GERI

Members of Mexico City's "Grupo Especial Reaccion Inmediata" (GERI), a police special immediate reaction group. This elite police group are at the service of the residents in Mexico City and are said to be equipped with latest technology and trained by some of the best instructors in the nation.

Members of the police GERI tactical unit train in Mexico City, on June 7, 2010. The government of Mexico City implemented GERI's personnel specific training on rescue of abducted people, as part of toughening of the fight against such crime in the city.

Members of the police GERI tactical unit patrol along a street in Mexico City, on June 9, 2010. Mexican marines helped by US intelligence sources seized more then 20 kg of explosives suitable for demolition and arrested four suspected members of the organized crime in Mexico City, the Mexican Navy reported.

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Two Wounded in Attack on Police Chief

The Secretary of Public Security in Escobedo, retired Brigadier General Hermelindo Lara Cruz, survived 40 minutes of hail of bullets from sicarios in five SUVs that fired on the vehicle and the C4 municipal police headquarters.

The Jeep Grand Cherokee, with level 5 armor plus, withstood some 100 impacts from gunfire that allowed the chief Lara to take shelter in the headquarters. The rear window that as not bullet proof was totally destroyed.

Monterrey, Nuevo Leon - A soldier and a civilian were wounded in an attack by suspected cartel hit men on a police chief in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, officials said.

A group of assailants on board five SUVs fired gunshots at the vehicle in which Gen. Hermelindo Lara Cruz – the Public Safety secretary in the town of Escobedo, part of the Monterrey metropolitan area – was riding.

The assailants also fired at the city’s police headquarters, but “the general and his guards managed to warn the people who were inside and therefore all the police and civilians were able to run and hide,” an official statement from the Escobedo municipal government read.

Gunmen wielding AR-15 and AK-47 assault rifles wounded a soldier and the driver of a trailer that was parked outside the police station. The hit men also fired at patrol cars and other vehicles that were parked near the building.

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178 Police in Monterrey Resign or are Forced Out

Monterrey, Nuevo Leon - Authorities in this northern industrial city said 178 municipal officers, or 40 percent of Monterrey’s entire police force, either resigned or have been dismissed in connection with anti-corruption screening carried out this week.

In a press conference Friday, Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabal presented the results of five rounds of testing the officers underwent in recent days.

On Monday, Larrazabal ordered the police force’s 14 command-level officers and 600 patrolmen to be subjected to five evaluations to weed out officers suspected of ties to drug traffickers.

Larrazabal said 118 officers voluntarily resigned and 60 others with blemished records were fired.

The mayor said 76 percent of the sacked officers had been penalized by the city’s Honor and Justice Commission – an agency that processes claims against law-enforcement officials – or “denounced for actions that required the intervention of internal affairs.”

He added that 15 police failed toxicological exams, while polygraph tests determined that 12 officers were unfit for the job.

Larrazabal added that Monterrey authorities prefer a smaller, more committed police force that is less susceptible to infiltration by organized crime.

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Mexican Marines Arrest 25 Acapulco Cops

Acapulco, Guerrero - Marines and federal law enforcement agents arrested 25 police officers, including three command-level officers, in Acapulco, a city in the Mexican Pacific state of Guerrero, but officials did not say why the officers were detained.

Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca confirmed that the officers were arrested, but he did not provide any details, saying only that his government would not tolerate actions that violated the law.

The municipal police officers were taken to the 8th Naval Zone facility in Acapulco.

The officers were detained when they arrived early Tuesday at the residence of Acapulco city council secretary-general Vicente Trujillo Sandoval in response to a supposed shooting report.

The officers’ relatives went to the 8th Naval Zone base to request information about their cases.

Carmen Nicolas Camacho and Ema Luna Garcia, the mothers of officers Eduardo Jimenez Nicolas and Javier Luna, respectively, said their sons were mistreated by the marines and they planned to file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

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Federales Vow to Fight Back After Deadly Attack

By Armando V. Durazo and Aileen B. Flores
El Paso Times

Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua - The ambush Friday in Juárez in which eight people were killed -- including six federal agents and a police officer -- may signal a new wave of intimidation against authorities, officials and experts said Saturday.

The attack, carried out in broad daylight by a group of hit men, solidified the resolve of Mexican federal police to fight back even though it was one of the deadliest attacks on authorities in the city since President Felipe Calderón launched the war on drug cartels.

Juárez officials said that the ambush will not deter them and that they will not be intimidated by the calculated and ruthless attack.

"They want to intimidate us. But now we are going to double our efforts to fight them," said José Salinas, spokesman for the federal police in Mexico City.

As a result of the ambush, he said, a new strategy will be used to "avoid similar ambushes."

"We will fight them," he said.

He did not elaborate on the new strategy.

Salinas said the attack on the agents was an act of desperation because authorities are winning the overall war. He also said the contingent of about 5,000 federal police agents will remain in the city indefinitely and will continue to pressure the criminals.

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At Least 6 Police Killed in Juarez

6 Mexican police officers killed in Ciudad Juarez.

Mexican federal officials said six law enforcement officers were killed today in the intersection of Santiago Troncoso and Durango in south Juarez.

Gunmen ambushed two police vehicles at busy intersection in Ciudad Juarez on Friday, killing six officers and a 17-year-old girl who was passing by, authorities said.

Chihuahua state spokesman Enrique Torres Valadez said five of the six police officers were federal, and one was municipal. Authorities said the police officers in the vehicles were distracted by someone selling items on the street when the gunmen opened fire. The assailants then fled in three vehicles.

Members of the Federal Police cover the corpse of a policeman killed by drug traffickers in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on April 23. Six police officers and a civilian were killed in a shootout in Mexico's most violent city, on the border with the United States, according to a local police officer.

Initial reports from Ciudad Juárez were that the slain officers had simply been performing their jobs.

They were ambushed by many gunmen in an attack that investigators said might have been a response to an operation the previous day, in which the federal police detained eight people in a stolen vehicle with automatic weapons, cocaine and marijuana.

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A Small Town Cop, Out-Gunned by Traffickers

From the Archives:
June 19, 2009

Ascension, Chihuahua - The violence got so scary that hundreds of citizens occupied the Ascension town hall in May of 2009 to demand that the Mexican army come protect them. Soldiers now rumble through a couple of times a week. Then they leave.

Jaime Antonio Chacón was on the beat here just three months when the rookie police officer stumbled upon an assassination in progress.

A couple of hitmen, known as sicarios in Mexico, were going after a local hoodlum when Chacón in his municipal police truck rolled into the middle of a gunfight last month. One of the sicarios took aim at Chacóns forehead and squeezed off a single round.

In the video (below) Chacón talks about how it feels to be a small town cop seriously out-gunned by drug-trafficking heavies with superior weapons and good aim.

There are more than 400,000 police officers in Mexico and the vast majority are municipal cops like Chacón. They are low paid, poorly trained, badly equipped.

In Ascension, the police lack the working radios, bullet-proof vests and machine guns they want. Lousy morale creates ideal conditions for corruption, which is rampant in municipal forces.

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The Forever Drug War

Inside the Mexican Drug Wars Quickly Consuming a Nation

By Tomas Kellner and Francesco Pipitone

Aguascalientes, Mexico - Just before noon on February 15, 2007, four municipal police officers in Aguascalientes, the picturesque capital of the central Mexican state bearing the same name, were called to a mundane road accident.

An overturned, black Chevy Suburban with out-of-state license plates was blocking traffic on the quiet Boulevard John Paul II that runs through the city's sleepy western suburbs.

When local police commander Juan José Navarro Rincón and his three colleagues arrived, they saw two men who did not appear to be hurt, removing AK-47 assault rifles and police uniforms from the crashed vehicle to a white Nissan sport utility vehicle (SUV) parked nearby.

Navarro Rincón called for reinforcements. He was about to arrest the pair when two other cars came to an abrupt stop just up the road. Three gunmen climbed out and opened fire with automatic weapons. Navarro Rincón was killed instantly. Three other officers also died.

The killings, dubbed "Black Thursday" by the local press, were the first shootings of police officers in Aguascalientes by drug gangs. Until then, Aguascalientes had been a quiet place, immune to the violence that was raging in cities along the U.S.-Mexico border and elsewhere in the country.

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Mexican Police Deploy to Drug Cartel Turf

Valle de Juarez, Chihuahua - Mexican authorities have dispatched large numbers of Mexican federal police and soldiers to the Valley of Juarez after weeks of terror.

The surge in federal forces comes after dozens of killings, the burning of homes and the attempted torching of a church. Many residents had moved away after receiving threats to leave or die as drug cartels battle for turf.

The visible federal presence appeared to have brought a sense of calm in stark contrast to two weeks ago, when the remaining residents were afraid to step outside at night.

On Wednesday, caravans of federal police vehicles rolled in the streets of small towns. Soldiers with machine guns stood behind sandbags at checkpoints on the roads in the farming area that is a battleground in the war between cartels. Helicopters flew over dirt roads looking for suspicious activity.

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Police Chief and two Other Officers Killed in Los Aldamas

Los Aldamas, Nuevo Leon -  Well, we have been reading a lot here on the Borderland Beat about some of the corrupt police officers. But in the northeastern part of Mexico a lot of them have been getting killed. Why do they get killed? Very few get killed while in the heat of battle, most are killed during an ambush or they get abducted and are later found executed.

That is exactly what happened in Aldama where two municipal police officers and their police chief were reportedly abducted (levantados) between Tuesday night and early Wednesday. Well, they were found executed Wednesday, their bodies dumped in a ravine in the rural part of the town.

The police chief was identified as Oliver García Peña, while the other two victim officers have not yet been identified.

As reported in the newspaper El Norte of Monterrey it was around yesterday afternoon when Pemex employees who were in the area to inspect a well of the oil company at which time they found the tree bodies.

The crime scene was full of military personnel who were there to keep the area secured. The agents of the Ministerial department as well as crime scene investigators arrived to process the scene. So there is not a lot of information yet. We do not know the cause of death.

Sometimes police officers get killed by organize crime because they have ties to rival cartels or sometimes they get killed because they are fighting the cartels. Seems like it's a "no win" situation no matter how you cut it.

"Plata o plomo?"

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Massive Amount of Police Terminations in Nuevo Leon

Some 20 former police officers face criminal proceedings in the PGJE

Some 481 municipal and state police officers have been terminated from the police departments in recent months because of the failed confidence test, for their alleged complicity with organized crime and a major clean up processes driven by the governmental authorities.

At least 20 of these former municipal police officers faced several criminal charges before the Attorney General in Nuevo León from November 2009 to February 2010.

The municipality of Escobedo, governed by the PRI Carrales Clara Luz Flores, reported that a total of 142 officers were dismissed.

The mayor said that "the terminations have been for various reasons, some had resigned, others were let go due a series of drug tests and confidence tests."

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Army to Hand Over Security Duty in Mexican Border City to Police

Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua - The army will begin handing over some security tasks in Ciudad Juarez, the murder capital of Mexico, to the Federal Police as of Thursday, but it will continue to be responsible for patrols and controlling access to the city, the border and the airport, among other duties, the government said.

Some 4,500 Federal Police officers will have primary responsibility for security in Ciudad Juarez, a border city in Chihuahua state, backed by 2,800 municipal police officers and 200 state police, the Government Secretariat said.

Responsibility for security in the border city will be handed over “gradually to state and municipal (police), with the goal in the medium term of fully restoring institutional normality in Ciudad Juarez,” the secretariat said.

The army, however, will continue providing “security at the main access points to the city, at international border crossings and at air and land transportation terminals,” the secretariat said.

Soldiers, moreover, will provide support to municipal, state and Federal Police officers “in emergencies, conducting operations and jointly assisting in information and intelligence tasks, and in fighting organized crime, among others,” the secretariat said.

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Former Texas Cop Arrested

Former police officer accused in connection with McAllen kidnapping.

McAllen, Texas - A former police officer has been arrested in connection with a kidnapping-turned-shooting Sunday night in South McAllen. The former police officer used “tactical training” to carry out a kidnapping near a Wal-Mart in South McAllen, according to a police affidavit in the case.

Rene de Hoyos, a former officer with the La Joya, Hidalgo and Pharr police departments, was arrested today about 3 p.m., McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said.

De Hoyos, 28, will be charged with two counts of attempted capital murder at an arraignment hearing slated for tomorrow, the chief said during a press conference this afternoon.

McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez answers questions about a kidnapping-turned-shooting during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

"We believe he was certainly in a leadership role," Rodriguez said, adding that police continue to seek at least two other attackers. Another man -- Jose Luis Ventura, 28, of Reynosa -- was arrested the night of the shooting.

Two victims sustained non life-threatening injuries after Sunday night's kidnapping.

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Dismantling Whole Police Departments

Mexico Dismantles Police Department over Crime Allegations

Veracruz, Mexico – Mexican army troops and Veracruz state police completely dismantled the municipal police department in Tierra Blanca, a city of 95,000, due to allegations that nearly 100 officers were involved in criminal wrongdoing, state officials said.

Tierra Blanca officers are believed to have been involved in kidnappings and extortion, among other crimes, the Veracruz state Attorney General’s Office said.

Soldiers, Public Safety Secretariat personnel and Veracruz Investigations Agency, or AVI, agents disarmed and detained 98 officers in Tierra Blanca, located about 380 kilometers (236 miles) southeast of Xalapa, the state capital.

Of the 98 officers arrested, 44 were released almost immediately, but without their weapons, due to lack of evidence that they committed crimes, Veracruz Attorney General Salvador Mikel Rivera told Efe.

Only 13 of the officers will be charged, the AG said.

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Two Police Commanders Executed

Two Police Commanders Slain in Southern Mexico.

Chilpancingo, Mexico – Two command-level police officers were killed here Wednesday, bringing to eight the number of law enforcement agents slain over the past five days in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.

Heraclio Rodriguez and Reynaldo Martinez were fatally shot while driving through Chilpancingo, the state capital, the Guerrero Attorney General’s Office said.

Six police officers were gunned down last weekend in several separate incidents in the Guerrero municipalities of Petatlan and Ciudad Altamirano.

Drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva’s death last December in a shootout with Mexican marines ignited a fierce battle for control of his organization and much of the violence has taken place in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero.

More than 17,000 people have died nationwide since December 2006 in violence arising from the cartels’ internecine struggles and the efforts of the Mexican police and armed forces to crush the drug traffickers.

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Two Mazatlan Officers Executed

Two municipal police officers were killed in a confrontation against sicarios.

Mazatlán, Sinaloa.-  The shooting occurred at 7:25 pm Tuesday when the two officers were on patrol in vehicle # 57. The driver of the police unit was Maximino Garcia Ortiz, alias "El Coyote," who held the position of chief operating officer of the South district and his passenger was officer Julio Cesar Trujillo. Several Sicarios that were on board a gray SUV Nitro pulled next to the officers and began firing at them.

Trujillo got out of the police vehicle to attempt to engage the sicarios but was shot numerous times. He fell to the ground and was hit by a city bus launching him several feet away. Trujillo was killed instantly from the gunfire.

Garcia Ortiz continued to drive away but lost control forcing him to veer off the road. He then was shot from the front of the vehicle and died instantly while sitting inside the vehicle. Both officers sustained fatal gunshots to the body and head.

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Mexico's Drug War 2010, 6, 7

From the Archives.
BBC


Originally aired on 10 Feb 2010.

Ciudad Juarez, Chih - Violence is running out of control in Mexico as rival drug cartels battle over the smuggling routes to America. Mexico's president has declared war on the gangsters but the only result appears to be an escalation of the killings.

Katya Adler journeys deep into the heart of a shocking conflict, uncovering the human stories behind the seemingly random and disturbing violence. She asks whether the continuing freedom of the world's most powerful drug runner, Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman, is evidence that the Government's war is toothless.

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Three Police Executed in San Nicolás and Total Police Chaos

Police officers in San Nicolas get briefed on the execution of three of their colleagues. Officers were upset for the lack of resources and low pay at the Secretary of Security.

The police officers were attacked with assault rifles when they were on the patrol car number 430 of the municipal police, having completed patrols in the red light district; the police agency just yesterday had hired a new Secretary of security.

Presumably sicarios in a red SUV disarmed the officers of their weapons after they had been intercepted and forced to get out of their patrol unit.

San Nicolás de los Garza, NL - Three policemen of the municipality of San Nicolas were killed and one more seriously injured after a shooting from organized crime.

According to the investigation conducted by elements of the ministerial police homicide unit, around 4:00 am a red SUV blocked the path of a patrol unit and forced the four police officers out of the unit at gunpoint. The officers were disarmed of their weapons.

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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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More Pictures of Police Ambush

Maravatio, Michoacan - At the end of January 2010 a convoy of federal highway patrol officers were ambushed and at leat 5 of them lost their life (as reported here). Here are more pictures we managed to find. Most are of the cars riddled with bullet holes.

After the shooting there was a huge police and military presence, a lot of them at the crime scene (picture above). I hope someone is setting up a perimeter to find the bad guys (it doesn't do any good to just stand around looking at the scene). Hope there is a full scale search with road blocks. In the U.S. you don't see this many police officers or military by that matter, congregating right in the middle of a crime scene. You need everybody out there looking for the perpetrators.

It looks like all the cars were sprayed with gunfire from all directions.

Some of the shots were in tight groups, indicating a possible active/former police or military person.

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