Cartels try to take out Juarez’s new police surveillance cameras

JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Mexican authorities say they will continue placing surveillance cameras on the streets of Juarez despite a series of coordinated attacks against the devices late Wednesday.

Eleven cameras that are part of the Centinela (Sentinel) Platform were reportedly shot at, struck with hammers or had their utility poles set on fire. Chihuahua State Public Safety Director Gilberto Loya on Thursday said only two of the devices were knocked down and showed reporters a picture of one of the assailants wielding a hammer.

“The Sentinel Platform has been under attack since we started the program. Organized crime feels threatened by this system that is being installed throughout the state,” Loya said. “(The cameras) will stop criminals from moving about with impunity. We knew (attacks) could happen; we knew they would happen.”

A slate of bogus social media posts followed the attacks, and Loya said police computer experts are investigating if they are part of a misinformation campaign.

The state police chief said the cameras are already helping bring down crime in the state’s two largest cities – Juarez and Chihuahua City – and will soon help make other communities safer.

In the past few years, drug cartel violence has spiked with numerous mass killings, severed heads left in public parks, limbs being found at the municipal landfill and bodies left next to elementary schools.

In an earlier interview, Loya told Border Report the cameras and a stepped-up police presence are reducing the cartels’ areas of influence in urban areas.

“They are losing the impunity they enjoyed moving about the city. They can no longer do that, and of course, they don’t like it. Surely, they will (attack) again. But we will not take one step back,” he said.

Sentinel Tower nearing completion in Downtown Juarez

Chihuahua state authorities on Thursday gave reporters a glimpse of the 20-story Sentinel Tower in Downtown Juarez. The 374-foot-tall concrete and steel building is 45 percent complete, construction supervisor Ignacio Silva Diaz said.

It will have a companion six-story parking lot with controlled access, a helicopter pad and its own water treatment plant for 600 police and civilian employees.

The planned height would make it the tallest building in the borderland. KTSM reported in 2021 that the tallest building in El Paso is the West Star building, standing 313 feet tall.

The Sentinel Tower (Torre Centinela) is round and “skinny” but built to withstand strong winds and even a rare earthquake, Silva said. It overlooks the old Balderas bull ring on Avenida Francisco Villa, which the government recently allowed to reopen.

The tower is meant to be a police command center and the monitor central for more than 3,000 surveillance cameras in Juarez.

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