Mexican police dismantled more than 100 cameras used in a sophisticated cartel surveillance operation in a city immediately south of the Texas border. The operation follows shortly after the Gulf Cartel spent days destroying police cameras, setting roadblocks, carjacking vehicles, and terrorizing locals.
Over the weekend, Tamaulipas state police located and removed more than 100 surveillance cameras placed by the Gulf Cartel throughout Reynosa. Authorities say the network was made up of commercially available cameras on light and telephone poles. The cameras piggybacked on Wi-Fi signals from nearby homes and businesses to transmit to cartel members.
The Gulf Cartel has a long history of using surveillance cameras, clandestine radio networks, and lookouts to maintain superior operational control over authorities.
The removals come as the Gulf Cartel works to disable police cameras in the same border city, sometimes leading to shootouts. The police surveillance network is often promoted by the current governor, thereby ensuring that efforts to attack it draws blowback from authorities.
The Gulf Cartel has been carjacking buses and other vehicles to ram concrete poles supporting the police cameras.
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.C Sanchez” and J.A. Espinoza” from Tamaulipas.