Extortions from Puente Grande: Jalisco

 "Char" for Borderland Beat

This information was posted by INFORMADOR.MX

By: Jaime Barrera

January 14, 2025 - 03:50 am

Some years ago, based on public denunciations and journalistic works, the high levels of corruption in the state prisons of the Puente Grande penitentiary nucleus were pointed out, due to the criminal self-government that has controlled them for years and that we will have to see to what extent it persists at present. A high-ranking police chief confessed to me, disconcerted and irritated, his impotence to control the use of the signal inhibitors and thus put an end, in addition to the wave of extortions that began to be committed against the population from the prisons, to the communication to the outside, with which detained criminal leaders continue to orchestrate their gangs in their various criminal activities.

“It takes me longer to go out to the free highway to Zapotlanejo, after supervising and leaving on all the signal inhibitors in the different penitentiary centers so that no one can make use of the cell phones that are introduced irregularly, when they stop working again,” he admitted to me in a clear recognition of the powerful and great web of corruption and government complicity that allows the prisons, with extortion and other abuses with people deprived of their freedom, to become an inexhaustible source of resources that strengthens criminal groups.

Given all this background, the announcement made last week by Governor Pablo Lemus that all signal jammers will be renewed is not an underage matter, after the new commanders of the General Directorate of Prevention and Social Reinsertion (DGPyRS) detected, barely a month into his administration, that telephone extortion has been registered from inside the Puente Grande prisons.

To put an end to this criminal activity, which is a whole illegal industry that leaves them juicy profits, in addition to renewing the jammers and entrusting them to officials who are not part of this corrupt scheme, they should also investigate whether or not the so-called “aunts' rooms”, which are nothing more than a kind of “call center” that they have inside the various prisons, are still functioning or not, in which they operate fixed telephones from where the inmates co-opted by the mafias randomly call families pretending to be their “nephews” so that they deposit money, or in the worst case, extort them for the kidnapping of a loved one they deceived of having one of their own captives.

If these actions succeed in combating and eradicating extortion from these prisons, the Lemus government could also be taking a big step towards recovering security in the state, retaking control of the prisons in Puente Grande.

SOURCE: INFOMADOR.MX