24 drug cartel surveillance cameras discovered in the city of San Luis Río Colorado, on the border with Arizona

Mexican authorities said on Friday, September 27, that they had detected and seized 24 drug cartel surveillance cameras attached to telephone and light posts in the border city of San Luis Rio Colorado.

The city on the Arizona border has suffered years of violence between drug cartels battling for control of the border crossing where they can smuggle drugs.

Prosecutors in the northern state of Sonora said the cameras were placed there by “falcons,” the name often used in Mexico for drug cartel lookouts that want to monitor the movements of soldiers and police.

Army troops removed the devices, which were found in three different neighborhoods. Photos suggested they were ordinary porch-style cameras wrapped in duct tape, and some were even attached to palm trees.

Located across from Yuma, Arizona, San Luis Rio Colorado is best known as a border town where Americans can go for cheap prescriptions and dental work. But the country is increasingly affected by violence by drug cartels.

It is not the first border city where cartels have installed their own surveillance networks.

In 2015, a drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas used at least 39 surveillance cameras to monitor the comings and goings of authorities in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

The cameras were powered by electrical lines above the city streets and accessed the Internet via telephone cables running along the same poles. They contained modems and could operate wirelessly or over the lines of commercial providers.

Several cameras focused on an army base, while others captured movements outside a naval post, offices of the attorney general and state police, as well as shopping centers, major thoroughfares and some neighborhoods.

In 2015, authorities also discovered 55 radio communications antennas between the nearby border towns of Matamoros and Miguel Aleman.

Source: Tribuna de San Luis

The Sonora Post