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Mexican authorities mentioned Friday they’ve detected and seized 24 drug cartel surveillance cameras fastened to phone and light-weight posts within the border metropolis of San Luis Rio Colorado.
Town on the border with Arizona has suffered years of violence between drug cartels combating for management of the border crossing, the place they will smuggle medication.
Prosecutors in northern Sonora state mentioned the cameras had been positioned there by “falcons,” the identify generally utilized in Mexico for drug cartel lookouts in search of to maintain tabs on the actions of troopers and police.
Military troops eliminated the gadgets, and pictures recommended they had been widespread porch-style cameras wrapped in duct tape. They had been present in three completely different neighborhoods, and a few had been even discovered connected to palm timber.
San Luis Rio Colorado, situated throughout from Yuma, Arizona, is greatest generally known as a border city the place People go for cheap prescriptions and dental work. However it has more and more been hit by drug cartel violence.
It’s not the primary border metropolis the place cartels have put in their very own surveillance networks.
In 2015, a drug cartel within the northern state of Tamaulipas used at the very least 39 surveillance cameras to watch the comings and goings of authorities within the metropolis of Reynosa throughout the border from McAllen, Texas.
The cameras had been powered by electrical traces above the town streets and accessed the web by way of telephone cables alongside the identical poles, and included modems and had been able to working wirelessly or by way of business suppliers’ traces.
A number of of the cameras had been educated on a military base, whereas others captured motion outdoors a marine put up, places of work of the lawyer basic and state police in addition to procuring facilities, main thoroughfares and a few neighborhoods.
Over the course of 2015, authorities additionally found 55 radio communication antennas between the close by border cities of Matamoros and Miguel Aleman.