Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 10

All mnnn New police chief killed in Piedras Negras $14,988 Austin American-Statesman WORLD NATION Sunday, April 26, 2009 fez B10006 1 jr.r.x III them fearful of reprisals from gangs'. Their conflict with the ex-colonel was a reflection of mounting tensions between Mexican police and the military, which is leading a nationwide offensive to crush violent drug cartels. Authorities said they administered polygraph tests to all 120 police officers on the force after Navarro's death and are questioning the six who failed. In appointing Navarro, the Piedras Negras government was following the lead of President Felipe Calderon, who has relied heavily on the military in his fight against drug cartels. Calderon has acknowledged that corruption is pervasive among Mexican police at all levels.

Mexico's drug violence has claimed more than 10,700 lives since 2006, when Calderon launched his anti-drug campaign. About 45,000 soldiers have been deployed to drug-plagued areas. In the border city of Juarez, Chihuahua, across from El Paso, two federal police agents were shot to death Friday night as they walked in the downtown area after leaving a bar, state police spokesman Enrique Torres said Saturday. Torres said gunmen opened fire on the agents from a car. He said authorities found a message threatening federal agents two miles south of the crime scene.

Also Saturday, the federal Public Safety Department announced the capture of an alleged cartel hit man suspected in the abduction of American anti-kidnapping expert Felix Batista. Batista was kidnapped in Coahuila state Dec. 10 and hasn't been heard from since. German Torres, 29, was arrested Friday in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, the department said in a statement. Torres is allegedly a founding member of the Zetas, a group of assassins for the Gulf drug cartel, who supervised training operations, kidnappings and killings.

By Oscar Villalba ASSXIATFDIHESS PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila Gunmen on Saturday killed the police chief of a town across the border from Texas less than three weeks after he took over the local force with the aim of purging alleged corruption. Six police officers were being questioned in the attack. Assailants wielding Kalashnikov and AR-15 rifles opened fire on the chief, retired Mexican army Col. Arturo Navarro, as he drove home in Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, investigators said. Navarro took over as police chief April 7 and, soon after, fired three high-rank- ing officers as part of a departmental purge.

On Tuesday, 70 officers had walked off the job to demand Navarro's resignation. They complained that his leadership left TT ARC Relocates Physicians to NEW Far West Medical Tower Austin Regional Clinic opened ARC Far West Medical Tower on April 20, 2009. It consolidated three other ARC offices into the new building, relocating physicians and staff from: Medical Park Tower ENT and Dermatology; Set on Northwest Rheumatology; and ARC Brykerwoods Dermatology, Family Medicine, General Surgery and Weight Management All physicians at the clinics mentioned above started seeing patients at 6811 Austin Center as of April 20th and April 27th. The ARC clinics at Medical Park Tower ENT, Seton Northwest Rheumatology, and Brykerwoods have closed. For additional information or to find a physician close to you, please call our information and referral line at (512) 272-4636 or visit our web site wwwAjstinRegionalClinic.com.

-'77- 5 Is 1 Y' I xr-kii1 -a: i r. iVuO' 1 agents Advisory Group lx.c. 512-501-1275- South Round Rock 512-501-12861 Marble Falls 512-553-6954 6 Agents 11 Advisory -Group L.L.C aurn- 1 JayJanner axiericvn-statesmvn Don Zimmerman, a Republican activist who won a utility board seat said he was dismayed to learn that moving the polling place to Canyon Creek Elementary School, as he had promised, required Justice Department approval and $1,250 in legal fees. CASE: Activist sees no history of bias; some fear losing tool to protect rights Annual ptrccnuac yield iAPYV SlOOOfJ munmum depoM Raw Hibec! 10 cbijiac pnar 10 portruue Perutt fc arr withdrawal VieW ttajy reflect tonui iM maumum nr per hoturbotd Operating under ticvme iM3JV5 AgroU Actawry Ortmfk. LiX onertng FDIC mtmcd CD with am miort to nHrorfuoB our anic Ksrsnce Accnti Advsw a sol bank twvar -J locaac he hi the wrUm HJJl HWufedCUi Presto1 I il 1 IJUUB Canyon Creek neighborhood (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No.

1) TIlTTur i CJUOLE HOUSE SPECIAL I Boulder Ln. A A A Austin 1 1 V2mile l'yi2222l 1 Detail! Vf-yV" I I Austin! Ax mduB5rts Can tower your er.t jsSSSTSStSl, Helps reduce allergens and odo caiiforimi RKH-Una-UDUf Hunt Estimate laborated to sue the Houston, school district over race-based admissions to a magnet school and Blum leaped at the chance to work again with the former solicitor general of Texas, whom he considers one of the nation's premier appellate court practitioners. Blum's organization offered to pay Coleman to pursue the Section 5 lawsuit. Blum declined to disclose the amount, but it was apparently enough to allow Coleman to approach the Canyon Creek utility board with an offer to sue the federal government at no charge. The board accepted.

think in these days and times that we don't really need oversight by the Justice Department," said Bill Ferguson, president of the board. Canyon with a population of about 3,500, asked to be freed from preclearance requirements or, barring that, for Section 5 to be overturned. A federal court, however, rejected the suit in 2008, ruling that "racial discrimination in voting continues throughout covered jurisdictions." The utility board had to decide whether to take the next step under the Voting Rights Act and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. By then, some things had changed in Canyon Creek.

'A few idealogues' Chris Bowers, a Democrat, was elected to the utility board in 2008 with the promise to oppose the Voting Rights Act lawsuit. He argues that the board should stick to its job overseeing a neighborhood park and assessing taxes to repay the water and sewer bonds and said he worries that negative publicity about the lawsuit will deflate property values in Canyon Creek. "I think a few ideologues gained control of a political body with fairly limited scope and misused it," Bowers said. But Bowers' effort to derail the Supreme Court appeal lost 4-1. "At least there is a record of opposition" from the neighborhood, he said.

Another opponent is Continued from Al in America. Supporters praise the neighborhood for challenging what they call an outdated response to the nation's bigoted past particularly now that an African American man occupies the White House. Critics say Canyon Creek is attacking what they consider a vital tool against discrimination. They also question how residents of a neighborhood that is only 7 percent black and Latino and whose family incomes are double the Travis County median could understand the importance of the Voting Rights Act. Neighborhood sentiment is divided as well, though leaders on both sides of the issue admit that many Canyon Creek residents seem unaware of the fight being waged in their name.

Stueber, who has not taken a side in the fight, said he was only trying to be helpful when he offered his garage as a polling place to elect the board of directors of a small local utility: Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1, created in 1988 to bring water and sewer service to the then-new subdivision. "I moved out the car, set up two card tables along the wall and put the ballot box by the doors," he said. Enter Don Zimmerman, a Republican activist who ran for the utility board on a promise of moving the polling place to a more convenient spot, an elementary school about three blocks away. Zimmerman won, but when he tried to keep his promise, he was dismayed to learn that the simple move required Justice Department approval known as "preclearance" involving a 20-plus-page form, $1,250 in legal fees and two months of waiting.

Zimmerman argues that the neighborhood, created 23 years after the Voting Rights Act became law, should not be hounded by racism from Texas' past. "The people here have no history of discrimination. Zero. So why should they thaniel Lesane, an African American resident of Can: yon Creek. Lesane joined the Supreme Court case, opposing the utility, with the state and Austin chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"There are still serious problems with voter intimidation and voting irregularities across the state," said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAAP. Section 5 "has been a real insurance policy for us. If you don't have that, you'd be amazed at the things people will try to do." But Coleman, representing the utility district, argued that Section 5 is an unparalleled and often unjustified federal intrusion into local affairs. Likening preclearance to a badge of shame, Coleman said Section 5 unfairly paints broad swaths of the nation as untrustworthy, regardless of progress on race relations, "That portrayal unfairly demeans current residents of all races in covered jurisdictions and diminishes both the progress our country has made and the gravity of the evils the civil rights movement fought to overcome," he told the Supreme Court in a brief. No state or local government covered by Section 5, however, has joined the utility in its fight.

In fact, Travis County intervened in the case in favor of Section 5, arguing that the utility's limited election experience leaves it unable to gauge the benefits of preclearance. Only one of seven elections administered by the utility was contested, and it drew just 20 voters, said Renea Hicks, the county's lawyer. By contrast, Travis County registers thousands of voters and conducts elections for 107 local jurisdictions, yet finds preclearance to be a valuable tool for ensuring fair elections, Hicks said. "From our experience it still is needed, important and helpful," he said. The case is Northwest Austin MUD No.

1 v. Attorney General Eric Holder, 08-322. 912-2569 I KfnfllYiR'li'ihVW Mllt? 111 1 Recycle Your Old Outdated Electronics TVs Computers Monitors Laptops Keyboards Mice Robert Calzada automatically be presumed guilty?" he said. A fight was born, though it would take four years to reach a courtroom. 'Don't need oversight' Texas is among eight states Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina are the others where every government subdivision must pre-clear even minor changes to voting practices.

Parts of eight more states also are subject to Section 5, including most of Virginia. Congress has reauthorized Section 5 four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension adopted unanimously by the Senate and 390-33 in the House in 2006. Seeing the lopsided vote coming, conservative organizations had already begun thinking about a federal lawsuit. "I was putting out feelers all over the country hoping to find a jurisdiction that would challenge the reauthorization," said Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, an advocacy group that seeks to challenge race-based government policies. Blum heard back from Greg Coleman, an Austin lawyer who was representing Canyon Creek in a lawsuit against the City of Austin over tax issues and knew neighborhood leaders were unhappy about Section 5.

Blum and Coleman had col p0UND ROCK LmZi BASEBALL CLUB BASEBALL CLUB at The DELL DIAMOND 3400 East Valley Palm Blvd FREE TICKET Over 500 Round Rock Express Baseball Tickets to give-away to Recycling Participants! (while supplies last) rV A Sponsored By: NO BATTERIES ACCEPTED.