Law Enforcement

Guinea-Bissau policeman Edmundo Mendes got a tip that South American drug traffickers had dumped 2 tons of cocaine off the coast of his West African country and marked it with a buoy so confederates could pick it up, then smuggle it to Europe. But Mendes, part of his country's tiny counter-narcotics force, was powerless because he didn't have a boat with which to seize the drugs. Even if he had, he and his colleagues were pitifully short of weapons to defend themselves if a fight ensued.

Two summers ago, drug gangs, leftist rebels and right-wing militias traded mortar and machine-gun fire daily as they vied for control of this steamy port city. Teens were paid $200 a month -- a king's ransom in this impoverished community -- to act as lookouts for narcos. Armed groups fought it out in the neighborhoods and trash-strewn inlets from which 60-foot speedboats departed for Central America and Mexico with illicit drug loads. With an average of three killings a day, Buenaventura's homicide rate was among the highest on the planet.

Federal authorities have repeatedly said their priority is to find and remove illegal immigrants with violent criminal histories, but the U.S. government's stepped-up enforcement in recent years has led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to a new study.

A city inspector dropped by the Bulldog Cafe Collective on Melrose Avenue last week to see if it was still in business. It was. Inside the spare, modern interior, dusky green marijuana buds were still displayed in plastic jars. An owner who is often at the store tweezed whimsically named strains into small vials for customers.

Efforts by Mexico and the United States to stem the skyrocketing border drug and weapons trade are failing, and both countries are to blame for the rise of violent cartels responsible for more than 6,000 deaths in Mexico last year, lawmakers and experts said in a Senate hearing Tuesday. For years, elected officials in Washington portrayed Mexico as being largely responsible for the problems spawned by the increasingly powerful crime syndicates -- and for fixing them.

For the last two months, Green Truck mobile catering services would park on Wilshire Boulevard along Los Angeles' Miracle Mile and serve handmade organic fare to the neighborhood's lunch crowd. "It was wonderful," said Bobby Allen, general manger of the Culver City-based company. "We had a line of people every day." But last week, the lines disappeared after police officers swooped in and forced Green Truck and several other mobile food vendors parked in the mid-Wilshire area to move on. Some drivers said they were cited for minimal violations such as parking too close to the curb, or parking too far away.

President Obama will ask Congress for $27 billion for border and transportation security in the next budget year, fulfilling a promise to the Mexican government to battle the southbound flow of illegal weapons and setting the stage for immigration reform by first addressing enforcement, administration officials said Tuesday. The spending, an 8% increase over this year's, will enable the administration to hire more agents and enhance security at air- and seaports.

International law enforcement officials, including deputy U.S. Atty. Gen. David Ogden, called today for a far more coordinated global response to the growing threat of organized crime syndicates, which they said are increasingly teaming up with terrorist networks and drug traffickers to pose an unprecedented national security threat to the United States and its allies. Speaking at the 78th general assembly of the global police agency Interpol in Singapore, Ogden and some of his counterparts acknowledged that they need to do much more to work together on many fronts, including attacking the money laundering pipelines that are enabling the crime syndicates to flourish in terror hot spots such as Pakistan and Afghanistan and other strategic locations such as Europe, Africa and Latin America.

They can spot the smile on a suspected smuggler's face from 10,000 feet in the air, record full-color video of his run for shore and simultaneously track 5,000 ships spread over hundreds of miles of ocean. Flying above the Atlantic about halfway between Florida and the Bahamas, the latest addition to the government's anti-smuggling arsenal can track the trajectory of a boat leaving Cuba and compare it -- in seconds -- to every filed course plan for vessels on the water.

Church of Scientology critics are accusing Riverside County of kowtowing to the religion and infringing on free speech by passing an ordinance that limits protest outside the church's sprawling complex near Hemet. For the last year, a handful of demonstrators who believe Scientology is an abusive cult have picketed Golden Era Productions, the church's main center for the production and dissemination of videos and tapes. The campus is home to 500 church employees.