Our government has sent hundreds of agents and intelligence analysts to the Mexican border in recent weeks to stem violence that President Obama has likened to 1920s gangland Chicago.
"The drug cartels have too much power, are undermining and corrupting huge segments of Mexican society," Obama said during a recent appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"And so he (Mexican President Felipe Calderon) has taken them on in the same way that... Eliot Ness took on Al Capone back during Prohibition."
The Obama administration wants to prevent that violence – torture and murder between rival drug cartels and even the beheadings of federal police – from spilling into the United States. But local police say they've already seen signs of it here, and it could get worse.
This problem begins with American demand that has people in Central and South America killing each other for the opportunity to supply our country with drugs.
"We have worked a considerable number of homicides and aggravated assaults over the last few years that are motivated by the drug trade," said Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz. "An increasing number of these cases involve Mexico drug connections. It is absolutely something we are concerned about."
Drug violence has claimed an estimated 7,000 lives in Mexico in the past 15 months.
But that war also has hit very close to home and likely will follow the well-worn path that cocaine, heroin, marijuana – and now meth – have taken on their way here through the Texas panhandle and into western Kansas.
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