Disbanding Local Police Forces to Combat Corruption

Mexico's top security official proposed disbanding Mexico's 2,022 municipal police forces and combining them with state law enforcement agencies to better combat corruption and crime.

Local police have fewer resources to fight crime, and their lower salaries make them more susceptible to corruption, Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said.

"Public safety should be a state policy," he added.

Consolidating police forces would improve communication among officials, he said, and bring greater security to areas where local police have traditionally lacked the means to fight crime. Nearly 90 percent of the country's municipal police forces have staffs of less than 100 people, he said.

Garcia Luna spoke to reporters at the end of a meeting of public safety chiefs from Mexico's 31 states and the capital, where officials presented a report titled "A New Police Model."

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Mexican Police Suspect in Chief's Killing

Five police officers and five other suspects were arrested Thursday in the investigation into the assassination of an army general who had been appointed police chief of this northern Mexican town over the weekend.

Brig. Gen. Juan Arturo Esparza was the latest military officer killed after taking over a Mexican municipal police force plagued with corruption. President Felipe Calderon has acknowledged that police forces throughout Mexico are rife with officers in the pay of cartels, and he has relied heavily on the military to fight drug trafficking.

The attack Wednesday had its origins in an illegal quarrying company, said Alejandro Garza y Garza, the Nuevo Leon state attorney general.

He said one of the suspects was facing investigation for operating the company and enlisted the help of a local hotel owner with ties to a powerful drug cartel to intimidate officials in Garcia, a town outside the northern city of Monterrey.

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