorienting bright light, allowing agents to move in and make arrests.
Colburn says that the challenge phase occasionally doesn’t work, and the bad guys open fire. In this case, terrible luck intervened, and a bullet found Terry, making him the first BORTAC agent killed in the line of duty.
“You either try to gain surprise and intimidate your suspects with less-lethal devises first, or you use no force at all,” says Colburn. “Those are your choices.”
WTF? Time for a major rethink on U.S. border security, from legalizing drugs to a massive show of military force on our border to the rules of engagement when confronting the bad guys in the field. Of course that would require leadership on the issue, of which the President of the United States has proven himself incapable.