New Cell of Sinaloa Cartel in Baja California

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Zetatijuana article

Subject Matter: Sinaloa Cartel, Baja California 
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

El Brusco, El Ocho, El Polo, El Poncho and El Morrillo, are operators of Rene Arzate, La Rana, they are in the sights of  the State Council for Security of Baja California and under fire of the sicarios of the CJNG, that the authorities have still not identified.

Reporter: Zeta Investigations
The criminals that represent the Sinaloa Cartel in Ensenada, together with their criminal enemies of the Cartel Arellano Felix (CAF), allied with the CJNG in their fight over territory, have been identified by the Group for Coordination.



Rene Arzate, La Rana, and his brother Alfonso Arzate "El Aquiles in Ensenada, are the criminals that operate under the orders of Misael Frias Ochoa, El Misa, who was a member of the CAF, and according to data from intelligence sources, allied with the Sinaloa Cartel in 2015.

One event that came to light recently was an attack on the group of El Misa, when his brother El18 was assassinated in December of 2017, his body was found by the Municipal Police in the trunk of a car abandoned in the San Ramon gardens in Ensenada.

Leopoldo Lizarraga Ochoa, El Polo or El Pantera

El Misa, who has been in prison since the 18th of May of 2016, when the State Police detained him in the Portena community, driving in a stolen vehicle in possession of two rifles, a .45 caliber pistol and 2.7 kilos of the drug known as Crystal meth.

He was signalled by the authorities as being the organizer and intellectual author of the attack against "Poker" perpetrated on the 26th of January of 2016 in coordination with Raul Miranda Ordaz, El Alejo, whom the authorities consider head of a cell and right hand man of the Arzate brothers since the end of 2015.

The criminal antecedents of "Alejo", show auto theft in 2010, and later homicide in 2013 when he was detained and then liberated for a double assassination in Tijuana.


In January of 2016, the Group for Coordination signalled him as having sent Sinaloa sicarios from Tijuana to Ensenada to orchestrate the failed assassination of a leader of the CAF,

More members of the Cartel

Below the plaza bosses of the Sinaloa Cartel in Ensenada, according to statements made by arrested drug dealers, the authorities have identified two men about whom they have little information.

Carlos Adrian Casas Reyes, El Ocho, who at this moment is the enforcer of the Arzate brothers in the port. Also nicknamed "El Mercenario" or "El Tragedias". However according to the State Council for Security he is thought to be a mid level operator, officially he has not previously been captured or been in prison, and has no pending arrest warrants.

Carlos Adrian Casas Reyes, El Ocho

Jorge Alberto Arce Guillen, El Tiger or El Brusco, Zeta can confirm that his man has been imprisoned since the 15th of November of 2016, in a open process for homicide.

He was captured by elements of the Municipal Police of Ensenda after Jose Saldana Lopez, El Che was shot on Calle Octava in the Amplicacion Hidalgo colonia, El Che later died in hospital. At the crime scene experts found spent shell casings from two different calibers, .40 and 7.62 x 39.

The alleged killers were detained minutes later on Calle Abelardo L. Rodriguez in the Nueva Ensenada fraccionamiento, authorities announced the apprehension of Jose Alberto N - Arce Guillen, 31 years of age and Jose Manuel N, 29 years of age.

On 17th of November, in an initial conference, the Public Ministry announced that they were captured aboard a vehicle who's characteristics were given by an unidentified witness in a paper that contained the following description: Blue gray, Honda Accord 7GG13, and they explained both detained were carrying both pistols and rifles, the weapons tested positive for the attack in ballistic tests.

El Che had already survived an attack which occurred on 16th of August of 2014 in the Costa Azul fraccionamiento, it is alleged that he was attacked because he had tried to engage in drug dealing activities. This time the attack came from a group of the Sinaloa Cartel, and this version is that there is a personal issue related to a woman. The lawyer of the family of the late Saldana Lopez said that in neither of the two files open on the attacks on his client, was the issue of drug dealing raised.

Christian Alexis Mendoza Guillen, El Plaga, or El Morrillo, whom the Group for Coordination located in this cell as operator in the Diaz Ordaz area in San Quintin during the past year, there is information that he may have been "disappeared". Zeta consulted the prison service who say he is not a registered inmate.

Criminal operating controls

In the second level of control authorities locate:

Leopoldo Lizarraga Ochoa, El Polo or El Pantera, whose antecedents begin as a car thief in 2012 in Sinaloa. He appeared on the Group for Coordination for Baja Californias radar in 2015.

Alfonso Niebla Vega, El Poncho

According to criminal statements, his group make profits of 15 thousand pesos per day, and according to intelligence reports, receives protection from several Municipal Police but only three have been identified by nicknames, La Chapis, Becerra and El Moreno.

The only public detention of El Polo was executed by the Municipal Police in November of 2015, along with Elvis Daniel Aguirre, accused of having entered a house to steal a cell phone, shot at the owner and fled in a white pickup that had no licence plates.

In the original complaint it was reported that four criminals had participated, but only two were arrested. They were in possession of two doses of crystal and ammunition in the following calibers, .223, .45 and .40. Both subject entered and left the penitentiary on the same day.

Alfonso Niebla Vega, El Poncho, arrested in February 2009 and admitted to the Ensenada prison for the crime of possession of drugs, and was released in May of 2011.

In June of 2013, the State Preventative Police captured Niebla Vega again, then 31 years old. They stopped him because he was driving at speed through Ejido El Porvenir in a van, they arrested him and found him in possession of 1130 doses of crystal meth. However, after that capture he was not imprisoned and his current status is at liberty. The Group for Coordination put him carrying out his criminal activity in the Ensenada Valley.

CJNG

Police also refer to the invasive presence of the CJNG in alliance with the remnants of the CAF, who in recent years had practically operated as independents. "They are already in the whole city and in the valley", they assured, with the support of the Municipal Police groups, " and some federal and ministerial officers that work for the highest bidder by contract with each other".

However, the full identification of those leading the criminal struggle on the Jalisco side, after the capture of Gabriel Ayala Fonseca in May of 2016, has been practically nil, despite months of investigation and street work by the State Police and Armed Forces in the port, carried out in three stages due to the resurgence of violence in the port, resulting in high impact homicides in the first period of January to June of 2016, and then, the first and last quarter of 2017.

In fact the municipal and ministerial authorities evade the issue, if any of the members of these cartels are caught for any crime, there is no further investigation, nor intelligence work even though Baja California Security Law instructs that all the police in the State have the obligation to "organize, analyze, select and use this information, in the preservation of public safety and in the investigation for the prevention of crimes, in support of the public ministry.

Article 104

The Police institutions, to best achieve their objectives, will establish, at least the following diligence: Research, they will be responsible for the investigation through the approved system of collection, classification, registration, analysis, evaluation and exploitation of information.

Article 105

The police units in charge of the scientific investigation of the crimes will be located within the organic structure of the Procurators office, or in the Police Institutions or in both. However the last high level capture of criminals of the two cartels in Ensenada dates back 20 months, and in that lapse in time the executions have increased. In the three previous years, the murders were 48 per year, with an average of 1250 victims of intentional injuries per year. While throughout 2016, the murders increased to 68 and in 2017, closed with 273 and increase of more than 300%.