Mexico government sought to withhold drug war death statistics

Official records show both the administration and the attorney general's office late last year refused formal requests for updated statistics. Under pressure, partial figures for 2011 have been released.

by Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

January 11, 2012

Reporting from Mexico City

Six months before a presidential election that his party is widely expected to lose, President Felipe Calderon is on the defensive about the government's blood-soaked drug war, with new revelations that it sought to conceal death toll statistics from the public.

By unofficial count, at least 50,000 people are believed to have been killed since Calderon deployed the military in the first days of his presidency in December 2006.

A year ago, the government released an official death toll up to that point — 34,612 — and pledged to periodically update a database and make it public. But official documents show that the offices of both the president and the attorney general late last year refused formal requests for updated statistics filed under the Mexican equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act.

After the reports first surfaced on the Mexican news website Animal Politico, a Calderon administration official told The Times that the government wanted to verify the numbers before releasing them. "It is not a lack of transparency on our part," the official said.

Under pressure, the attorney general's office Wednesday released a partial death toll for 2011. As of Oct. 1, it reported, 12,903 people had been killed in incidents tied to "rivalry among criminal organizations."

Until now, without official data, the public had to rely on tallies kept by Mexican newspapers. The partial official numbers show a notably higher death toll than the newspapers had calculated and suggest that the overall count since Calderon came to office will easily surpass 50,000.

As the Calderon administration claims a measure of success in the drug war, a burgeoning peace movement, academics and opposition politicians keen to take power have all asserted that the military offensive was flawed from the start and has caused violence to soar.

Although the government maintains that its reluctance to divulge the numbers was simply a matter of verification, some Mexicans suspect other motives. For one, the government may have been loath to draw attention to the high death toll in the lead-up to an election that will choose Calderon's successor. His conservative National Action Party is expected to take a drubbing, in part over his handling of the violence.

The government also saw damage to its credibility in 2010 when different agencies released contradictory statistics.

"The lesson we got from releasing figures is that no one believed them," said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and did so on condition of anonymity.

The failure to disclose the statistics, meanwhile, had the effect of fueling greater doubt and suspicion.

"It can create the perception that the number of murdered is alarmingly higher than what is thought," said Ciro Gomez Leyva, a journalist and radio host. "And that instead of releasing solid and reliable reports, [the government] is opting to hide cadavers."

The majority of the dead are traffickers and their henchmen, but civilians, human rights defenders, migrants and children are increasingly being slain.

One such victim was the son of poet Javier Sicilia, who was killed in late March along with six other people who had been at a bar in the bougainvillea-filled town of Cuernavaca. That killing propelled the elder Sicilia into a crusade as arguably Mexico's most successful peace activist and one of the most outspoken critics of Calderon's drug war policies.

The government said the 2011 numbers showed that the pace of killing had slowed. The attorney general's statistics, though partial, indicate that killings were up by 11% in 2011, compared with a staggering 70% increase in 2010. Still, the aggregate numbers of dead, plus the brutality, have reached levels unthinkable just a few years ago.

The deadliest city, according to the new government figures, remains Ciudad Juarez, on the border across from El Paso, although its homicide rate has dropped. Juarez was followed by Acapulco, the tourist mecca hit by a surge of killing among gangs battling for market shares.

At the same time, violence spread to other parts of the country, such as the eastern coastal state of Veracruz, where the dumping of large numbers of bodies became a hallmark of gang warfare in the last half of the year.

Behind much of this mayhem is the intensifying struggle between the two dominant cartels, the vicious Zeta paramilitary force and the more businesslike, albeit ruthless, Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's largest.

The government's strategy of arresting leaders of drug-trafficking organizations has triggered a fragmentation of many of the bigger groups into smaller factions that have turned increasingly to other crimes, such as extortion, protection rackets, kidnapping and human smuggling.

Scores of clandestine mass graves have been discovered in the last year, yielding hundreds of victims, many of whom were poor immigrants from Central America, while others simply go unidentified, further complicating the amassing of accurate statistics.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-dead-numbers-20120112,0,1311879.story

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Van der Sloot pleads guilty: Closure for Natalee Holloway's family?

It's a moment that Natalee Holloway's family has wanted for years: Joran van der Sloot on Wednesday admitted in a court of law that he is a killer.

His guilty plea came in connection with the May 30, 2010, death of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman, Stephany Flores, who was killed in Van der Sloot's hotel room in Lima.

The killing took place precisely five years to the day that Holloway disappeared during a trip to Aruba to celebrate her graduation from high school in Alabama. On the night she vanished, Holloway was seen leaving a nightclub with Van der Sloot. She was never heard from again.

"Yes, I want to plead guilty. I wanted from the first moment to confess sincerely," Van der Sloot told the court Wednesday. "I truly am sorry for this act. I feel very bad," he said, according to the Associated Press.

Van der Sloot is scheduled to be sentenced Friday, and faces up to 30 years in prison. However, he could get a lesser sentence given his guilty plea.

Holloway's disappearance became an issue in the Flores murder case -- and was even used as a gambit to gain leniency for the suspect.

Van der Sloot's lawyer at one point tried to argue that Van der Sloot, 24, a Dutch citizen, was driven to kill Flores as a result of "extreme psychological trauma" he endured after he became a prime suspect in Holloway's disappearance.

Said one Twitter user Wednesday morning: "Van Der Sloot pleads guilty! YES! He may not have been pinned for Natalee's death, but there will be justice for Stephany!"

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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From Google News

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Missing in Aruba for 6 years, Natalee Holloway's father asks judge to declare her dead

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An Alabama judge has scheduled a hearing in Birmingham on whether to sign a court order declaring Natalee Holloway dead more than six years after the 18-year-old woman disappeared in Aruba.

Thursday afternoon's hearing was scheduled before a suspect questioned in Holloway's disappearance, Joran van der Sloot, decided to plead guilty Wednesday to killing a young woman in Peru.

Probate Judge Alan King is hearing a request by Holloway's father to have her declared dead. The judge ruled in September that Dave Holloway had met the legal presumption of death for his daughter and it was up to someone to prove she didn't die in Aruba. He set the hearing Thursday to allow time for anyone to come forward.

The father's attorney, Mark White, says no new evidence has emerged.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/missing-in-aruba-for-6-years-natalee-holloways-father-asks-judge-to-declare-her-dead

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Monterey County Ranks #1 for Youth Homicide Victimization in California for Second Year in a Row, New Study Reveals

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2012 -- Annual Study Compares Rates of Homicide Victimization for Californians Ages 10 to 24 by County, Race, Ethnicity, Weapon Used, Circumstance, and Location.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Monterey County's young people suffer a murder rate that leads all California counties and is nearly three times the overall state rate for the same age range, according to "Lost Youth: A County-by-County Analysis of 2010 California Homicide Victims Ages 10 to 24," a study analyzing unpublished California Department of Justice Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data released today by the Violence Policy Center (VPC). The study, available at http://www.vpc.org/studies/cayouth2012.pdf and funded by The California Wellness Foundation, uses the most recent data available to rank California counties by their homicide victimization rates for youth and young adults ages 10 to 24.

This is the second year that the VPC has released the study and the second year that Monterey County has led the rankings. While for 2010 Monterey maintained its top ranking compared to other California counties, the county's homicide victimization rate for this age group dropped from 31.24 per 100,000 in 2009 to 24.36 per 100,000 in 2010.

Statewide, the homicide victimization rate for Californians ages 10 to 24 dropped from 10.48 per 100,000 in 2009 to 8.48 per 100,000 in 2010. The appendix from the study comparing California counties' 2009 rankings to their 2010 rankings can be found separately at http://www.vpc.org/studies/cayouth2012ap4.pdf.

The study finds overwhelmingly that firearms, usually handguns, are the weapon of choice in the homicides of youth and young adults. The study also shows that there are vast disparities between groups: in California, young African-Americans are more than 22 times more likely to be murdered than young whites; young Hispanics are more than five times more likely to be murdered than young whites.

Josh Sugarmann, VPC executive director and study co-author states, "The homicide rates for youth and young adults across California show the urgent need for effective violence-prevention strategies that stress tailored, localized approaches that engage local leaders and community stakeholders."

TOP 10 COUNTIES BY YOUTH HOMICIDE VICTIMIZATION RATE

The top 10 counties with each county's corresponding homicide victimization rate for its population of Californians ages 10 to 24 are:

1. Monterey County, 24.36 per 100,000
   
2. Alameda County, 18.41 per 100,000
   
3. San Joaquin County, 18.36 per 100,000
   
4. Tulare County, 18.06 per 100,000
   
5. Merced County, 13.44 per 100,000
   
6. Contra Costa County, 12.94 per 100,000
   
7. Fresno County, 11.61 per 100,000
   
8. San Francisco County, 11.52 per 100,000
   
9. Madera County, 11.39 per 100,000
   
10. Los Angeles County, 11.35 per 100,000

The study contains a detailed analysis for each of the top 10 counties, including: gender; race/ethnicity; most common weapons; victim to offender relationship; circumstance; and, location. (To help ensure more stable rates, only counties with a population of at least 25,000 youth and young adults between the ages of 10 to 24 were included in the study. The selected counties account for 99 percent of homicide victims ages 10 to 24 in California and 98 percent of California's population ages 10 to 24 for 2010.)

BACKGROUND FOR MEDIA

STATEWIDE COMPARISONS

The study's statewide findings include more detailed information, broken down by a number of factors.

GENDER, RACE, and ETHNICITY

Out of the 680 homicide victims ages 10 to 24 in California in 2010:

• 89% were male and 11% were female.
  
  
• 53% were Hispanic, 34% black, 7% white, 4% Asian, and one percent were "other."

Overall, black victims were killed at a rate more than 22 times higher than white victims. Hispanic victims were killed at a rate more than five times higher than white victims. Asian victims were killed at roughly one and a half times the rate of white victims.

WEAPON USED

Firearms, especially handguns, were the most common weapon used to murder youth and young adults. Of the 668 homicides for which the murder weapon could be identified, 87 percent of victims died by gunfire. Of these, 76 percent were killed with handguns.

RELATIONSHIP

For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 50 percent were killed by a stranger. Thirty-two percent were killed by someone they knew. An additional 19 percent were identified as gang members. Black and Hispanic victims were more likely to be killed by a stranger than white or Asian victims.

CIRCUMSTANCE

The overwhelming majority of homicides of youth and young adults were not related to any other felony crime. For the 500 homicides in which the circumstances between the victim and offender could be identified, 83 percent were not related to the commission of any other felony. Of these, 64 percent were gang-related.

LOCATION

For all races, the most common homicide location was a street, sidewalk, or parking lot. Among youth and young adults for homicides in which the location could be determined, 54 percent occurred on a street, sidewalk, or in a parking lot. Fourteen percent occurred in the home of the victim or offender. Twelve percent occurred at another residence, and nine percent occurred in a vehicle.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The study concludes that "homicide, and particularly gun homicide, continues to be one of the most pressing public health concerns in California among youth and young adults ages 10 to 24" and states that "effective violence prevention strategies must include measures that prioritize preventing youth and young adults from accessing firearms, especially handguns."

The study recommends further research into "the identification of the make, model, and caliber of weapons most preferred by this age group as well as analysis identifying the sources of the weapons" and an "expansion of comprehensive violence intervention and prevention strategies that include a focus on the psychological well-being of witnesses and survivors of gun violence."

The Violence Policy Center (www.vpc.org) is a national educational organization based in Washington, DC, working to stop gun death and injury. Follow the VPC on Twitter (http://twitter.com/VPCinfo) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Violence-Policy-Center/284334690298?ref=ts).

The annual study "Lost Youth: A County-by-County Analysis of 2010 California Homicide Victims Ages 10 to 24" is funded by a grant from The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF). Created in 1992 as a private, independent foundation, TCWF's mission is to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education and disease prevention.

CONTACT: Sari Wisch, +1-202-822-8200 x110, press@vpc.org

SOURCE Violence Policy Center

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/10/v-print/4177236/monterey-county-ranks-1-for-youth.html

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