Police locked down after murders
Drug cartel threatens to kill an officer a day
CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO— Police officers in Mexico’s most violent city have been forced to live in guarded hotels after targeted attacks last month killed at least eight officers and wounded three.
The mayor of Ciudad Juarez, Hector Murguia, made the move to protect all 2,500 members of the city’s police force as a local drug cartel threatened to kill an officer a day.
“I have no choice,” he was quoted as saying Monday, after a grenade attack on three officers at a gas station. “Due to several attacks against Juarez police officers, where some of them have died, they have been sheltered in several motels.”
Police continue to work regular shifts, but sleep at the guarded hotels.
Almost 3,000 police officers were killed in Mexico from 2007 to 2011, most of them as casualties of the country’s ongoing drug war.
National media group Milenio reported that January was the most violent month since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on drugs in 2006, with 39 police officers killed across the country.
Police have a notoriously dangerous job in Mexico, but the wave of targeted assassinations has raised the level of concern.
The day after two Juarez municipal police officers were murdered on their way to work last week, drug criminals hung 10 banners — called “narcomantas” — from bridges. They threatened to keep killing officers if police Chief Julian Leyzaola didn’t step down, and they were signed by the New Juarez cartel. “If you keep backing those dogmounters (the rival Sinaloa cartel) and only arresting our people, we are going to kill a cop every day so that the citizens know how corrupt you are. Leyzaola = a criminal with a badge,” said one. Three police officers were killed over the next three days, with three more wounded in the Monday gas station attack. The New Juarez cartel is believed to be a breakaway group from the Juarez cartel, also called La Linea. La Linea and its allies have been hit hard since Leyzaola took office last summer. Aformer army colonel with a controversial record, the police chief is best known in Mexico for taking on organized crime and reducing violence in Tijuana, amidst a flurry of torture and abuse allegations. His office points to similar drops in Juarez — among the most violent cities in the world — to explain why the gangs are fighting back. “The work we’ve done here has had a huge impact,” said Adrian Sanchez, spokesman for the Ciudad Juarez police. “These attacks are the desperate response of organized crime against the police.” The human rights commissioner of Chihuahua state, where Juarez is located, calls Leyzaola’s claims of reducing violence a “marketing campaign.” Gustavo de la Rosa says there are still more than 100 murders a month in a city of 1.3 million and only eight convictions for every 1,000 arrests — a large drop from the peak year of 2010, he argues, but far from under control. The drug gangs, he said, “kill the police because they can.”