The Drug War At Home: The Texas Valley Of Corruption
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The southernmost tip of Texas is the 120-mile-wide Rio Grande Valley. This region is home to a string of small towns perched on the edge of Mexican states like Tamaulipas, where drug cartels have taken over entire cities. These cartels are expanding their reach north of the border, trapping many public officials in the United States in its web of corruption.
The tiny town of Sullivan City, in the Rio Grande Valley, is now mired in the scandal of the drug trade. And in the middle of it all is former Police Chief Hernán Guerra, charged with drug trafficking.
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Guerra is just the latest public official turned corrupt crook in the Rio Grande Valley. The long list includes sheriffs, other police chiefs and even judges.
Gene Falcón was one of them. He served as Starr County sheriff for 17 years before taking a prison-bound nosedive for taking kickbacks in the late 1990s.
“I would be the first person to say: ‘Man look what happened to me. I don’t want that to happen to you,’” Falcón said. “Believe me, I’m not proud of it. I’m ashamed of it.”
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This is the spillover. Not violence — money. Corruption. There is so much money involved, the corruption is almost inevitable. The second to last line of the report:
“You see it everyday. You see it all the time,” Benavides said. “You know, it takes two or three years, but eventually they get caught.”And here’s some of the violence. The last line of the report:
The latest to fall may be the police chief of the town of La Joya, next to Sullivan City. He was found dead in his car May 12. It was ruled a suicide. But many locals have little doubt there was some cartel connection.