Are Police Really In Charge Of Public Safety In Mexico?
Cartels no longer want to risk their own members and prefer to send the most vulnerable in a chain of command.
TIJUANA, Mexico.— The pick-up trucks arrived at night. Three vehicles from the local Police of Tijuana, under the command of chief Fernando Sánchez, and two from the State Police of Baja California, led by Gen. Gilberto Landeros. They explained to the security guard of the private residential area they were trying to enter that they were there for a drug seizure following an anonymous tip. They entered with empty boxes and left with over 20 kilos of cocaine in black trash bags.
However, part of the drugs never made it to any police station. Eight of those 12 kilos ended up in a private house, in the hands of Pablo Edwin Huerta, known as 'El Flaquito,' the head of the Tijuana Cartel.
It took only a couple of hours for Hugo Alejandro Murua, one of the commanders who participated in that fake seizure, to receive a call: "The Moreno is calling you, on behalf of 'El Aquiles'," the voice behind the call is heard, according to an audio leaked to local media in Tijuana. 'El Aquiles' is named Alfonso Arzate García, who, along with his brother, René Arzate 'La Rana,' are the leaders in Tijuana of the Sinaloa Cartel's 'Mayo' Zambada faction.
"We sent you to watch over the job on Friday, dude, what they were stealing from us, and you joined the fucking thieves," 'El Moreno' complains to Murua. The drugs, of course, belonged to the legendary drug trafficker 'El Mayo.'
Just a month later, five of the police officers who participated in the theft had already been murdered on the streets of Tijuana.
However, as surprising as it may seem, Baja California state, where Tijuana sits, is not even among the states with the highest rate of police killings in the country.
In Mexico, local police are in the midst of a war between criminal groups that see officers as even more disposable than their own hitmen. Cartels no longer want to risk their own members and prefer to send the most vulnerable in a chain of command... after all, that's what they're paying their bosses for.
In Mexico, on average, a police officer is murdered every day, according to statistics from the non-profit organization that tracks crime rates in the country, 'Causa En Común.'
Now the state of Guanajuato has the highest number of murdered police officers with 60 agents killed during 2023. It is followed by Guerrero, Zacatecas, Michoacán, and Jalisco, with 24 in the latter.
Tijuana’s chief of police, Fernando Sánchez, told me that some of his elements "make themselves vulnerable" when they participate in organized crime offenses, which makes sense: if you steal drugs from a cartel, your life is surely in danger. But that does not explain the underlying phenomenon.
It is no coincidence that the states with the highest rate of murdered police officers are states in conflict between cartels: in Guanajuato, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel are fighting to the death for a territory rich in minerals and strategically positioned for the production of synthetic drugs.
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