Mexico fires thousands of police to combat corruption
Federal police officers stand in formation after their arrival at Mariano Escobedo international airport in Apodaca, neighbouring Monterrey August 26, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Tomas Bravo
MEXICO CITY |
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Authorities in Mexico have fired nearly 10 percent of the federal police force as President Felipe Calderon seeks to rein in powerful drug cartels and curb widespread corruption among Mexican police.
"Because they failed to carry out duties established in the federal police law, 3,200 policemen were fired," Deputy Police Chief Facundo Rosas said at a press conference on Monday.
Another 465 policemen, including a police chief in the violent northern city of Ciudad Juarez who was turned in for corruption by his own staff, will also be dismissed.
A federal police spokesman said some of those fired had failed drug, lie detector or vision tests or had been found to have assets that could not be accounted for by superiors.
He declined to comment on whether any were suspected of police corruption, a common complaint in Mexico, where police are known to solicit bribes and even work with the very drug cartels the government is trying to fight.
Before the dismissals, there were about 34,500 federal police officers.
When Calderon took office in late 2006, he deployed more than 50,000 troops and federal police because local police forces there had failed to stop rising violence.
More than 28,000 people have died in drug violence since Calderon launched his war on drugs, prompting fears that bloodshed could undermine tourism and investment as Mexico slowly recovers from its worst recession since 1932.
In another sign of mounting violence, a shootout that lasted over 12 hours paralyzed the town of Panuco in the Gulf state of Veracruz, killing six drug hitmen, one soldier and a civilian, Veracruz state prosecutor Salvador Mikel told local radio.
The firefight began when members of a drug cartel attacked a military checkpoint near the border between Veracruz and Tamaulipas state and then fled to a house in Panuco, he said.
The drawn-out gun battle terrified residents and shuttered banks and public buildings in the town. The army said six cartel members were captured.
Over the weekend, suspected drug hitmen killed the mayor of a small town in Tamaulipas state where two car bombs exploded and the bodies of 72 murdered migrant workers were found last week. The powerful Gulf cartel is fighting a bloody turf war in the region against a spinoff group, the Zetas, for dominance of drug trafficking and human smuggling routes.
(Reporting by Cyntia Barrera, Anahi Rama and Miguel Angel Gutierrez; editing by Missy Ryan and Stacey Joyce)
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It use to be..’mind your own business’ (in Mexico) while the drug gangs and the cartels ran their clandestine trade, with government/police complicity. Now you have a government looking to put this longstanding drug economy out of business and alot of narco trafficers are finding themselves out of a job. Without government support this illict trade is become destablilized on who controls the illit traffic. No question, the war between the drug trafficers and the government is getting worse and is leading the country toward a de facto civil war. The drug gangs, like the teriffying ZETTAS (Z’s) are now about to traget innocent civilians (on a larger scale), like they have been doing to migrants, to flex their muscle, as they fight for survival, by taking on new turf battles. Mexico is becoming a more dangerous place and when the American tourists (finally take their heads out of the Mexican sand) and take notice of the war waging around them and stop visiting the ‘gold zone’ resort towns, the Mexican tourist industry will collapse and economic instability/panic will insue.
Unfortunately the only solution to this problem lies in the hands of the US, and it doesn`t seem like there is any political will to change US policy towards drugs.
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