A Different War: As violence — largely from drug cartels — extends to the northernmost cities in Mexico and beyond the southernmost areas of Arizona, the gap between the traditionally “safe” and “unsafe” is shrinking. This story is the third in a three-part series that speaks of the shifting violence from Mexico into Arizona.

::View the first and second part of the series::

Though Phoenix has become the nation’s kidnapping capital, Phoenix police officials say the brutal violence on the streets in many U.S.-Mexico border towns hasn’t hit Phoenix.

“The vast majority of illegal drugs that travel through the streets of Phoenix come from Mexico,” Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Tommy Thompson said Wednesday. “It’s an issue we’re dealing with aggressively.”

The department had 368 kidnappings in 2008, and most have been drug-related, Thompson said.

“When you get a call demanding a ransom of $50,000, $200,000 or even $1 million, that’s a tip-off right there,” Thompson said. Kidnappers usually only target people who have the connections to pay off the demands, he said.

“Jane and John Q walking down the street in Phoenix don’t have the ability to come up with that amount of cash and leave law enforcement out,” Thompson said. “And you know who does? People in the drug business.”

Thompson said Phoenix police believe a large number of kidnappings go unreported. The number has been on the rise since June of 2008.

In September, the department established a home invasion and kidnapping task force to target the increase in hostage and abduction incidents.

Marco Slores, a specialist for the U.S. Army Reserves who moved to Tempe from Nogales, Ariz., in August, said the border towns in southern Arizona are major ports for drug distribution to and from Mexico.

“Every major city in the country has a tie to one of those three cities,” said Slores, a marketing freshman at ASU, referring to Nogales, Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. “Nogales is a major halfway point for drug trafficking.”

Because Phoenix is only 2 1/2 hours away from the Mexican border, Slores said it is an obvious destination for drugs and the violence that can come with them.

“The U.S. is doing its part to control drugs,” Slores said. “But it’s a different story in Mexico.”

Slores said he grew up living just two blocks from the border in Nogales and walked or drove across the border into Mexico every weekend.

“If someone gets killed in Nogales [Ariz.], it’s because they have a connection to the drug cartels,” Slores said. “[Cartel leaders] know exactly who to target, who to hit, who to cause harm to — they don’t [hurt] bystanders.”

Less than a mile away in Nogales in Sonora, Mexico, it’s a different story.

“People get shot at in malls, shopping centers, restaurants, hotels, clubs, all kinds of public places,” Slores said.

Mexican troops are stationed in the city and regularly patrol the rural outskirts of town.

Personal impact

Guillermo Valencia, a finance freshman from Nogales, Ariz., said his family and friends back home are fearful of the situation.

“Once they realized it was really dangerous, no one was crossing [the border],” Valencia said. “People wouldn’t even go outside their homes. Every day it was another dead person.”

Valencia said his mother was crossing from Mexico back into Arizona several months ago when someone shouted for everyone to get on the floor and then shots were fired.

Someone was killed in the incident, Valencia said.

“I would go across the [border] with my friends in high school all the time, and my dad would always tell me, ‘I don’t want you fooling around. Don’t give anyone bad looks.’”

The violence wasn’t taken seriously until very recently, Valencia said, citing several deaths of parents of teenagers attending the city’s Catholic high school.

“Once a week or so we’d hear about someone whose mom or dad was killed. Ninety percent of them were involved with [the cartels],” he said. “The drug cartels are trying to make a statement. Literally, like, one wrong look, one wrong anything could still get you killed right now.”

Valencia said he felt safer when he moved to the Valley last fall.

Security as a priority

Thompson of Phoenix police said Phoenix remains one of the nation’s safest large cities, despite the growing number of kidnappings.

“It is not any person that gets kidnapped, and it is not tourists,” he said.

Thompson said as many as 60 officers can work on a single kidnapping rescue.

“These criminals don’t want to bring law enforcement in — they just want the money,” Thompson said, alluding to the main reason the department believes many of these abductions go unreported.

“While most of the people are related to the drug trade, we just have not seen the brutal violence from Mexico yet,” he said. “Now ask the people who were kidnapped if it was violent? They think so but here they usually get to keep their heads and don’t end up buried in a hole somewhere.”

Thompson said Phoenix police have been successful in capturing kidnappers and putting them away for many years. The kidnapping task force works with both U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Maricopa County attorneys.

“Even first-time suspects are getting significant sentences,” Thompson said. “We’re saying, ‘Stand by, because if you’re coming to our town to [kidnap], you’ve picked the wrong place.”

Though violent kidnappings are on the rise, Thompson said the Phoenix Police Department has never been able to tie them to drug cartels in Mexico.

“Anybody can still walk down our streets and be safe,” Thompson said. “We haven’t had any kidnappers really try to take on law enforcement.”

Reach the reporter at tessa.muggeridge@asu.edu.