No Good Options

Saturday, Torreón suffered its fourth bank robbery of the new year. There were only three last year, all of them after September. It's not a coincidence that since last summer, the city has been flooded by army and federal police troops. This is another example of the dilemma Mexico faces in cracking down on drugs. The passage of tons of cocaine through the area is unsettling, but if carried out peacefully, drug traffic is less of a menace than bank robberies, assaults of armored cars, and home burglaries, which are also on the rise. This isn't argument for the police laying off the smugglers, but it just shows how for Mexican law enforcement, there are no options that don't carry negative side effects.