February 5–10 drug dealers are killed in a battle with police in Rio de Janeiro.[5]
February 5 – Mexican police capture drug dealer in Mexico City.[6]
February 10 – Troops descent upon a police station in Cancún in connection with the torture and murder of former general , who led an elite anti-drugs squad.[7]
February 11–21 people, including one soldier, are shot dead in a gunfight in Chihuahua, Mexico.[8]
February 19 – International organized crime figure pleads guilty to a conspiracy to distribute ecstasy in the United States.[10]
February 27 – American raids code-named Operation Xcellerator on the Sinaloa cartel in California, Minnesota and Maryland lead to 755 arrests, the discovery of a 'super meth lab' and laboratory equipment capable of producing 12,000 ecstasy pills an hour.[11]
March[]
March 7 – NYPD and mafia associates Stephen Carapacca and Louis Eppolito are given life sentences for their part in eight murders.[12]
April 19 – In Mexico eight police officers are killed in an attack on a prison convoy transporting senior leaders of the Beltran Leyva cartel.Mexico drug gang's rescue foiled
May[]
May 18 – Raffaele Amato, a Camorra boss accused of being one of the principal importers of cocaine into Italy, is arrested in Marbella, Spain.[17]
May 21 – Colombian security forces arrest 112 members of the Norte del Valle cartel.[18]
December 31 – The bodies of six men abducted December 30 in the north-central Mexican state of Durango are found shot to death execution-style. Among them are Bobby Salcedo, an assistant principal and school board member, who is from El Monte, California. Salcedo is believed to be the first U.S. elected official killed in the four years of Mexican drug-related violence.[24]
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