HAVE BROWNTOWN PSEUDOCOPS BEEN ARRESTED?

By Juan Montoya
Even though it appears that the Brownsville Police Department has deliberately tried to keep the news about the month-long rash of armed robberies by pseudocops of 14th Street beer joint patrons under wraps, some victims say the perpetrators may have been nabbed.
One of two customers accosted outside the back door of El Siete Mares Lounge about a week ago by a well-dressed man wearing what appeared to be a handgun and flashing a badge said he had been called by BPD detectives and told that they had identified a man who used a credit card he took from his wallet during the holdup.
The elderly man was dispossessed of his wallet as he emerged from the bar, asked for his wallet by a man who then told him to go back inside, and who then took off in a dark pickup truck. He as the second victim of the establishment. The first victim did not have any money in his wallet and it was returned to him and he was sent back inside. In the case of the second victim, he had more than $700 and when he told the owner of the bar, they called police. The robbers were long gone by then.
Now it seems that aside from taking his money, the thief (thieves) also used his credit card to make some purchases at a Stripes convenience store and that their photos were in possession of police detectives.
"It appears that they know who nit is," the victim said. "They called me to identify the pictures. It was him."
This latest robbery was the latest in a spate of such crimes that has been going on for more than a month, according to bar owners on the strip.
Late last month a customers was washing her van when she saw a wallet sticking in the gap between the windshield and the hood. When she examined its contents, she saw that it contained important ID information of a robbery victim that included a U.S. residency card, driver's license and other personal effects. She had her husband call the man and returned the wallet.
The victim told the couple that he had been stopped almost a month before as he was leaving Charlie's Bar  by a car with flashing light mounted on the dashboard and asked for his wallet. A man wearing a gun and flashing a police badge demanded his wallet and told him to wait in his vehicle. When the victim turned around, the man and his companion who was driving had sped away.
Since he had existed a drinking establishment, he had decided not to report the incident to police. The robbers then made off with more than $300.
Without his residency card, he said, he had been unable to replace his driver's license.
"I don't care about the money," said the man, a building contractor. "The documents are more important to me. It takes forever to replace a residency card, and without it you can't replace your license."
Ia a related incident, a bartender at La Catoce Bar said she had looked out the front window and had seen two men stop a customer exiting the neighboring El Capitan Bar and asked them for their wallets. When she stepped outside to see what was happening, the men jumped in a car and sped away with the man's wallet. Later, the victim said he had found his license thrown near a dumpster down the road.
All the cases happened after 11 p.m. and before the 2 a.m. closing time, the victims said.
Yet, the Brownsville Police have issued no alerts or distributed the descriptions of the suspects or their mode of operation to local business owners or customers.
"Does it matter that the robberies happened in this area?" asked a bar owner. "Shouldn't these people be protected from armed robbers by the police as well? You don't have to approve of them drinking in this area, but they deserve to be protected by the police, too."