Drug cartels’ homemade armored ‘monster’ tanks seized by Mexican government
The Mexican government released video of customized “Franken-tanks” seized from drug cartels being destroyed.
The narco vehicles have been modified with battering rams and steel plates welded onto regular pickup and semi trucks to make them extra-tough for the deadly drug runners’ nefarious activities.
They could be seen getting torn up by a crane in government footage that went as far as blurring the identity of the crane operator to protect him from any repercussions.
The so-called “monster” vehicles look like a cross between cartoon tanks and medieval war machines.
Some even have openings for machine guns so cartel snipers can pick off rival cartel members or Mexican law enforcement officers, according to the site Border Report.
“The modifications applied to these vehicles represent a danger to the safety of law enforcement agencies and the community in general,” the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office told the outlet.
“Their destruction diminishes the mobility and firepower of these organized criminal groups.”
Dubbed “monstruo” or “monster” vehicles by the Mexican government, the tanks are the closest thing cartels have to armored vehicles.
These most recently seized homemade tanks were made by the Gulf Cartel, Zetas and Northeast Cartel.
Police in the state of Tamaulipas, on the southern border of Mexico, took the vehicles into custody after finding them during patrols of known drug trafficking areas or after armed confrontations with drug cartels.
The “monsters” were taken to an impound lot in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, to be taken apart this week.
In the last four years, Tamaulipas state police have seized 257 similar armored vehicles from narcos.
Mexican police battling against the cartels in the area also recently made a high profile arrest, bringing in Salinas Cortinas of the Gulf cartel, whose was nicknamed “La Cabra,” or “The Goat,” in English last month.
Cortinas was busted with two guns and 600 suspected fentanyl pills. He was said to have controlling drug trafficking in a territory comprising the towns of Camargo and Miguel Aleman, across the border from the Texas towns of Rio Grande City and Roma.
The Gulf cartel also made international headlines in March, when some of its members allegedly kidnapped American citizens in Mexico, leaving two people dead.
The cartel’s Scorpions faction later apologized for the violent March 3 abduction in the city of Matamoras and turned over five gang members to the authorities.
