Spillover Violence from Mexico, Reality or Exaggeration

From his office window, El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen has a clear view of Ciudad Juarez, El Paso’s blood-drenched sister city just across the Rio Grande in northern Mexico.

The carnage that has claimed 4,700 lives over the past two years has been confined primarily to Juarez. But Allen is taking no chances. He recently obtained approval to buy 1,145 M4 rifles civilian versions of the military weapons used by U.S. combat troops — to put his officers on equal footing with the heavily armed criminals in Mexico’s drug gangs.

The drug war across the river is “so dadgum close that it has to be a concern to the law enforcement community here,” Allen said. “You have to speculate that it could come here. That’s a reality.”

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