100 Police Officers Held in Mexico: Military, AG Target Drug Corruption in Border State
By Laurence Iliff, The Dallas Morning News
Apr. 17–MEXICO CITY — Mexican soldiers detained more than 100 police officers Monday in the Texas border state of Nuevo Leon, and authorities said the officers would be held in custody and investigated on suspicion of helping drug traffickers.
The joint operation between the army and state attorney general’s office targeted corrupt police in a dozen towns, and also in the state security ministry and the state police, authorities said in a prepared statement.
The officers were identified as a result of recent information obtained in the town of Marin, and more arrests in additional towns could be in the offing as a result of the ongoing investigation, the statement said.
Detained officers would be replaced by state police and those from other towns, authorities said.
The detentions came on a particularly bloody day even for cartel-ravaged Mexico, with 21 drug-related killings reported, including the discovery of five bodies inside a truck in the resort city of Cancun. The five were apparently shot execution-style and their heads covered in tape.
So far this year, 32 people have been killed in Nuevo Leon as a result of a turf war between the Gulf cartel, based along the Mexico-Texas border, and the Sinaloa cartel, based in the northern state of Sinaloa. Fourteen of those killed have been police officers, according to a count by the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.
Pictures posted on the Internet by Mexican media organizations on Monday showed army convoys escorting buses full of officers, and the Mexico City newspaper Reforma said the suspects were being held at the state police training school.
Since taking office Dec. 1, President Felipe Calderon has used the military on three other occasions to help civilian authorities detain police officers.
In Tijuana, the entire police force was disarmed and their weapons checked to see if they had been used in a series of cartel killings there.
Army soldiers also have intervened in the police forces of Villahermosa, Tabasco and Oaxaca City. In Oaxaca, police were investigated for a series of political killings related to street protests, and in Tabasco their weapons were checked against bullets found at crime scenes.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Dallas Morning News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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