5 Juarez cops die in shooting -- UPDATED

Updated with new information including identities of the victims and other new information

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Five  Juarez municipal police agents were shot to death and another three were wounded in an assault at a residence in Juarez Wednesday night, according to Mexican news accounts.

El Diario de Juarez news daily identified four of the dead as Juan Rodriguez, Maria Romero, Blas Barrera and Brenda Ulloa.  The fifth victim was identified only as Ceballos.  The police agents were all from Cuauhtemoc and Babicora police stations

The attack took place at about 2030 hrs near the intersection of calles Oasis de Lisboa and Rafael Murguia in the Praderas de los Oasis subdivision.

The officers were attending a cookout at the residence when they were shot.  Uncredited reports say as many as 20 shooters entered the residence and fired on their victims.

 El Diario de Juarez also said none of the five officers would be buried with honors since they were off duty when the shootings occurred.


According to La Polaka news daily, the killings were preceded by several narcomensajes or narco-messages against Juarez's controversial mayor, Hector Murguia Lardizabal, and his police chief Julian Leyzaola Perez, both civic functionaries with a hard nosed reputation in the city.

According to La Polaka, a total of 18 municipal police agents have been shot since the start of the year.

Juarez has been in the thrall of a deadly competition between local operatives with the Sinaloa cartel and the Juarez cartel,and their enforcement wing, La Linea.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com

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Arrested Tijuana Cops Were Hailed as Models

The Associated Press

Tijuana BC - Just a few weeks ago, the two officers were lauded as part of a new breed of honest cop, elevated to become key players in a drive to overhaul one of Mexico's most notorious police forces.

Now Francisco Ortega and Juan Carlos Espinoza are among five Tijuana police officers under arrest in a crackdown on a drug gang that has beheaded rivals then hung their mutilated corpses from freeway bridges or dissolved them in vats of caustic soda.

The five officers were caught at a Tijuana house this week along with six cartel members who were holding two rival gangsters captive, Ramon Pequeno, head of the anti-narcotics division of the federal police, said at a news conference Tuesday in Mexico City.

The arrests are a setback to Tijuana's public safety secretary, Julian Leyzaola. He had praised Ortega, 49, at a ceremony to name him commander of the border city's bustling La Mesa zone. Espinoza, also 49, was appointed his deputy.

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Lt Coronel Leyzaola Perez in HIs Own Words

They have attempted to assassinate the LT Coronel Julian Leyzaola Perez with bazookas, he has been ambushed, even with trucks cloned to look like military vehicles, they have tried to take him out with car bombs, and just recently a sicario infiltrated his close circle of security detail. But when he talks about all this, he talks so calm despite the violent wave engulfing the city of Tijuana.

He is waging a war against the cartel, or as he prefers to call them "mugrosos," in the city of Tijuana.

He talks, in his own way, pulling no punches, about the image of narco drug pins that are portrayed in narco corridos. Last year he kept the Tucanes de Tijuana from performing in the city.

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Tijuana Chief Revisited

Tijuana, BC - A chief of police, especially the one in Tijuana, Baja California, must follow the policies of the agency. And in these policies it says that a commander has to implement active and passive measures every day to protect his life.

Passive measures are, among others; not going to bars, not walking alone on the streets, it means having a private life and it means very private, and constantly having to change his routine.

The active, however, include a good weapon to have on hand and with his bodyguards, ready to fire it 24 hours a day.

Lt. Col. Julián Leyzaola Pérez,, grandson of a general and son of another ranking soldier, is working toward a full compliance in a disciplined manner for each of these rules since he became Secretary of Public Security of Tijuana.

His day started on December 10, 2008 amidst a dispute of "blood and lead" between the Sinaloa cartel and the Arellano Felix clan to control drug trafficking in California, USA.

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Focus on Police Corruption in Tijuana

Mexico’s rug war focuses on police corruption in Tijuana.
From the archives.

The Associated Press

In this Aug. 22, 2009 photo, police officers hold their diplomas after finishing a training course in Tijuana, Mexico. Tijuana's Public Safety Chief Julian Leyzaola is leading the most aggressive police reform to date, a mix of counterterrorism and community policing. If it works, it would be a model for other hotspots and a huge breakthrough in a drug war that has taken more than 14,000 lives in Mexico since it was launched three years ago

Tijuana, Mexico — Behind every crime is a corrupt cop.

That’s Public Safety Secretary Julian Leyzaola’s mantra as he storms Tijuana with its most aggressive police reform to date, a mix of counterterrorism and community policing. If it works, it could be a model for other hotspots and a huge breakthrough in a drug war in Mexico that has taken more than 14,000 lives in the last three years.

But the job is as monumental as turning around Al Capone’s Chicago. Cops in this border city and many others nationwide now serve as the eyes and ears of drug lords. And those who fight the cartels — let alone those who lead that fight — often end up dead.

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El Teo is No Hero

Tijuana BC - The lieutenant colonel and current Secretary of Public Safety for the city of Tijuana, Julián Leyzaola Pérez, said that although some people portrait drug lords as heroes such as Teodoro Garcia Simental, "El Teo", but in reality he is only a "rat in prison, a coward and a disgusted fat man.

"They are afraid of dying in in prison, but some songs in "corridos" make them sound like they are super-human heroes."

"El Teo is now a rat in prison and he fell like any other little dirty criminal who only feels brave when they victimize someone innocent, but when it's their turn, they in turn act like cowards and act like women," said Leyzaola in an interview.

"His surgery and his disgusting fatness the he shows could confuse someone, but eventually he was stopped," said the official, who has been the target of four attempted bomb attacks blamed on the sicario Garcia Simental.

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The Tijuana Police Chief

Tijuana's new weapon in gang war:

Leyzaola goes after ‘filthy, shiftless’ foes
 
San Diego Union Tribune
 

Tijuana’s public safety secretary, Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola Perez, has a five-year plan to gain control of the city.

PROFILE
Julian Leyzaola Perez
Age: 49
Born: Culiacán, Sinaloa
Military career: Lieutenant colonel with 25 years on active duty; on leave since 2000
Civilian career: Public security posts in state government in Oaxaca; head of state police academy, director of state penitentiaries, head of State Preventive Police in Baja California; top operational commander with Tijuana Police Department; currently Tijuana’s secretary of public safety
Family: Married, three children, two grandchildren

TIJUANA —They’ve gunned down his officers; left him taunting, handwritten messages at crime scenes; and more than once plotted his assassination.

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More Cops Die as Drug Lord Wants Chief Out

TIJUANA — The first attack came at 7 p.m. Monday. Gerónimo Calderón Jiménez was getting off guard duty in southern Tijuana when heavily armed men shot him repeatedly and left behind a handwritten sign: Five officers will die each week unless police chief Julián Leyzaola resigns.

Gerónimo Calderón

The next 15 hours saw four more assaults in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach that left two officers dead, one wounded and one unhurt but badly shaken. In the brutal showdown between drug cartels and Mexican law enforcement, these victims were shot at random, authorities said – officers who found themselves in harm's way as a brutal drug lord named Teodoro García Simental sent a deadly message.

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