Fentanyl Shipment Busts Spike in Mexican Border State
Mexican authorities are reporting a spike in fentanyl seizures in the border state of Nuevo Leon, a region not typically known to see the narcotic trafficked or distributed.
The first seizure took place on Tuesday evening in western Monterrey during a house raid. Authorities found 12 kilograms of fentanyl in packaged powder form, law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas. Authorities also arrested a man and a woman at the house who claimed to be renters for the past six months.
In a separate seizure on November 12, agents with Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office obtained a warrant to raid a house in the Santa Fe neighborhood of the city. Federal authorities asked for the help of a tactical team from the state police agency Fuerza Civil. While no arrests were made, authorities did find, 29,000 pills.
On November 5, Monterrey’s Municipal Police arrested three men in the downtown area with 950 doses. According to local news outlets, police saw two men in a Toyota dropping off a bag of 750 pills to a third man. Inside the vehicle, authorities found another 200 pills.
Officials are not disclosing which cartel is involved in the current distribution of fentanyl. However, the timing suggests the Sinaloa Cartel could be a suspect as it gains new turf in the border state. The cartel is known to be a major distributor further west along the U.S.-Mexico Border.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.P. De la Garza” from Nuevo Leon.
DC Council Lowers Sentences for Gun Crimes as Homicides Surge
The Washington, D.C., city council on Tuesday voted to dramatically reform the city's criminal code, reducing penalties for offenses including illegal gun possession and carjacking, even as D.C. has seen a spike in homicides in recent years.
The legislation, which requires the approval of Mayor Muriel Bowser (D.), would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for most crimes, the Washington Post reported, and lower the maximum sentences for crimes such as carjacking and robbery.
The reforms to the city's criminal code come as homicides in D.C. spiked 14 percent in 2021 from 2020. The 226 killings in 2021 are more than double the 88 homicides the city saw in 2012.
Tuesday's vote marks the second time this month that the council approved the legislation, which is required for bills in D.C. to advance. This week's deliberation over the bill was contentious, as some council members challenged the bill's provisions that would lower the maximum penalty for carrying a pistol without a license and possession of a gun as a felon to two years in prison.
Councilwoman Brooke Pinto (D.) proposed an amendment that would have increased maximum sentences for illegally carrying and possessing firearms, but it was rejected by a majority of the council. Public safety committee chairman Charles Allen (D.) said the amendment was not supported by data showing it would improve public safety, according to the Post‘s reporting.
"For supporters of this amendment, I hear you saying we need to raise penalties to meet this moment, to send a message. But I ask you to show your work," Allen said. "At some point, this council needs to reckon with what it means to have one of the highest incarceration rates per capita in the free world and yet endure this kind of violence."
Criminal justice reform advocates supported the legislation on the basis that it would reduce racial disparities in incarceration. Jinwoo Charles Park, head of a city commission to reform the criminal code, said he opposed the amendment to raise penalties for gun crimes because "increases in the average sentence for these offenses would have a disproportionate effect on African-American defendants," the Post reported.
Allen has rebuffed characterizations of the legislation as a soft-on-crime reform, saying the purpose of the bill is to rewrite "unclear" criminal laws and address "overlapping charges with inconsistent or missing definitions and elements [and] outdated terminology."
Other crimes besides murder have surged in D.C., including carjacking, which would see reduced maximum sentences if Bowser signs the bill. Carjackings have tripled since 2019. A doctor was murdered in March after he tried to prevent a carjacker from stealing his car, a city council candidate had his car stolen at gunpoint in January, and in August rookie running back for the Washington Commanders Brian Robinson Jr. was shot multiple times in an attempted carjacking.
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