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According to the San Jose Mercury News, Sergio Giron is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, a member of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang (a.k.a. MS-13) and a convicted felon. Having served a 346-day sentence for assault with a deadly weapon after shooting a gang defector (charges since dropped), Giron awaits deportation hearings. To pay for an immigration lawyer, Giron’s fellow gang members began stealing cars and chopping them for parts. The admission illustrates the direct link between car theft and organized crime and, as this report from The Boston Globe points out, international terrorism. It's high time the states stepped-up their cooperation with federal authorities in this area.
7 Comments on “Car Theft Fuels Gang Violence and International Terrorism… Still...”
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Like everything else funding is the answer. If I understand the article correctly this is simply another unfunded federal mandate. You can’t blame states with not complying if congress does not fund the database.
From the article: only nine states have done so, making it nearly impossible to identify hundreds of thousands of stolen vehicles — including a small but steady number that end up as car bombs in Iraq. This sounds suspiciously like Limbaugh math. How exactly did they smuggle all those stolen Suburbans to Iraq, in diaper bags? Was this taken directly from Karl Rove’s fax machine? How can you trust anything that comes from the federal government’s mouth, after all the lies of the past six years? Any article with the words "terrorist," "Iraq," and "federal government" in it should be viewed as suspect unless independently verified (with your own eyes, not with a government agency).
Boston Globe journalists are funnier than CNNs. For cutting-edge, hard-nosed, factual reporting, I prefer The Onion.
346 days for attempted murder. If you have a nagging urge to kill someone, take them to California. I guess if your victim dies, you would have to serve the entire 365 days. If you make a 1% error on your tax return the sentence would be 20 years to life though.
Is there any municipality that takes car theft and car break-ins seriously? They are considered essentially victim-less crimes, it takes multiple convictions to get any jail time (!), and virtually all municipalities charge law abiding citizens for the towing and storage of (if they are lucky) recovered stolen vehicles. You always get more of an activity if you reward it. At this time, car theft is only marginally illegal.
So, does the “MS-13” name come from the fact that “Mara Salvatrucha” contains an “M”, an “S”, and thirteen additional letters? Sort of like how nerds abbreviate “internationalization” as “i18n”?
Cliff G.,
I agree. I would personally like to see this sort of crime punished and deterred, and greatly reduce illegal drug incarceration, starting with at least, Marijuana.
whitenose: This sounds suspiciously like Limbaugh math. How exactly did they smuggle all those stolen Suburbans to Iraq, in diaper bags? Was this taken directly from Karl Rove’s fax machine?
Most stolen cars leave the country in shipping containers. US Customs currently checks something on the order 10% of these containers (and that may be lower). If you’ve never been to a large shipping yard or port authority dock it is something to see. Like a kicked over ant-hill, only less organized. I don’t know where the cars go from there but getting them out of the US is painfully easy.