Law enforcement officials try to make sense of aliases

Recent bouts of border violence and the narcotics trafficking culture have provided law enforcement officials on both sides of the border with a string of colorful aliases.

While sometimes an alias is an easy way to identify a person among friends and family, when it comes to law enforcement, that alias becomes a detriment that prolongs an investigation, Brownsville police spokesman Eddie Garcia said.

When authorities only have an alias, they must work around it in order to identify the suspect, Garcia said.

When a multi-agency task force including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, U.S. Border Patrol and Brownsville police arrested a top Zeta lieutenant, matching the alias with the man’s name became tricky.

Oscar Castillo Flores, "El Apache," was charged by ICE with illegal re-entry. However, Mexican law enforcement documents identify him as Arturo Castillo Flores.

A Mexican law enforcement official who asked his name not be released citing security reasons, said El Apache led a group of Zeta hitmen who were responsible for various attacks in Matamoros.

According to that official, the public and the media many times remember drug dealers and cartel leaders by their aliases more than by their real names.

"For example the recent arrest of La Barbie: if you ask someone about Edgar Valdez Villarreal, most people wouldn’t know who that is," the source said. "On the other hand if you ask them about La Barbie, everyone knows who he is. The same goes for El Chapo Guzman, El Azul, Tony Tormenta, El Cos, El M3, El Gringo, etc etc. Most have heard the nickname but few know their real names."

Mexican arrest warrants and court documents list all of the known aliases and variations of the suspect’s last names.

In Brownsville, police databases keep track of all aliases used by a person, as well as variations of names, such as when a person switches the order of their last names, Garcia said.

"We have seen that before; however our jail staff is ready to check on it," Garcia said.

When a person is not truthful with their names, investigators will work with other agencies to run their fingerprints on law enforcement databases to identify them, he added.

Street names have become a daily hassle for Rio Grande Valley law enforcement officials. For example, McAllen police last week had only the name "Rambo" for a suspect in a fatal shooting.

Police were able to identify "Rambo" as Victor Ernesto Treviño, who allegedly sprayed a car with bullets, killing one man and severely injuring a woman.

Chief Victor Rodriguez said street names or nicknames make an investigator’s job a little more difficult.

"‘Rambo’ is not sufficient for a warrant," he said. "I have to figure out who Rambo is. We have to go beyond the alias to meet the requirements of the person’s whereabouts to get a warrant out for somebody specifically."

With the help of databases, local officials are able to search through criminal histories to find aliases and nicknames to identify suspects.

Edinburg Police Chief Quirino Muñoz said working with other local, state and federal agencies is the most helpful in identifying people who use nicknames.

"(Having nicknames) is usually very common in gang-affiliated individuals," he said. "They usually have a nickname or a street name. That’s what they normally go by. Then when we pick them up and put them in our system, we have to indicate in our forms all of the aliases and nicknames that person has."

Muñoz said once a person is in the system with an alias, it stays on the individual’s criminal history in all the databases.

But gang members aren’t the only people who use false identities, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said.

Some people in the Valley use different last names or switch their names around to try to outsmart officials. However, he said sometimes switching a name around is a cultural misunderstanding.

"A lot of times it is not intentional, but it’s cultural," he said. "The reason I say that is because most of the time in Mexico, your father’s name is going to be the first last name and your mother’s name would come next."

Yet, in the United States, some people use their mother’s last name first followed by their father’s. And marriage complicates which last name is used even further, Treviño said.

"It does present a problem," he said. "We are accustomed to seeing the double last name … but some Mexican nationals and people here, too, still hold on to their cultural ways."

While names can be changed and switched around, no matter what name the person arrested uses, fingerprints don’t lie, Treviño said.

"There have been a lot of instances where a person will get booked in under an alias," he said. "But once we run the fingerprint check, two names come out or other aliases come out and then we know who they are."

Treviño said running a person’s fingerprints through a national database has been a successful way to identify people who have warrants out for them but haven’t been caught yet.

"Once we get them in our custody," he said, "their house of cards is going to fall very rapidly."