law enforcement

Visiting Detective Emilia Cruz: “Hunt for the Missing”

November 29, 2022

The Law Enforcement landscape changes as societal needs evolve. Years ago, local police departments generally focused on car thefts, bank robberies, burglaries, the occasional drunk, domestic disputes, etc. These days, car and home break-ins are a very low priority, with drugs, human trafficking, and cyber crimes on the rise.

 

The increase in new crimes and more sophisticated criminals requires a level of training few departments have available, so conferences sometimes fill the gap. If the budget allows, ranking officers and detectives attend in order to discover what other people in the country (or our border countries) are doing to solve the issues causing the most harm.

 

That’s how I met Detective Emilia Cruz, a guest speaker at a recent conference in Virginia, not far from D.C. Her topic hit pretty close to home, since our north Jersey county, with its proximity to seaports and major highways, was also experiencing an uptick in missing women and girls. Combined with the Mexican and Central American citizens fleeing the drug cartel violence, coming with stories of horrors their families had faced, made for complex problems. I invite you to read Detective Emilia Cruz’ account:

 

Hunt for the Missing with Detective Emilia Cruz

“I never expected to be lecturing a bunch of norteamericano detectives about hunting for missing persons in Mexico, but there I was in Alexandria, Virginia, sweating bullets and trying to remember how to speak English. My plan was to stumble through my presentation, fly back to Acapulco and slay my boss, Lieutenant Franco Silvio, for sending me to this conference on law enforcement.

Fortifying myself with a dose of caffeine before my presentation seemed like a good idea, although I was already buzzing with nerves. All the attendees were circling around, paper cups in hand and meeting each other. Ten men to every woman. Just like in Mexico.

A fellow joined me at the coffee urn and introduced himself. “Charlie Kerrian,” he said and stuck out his hand. “You must be our guest speaker.”

“Hello, I’m Detective Emilia Cruz Encinos, from Acapulco.” We shook hands. I liked him right away. He didn’t try any stupid moves, like squeezing too hard or tickling my palm like Mexican colleagues often did. “Mucho gusto, Mr. Kerrian.”

“Call me Charlie.” He sipped his coffee. “I’m really looking forward to your presentation.”

A bell rang and we filed into the conference room.

My audience was well aware of Mexico’s organized crime situation and the violence washing through the country due to the drug trade. The United States is the biggest consumer of illicit drugs that move through Mexico and cartels are forever fighting over territory and lucrative shipping routes. Violence has spiraled in Acapulco because it’s a port of entry for the Chinese chemicals used to make synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl.

My particular area of expertise is in hunting for those who have gone missing amid the drug war violence. It’s hard to get a perfect count, because many go unreported, but over 100,000 people have gone missing in Mexico over the past ten years. As many as 39 go missing every day. More mass graves are found every day, too.

Beyond a numbers tracking database, the federal government hasn’t allocated many resources to finding the missing. We have nothing like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Is it because too many of our civil and military authorities are involved with the cartels? Are they taking drug money to look the other way?

The bottom line is that in Mexico, finding the missing is left to families, private detectives and cops who hunt for the lost on their own time, like me.

I keep a binder of women who have gone missing in Acapulco. I call them Las Perdidas. The Lost Ones. I start with missing persons reports and morgue files of unidentified women. Next, I collect every scrap of helpful information that I can, starting with newspaper advertisements.

Families pay for newspaper advertisements with the headline DESPARACIDA, meaning “disappeared,” and a picture of the missing person along with a call for information. Similar notices are printed on burger wrappers or posters plastered on walls alongside ads for Jumex juice and Tía Rosa snacks.

If I’m lucky, an advertisement points to a body or a report. Usually I’m not.

Many of the women in the Las Perdidas binder are probably dead. They’ve been missing for too long. Perhaps they’re in one of Mexico’s mass graves. But without better DNA recordkeeping, we’ll never know.

Yet I have high hopes of finding one particular girl named Lila. She has swum in and out of my grasp as I investigated other crimes, but I’m going to find her again.

When I do, I will bring her home.

My presentation got a big round of applause. Charlie Kerrian asked me to write it up for an online notebook he keeps of investigative techniques. So here it is.

Thank you, Charlie, for caring about Las Perdidas. If you ever make it to Acapulco, look me up, por favor.

I could really use your help.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Carmen Amato turns lessons from a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency into crime fiction loaded with intrigue and deception.

Her Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series pits the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico’s drug cartels, government corruption, and social inequality. Described as “A thrilling series” by National Public Radio, the series was awarded the Poison Cup for Outstanding Series from CrimeMasters of America in both 2019 and 2020 and was optioned for television.

Originally from upstate New York, Carmen was educated there as well as in Virginia and Paris, France, while experiences in Mexico and Central America ignited her writing career. She has been a judge for the BookLife Prize and Killer Nashville’s Claymore Award and is a recipient of both the National Intelligence Award and the Career Intelligence Medal.

Every other Sunday, Carmen is your guide to the mystery ahead with exclusive announcements, excerpts and reviews of books she loves and think you will, too. Subscribe here: https://carmenamato.net/mystery-ahead

Please click on the titles in the riveting Detective Emilia Cruz Series to find out more.

 

 

Begin your thrill ride with CLIFF DIVER: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1

 

 

 

 

HAT DANCE: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 2

DIABLO NIGHTS: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 3

KING PESO: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 4

PACIFIC REAPER: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 5

 

 

43 MISSING: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 6. Read my review here.

 

 

 

 

RUSSIAN MOJITO: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 7

NARCO NOIR: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 8

MADE IN ACAPULCO: The Emilia Cruz Stories

THE ARTIST/EL ARTISTA: A Bilingual Short Story for Language Learning

FELIZ NAVIDAD FROM ACAPULCO: A Detective Emilia Cruz Novella

THE LISTMAKER OF ACAPULCO: A Detective Emilia Cruz Novella

Many thanks to Carmen Amato for taking the time to visit with the Kerrians! As in her books, her article is based in fact.

 

 

 

 

KN, p. 293 “Europol”

June 29, 2022

 

The internet bombards us with more information about the other side of the planet than we could ever have imagined even 20 years ago. TV and computers now stream live events as they happen, instead of via delayed taping or recording days or weeks later as was the norm during the last century. But, with that immediacy of global sharing also comes the ability to commit crimes in new and more heinous ways.

 

Bank fraud can now occur through cyber crime, with fraudulent cryptocurrency transactions as the shiny new way of scamming the unsuspecting.

 

Instead of drug deals happening on street corners and alleyways, international transport of shipping containers full of illegal drugs (and legal goods in short supply transported illegally) plague the harbor masters at entry ports of each major country.

 

Global unrest due to political or natural disasters cause people to attempt emigration to safer places, giving rise to illegal immigration attempts. Human traffickers take advantage of the young people eager to cross borders without the means to do so legally, then sell those people into slavery or worse.

 

Across the globe, law enforcement is tasked to stem local crime, provide a safe environment for its own population, and enforce the laws on the books. But, when criminals seek to commit their crimes in another region in an effort to slow down pursuit or prevent investigation into their criminal acts, law enforcement in each jurisdiction usually has to find a way to work together in order to catch the bad guys. This is not always easy. Big cities have different methods than small communities do; federal, state, and local regulations may be at odds with each other, and resources are not easily shared.

 

There have been a few TV shows featuring international law enforcement groups – a current show is FBI International. That show highlights the difficulty facing agencies battling crimes that cross international borders. Europol is one of those real-life agencies. 

 

Through Europol, the European Union, (a group of countries -presently 27- agreeing to work together in large part for economic reasons) addresses crime that crosses borders. “Our main goal is to achieve a safer Europe for the benefit of all the EU citizens.” *

 

Europol was officially established in 1995 to fight international drug trafficking and organized crime. It has operated out of The Hague (seat of government in the Netherlands) ever since. The Directors have come from various countries within the EU.

 

Forensic science is a big part of any law enforcement support system. When needed, Europol investigators are able to collect evidence at international (Eurozone) crime scenes and send it on to the lab. It is sorted and analyzed by qualified scientists who apply the latest scientific methods during processing. Law enforcement agencies across the EU can call on this assistance for the crimes that cross borders.

 

Europol helps fight these crimes:

  • Euro counterfeiting – by determining the source of equipment and supplies needed to manufacture illegal Euro dollars.
  • Illicit drug production – by helping to destroy illegal production sites, seize illegal drugs, stop illegal synthetic drug production, and to collect evidence in EU Member States.
  • Payment card fraud – by seeking and prosecuting the criminal organizations behind credit card cloning and counterfeiting, and their tampering with credit card readers and machines.
  • Terrorism – by providing immediate on-site information sharing and evaluation support for investigations into terrorist attacks, in or out of the EU.
  • Cybercrime – by providing a centralized, united response to crimes committed online affecting EU member states.
        • Financial
        • Infrastructure (i.e. power or water related)
        • Child online porn
        • Information systems

Part of Europol’s mission is not just to show up to assist local authorities, but also to train the regional law enforcement groups to better handle their own investigations – with more knowledge, a higher level of investigations can improve results.

 

Europol provides training to law enforcement personnel both in and out of the Eurozone. Connections made between officers from a variety of countries can only improve cooperation throughout the continent in order to more effectively combat criminal enterprises.

 

 *quote from the Europol website

 

 

KN, p. 287 “Postal Inspectors: Law Enforcement Agents”

March 24, 2022

 

 

Most of us think of the Post Office as the local place where we mail packages, pick up our mail from those handy P.O. Boxes, and buy stamps from the helpful window clerks. In fact there are many different types of employees within the country’s postal system, including Postal Inspectors and Postal Police Officers. The 1200 Postal Inspectors are federal law enforcement officers entitled to carry firearms and make arrests in order to protect the system from people that would commit fraud through its use.

 

The first Postmaster General of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, set up a system back in the 1770s whereby mail theft could be investigated by the newly formed U.S. Postal Inspection Service. 240+ years later, there are 200 laws that deal with specific crimes against the USPS. These days, much more than letters and money is stolen from the mail and the postal service is used by nefarious types for transporting all kinds of illegal items, including pornography.


The USPIS reports that it made 5,759 arrests in 2019, with an 80% conviction rate, largely for mail theft and mail fraud.

While mail and package thefts are thoroughly investigated, those thefts pale in comparison monetarily to the millions of dollars of illegal drugs that criminals attempt to pass through the system each year. The USPIS employs state-of-the-art methods at their National Forensic Laboratory in Virginia to detect and identify opioids and other drugs after seizure, process fingerprints and DNA to tie the drugs to the bad guys, and ferret out cyber criminals of all types that seek to misuse the mails.

Due to the growing global problems with opioid and fentanyl trafficking, the USPIS agents work cases together with the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enforce the laws of our country. One interesting method of detecting illicit drugs in the mail allows inspectors to check for 300+ substances without ever opening the packages.

The USPS takes the mission of guarding the mail quite seriously and has a few tips for private citizens to help avoid theft of packages and letters. Check them out:

  • Pick up your mail daily. If you’ll be away, contact the local post office and have them hold your mail until you return.
  • Don’t send cash in the mail.
  • If you need to send something important in the mail, take it to the physical post office or drop it in one of the big blue mail boxes right before pickup time.

If you expect to receive a particular piece of mail and don’t, call the local post office and/or call the sender as soon as you realize it hasn’t arrived on time.

 

If you suspect mail fraud, you can report it by writing to this address:

Criminal Investigations Service Center
Attn: Mail Fraud
433 W.Harrison Street, Room 3255
Chicago, Il 60699-3255

 

Just in case you think that the USPIS focuses on the bad guys alone, they also send out emergency response teams after natural disasters (like fires and hurricanes) in order to restart mail service.

 

The USPIS press kit (https://www.uspis.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/uspis-press-kit-fact-sheet-2021.pdf) points out some of the agency’s duties and history.


Stay tuned for the next article about the USPIS, where I share information about high profile cases in which they have been involved.

 

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