TWO WOMEN KIDNAPPED BY POLICE

Last night, on the History Channel, I saw an episode of "Gangland" that made my blood boil.

Two young women (one was 27 and very beautiful) from Laredo, Texas, went to a concert across the border in Nueva Laredo and didn't come back.

(People in their family had been going back and forth across the border for more than a generation, with no problems.)

One woman's stepfather went across the border looking for them and found their car in an impound lot owned by a federal judge.

The stepfather asked the local police to help find them. But the police were no help. He kept asking on the streets and found someone who said the two women were pulled over by the police, who gave them as a gift to the Zetas, a drug gang that rules Nueva Laredo.

The stepfather put flyers all over Nueva Laredo and called "America's Most Wanted," the TV show. They aired a segment, and 30 minutes later a DEA agent called their house to say that a hit squad was on its way from Mexico to kill the whole family.

The police and DEA stopped the hit squad, but now the family lives in fear.

Wait a minute, this family has been wronged. Where is justice? What about decency? The Zetas want to kill them for being decent? For doing what is right?

Are these Zetas animals? Have they no decency? No shame? I thought they were supposed to be decent people who cared for ordinary people and didn't abuse "civilians."

I would like to appeal to their sense of decency. What if this happened in your family? Please, Zetas, tell us, what happened to those two women?

Do we in the USA have to live in fear of these gangs? Is this Somalia?

Where are the Navy SEALs when we need them? Makes you want to send in the Marines, doesn't it?

What an outrage.

And we, the most powerful nation on earth, supposedly, sit by and do nothing.

(Of course, with the government cutbacks, the DEA, the local police and the Border Patrol do not have the manpower they need to stop this kind of thing. This is the world the Tea Party wants to bring us. That would be a shame.)

My advice: Don't let your daughters go to Mexico by themselves.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

TOUGH GUYS

The other day, in the L.A. Times, I saw a story that chilled me down to my bones:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tattoo-20110422,0,1399043.story

Here is the photo that first caught my attention:

Look at this kid. Anthony Garcia. Look at his eyes, how innocent he looks. He doesn't look like he has done anything wrong. He doesn't look angry or hostile or guilty or worried or haunted by his past.

Then look at the tattoos across his chest and shoulders. This week, he was convicted of killing a man in front of that liquor store, in those tattoos.

He was carrying around his confession on his chest, only in his case he seems to have been bragging. I guess he killed a man and had the tattoo put on his chest to brag about it.

Good God. Who are these people? What is the world coming to?

This kid looks a lot like the students I was teaching for the last five years, in an adult school in L.A.

One day, I saw a couple young guys who looked like gangbangers on the campus, and I asked them if they were looking for someone. They turned their backs and walked away, as if they had been caught doing something wrong.

I told my students about the two guys, and they said, "Stay away from those people, Mr. Angle."

They were right. We should all stay away from those people. If we can. Thank God for the police, and for this one cop, who figured out what those tattoos meant, and for the others who got him to confess.

But I have to add that I've had former gang members in class who were the most polite, reserved, disciplined and well behaved students you could ever want.

One guy had a tattoo of a teardrop below the corner of one eye. And other tattoos on his arms and hands. I never asked him what they meant. Figured it was none of my business.

But he was a good student. Came to class on time, always did his work on time, did the rewrites and the reading, and did everything I asked him to do. He was always polite. He finished the class, and I think he got a "B."

I don't know what that means. But I'm glad he was in class.

I feel sorry for Anthony Garcia. I wish he'd been in school instead of in the gang.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle