The mayor of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Fernando Larrazabal, fired 178 municipal police officers as part of his campaign to clean up the city police force. After a series of 5 "confidence" tests (which include drug testing, financial checks and the polygraph) 118 officers opted to resign with benefits while the other 60 were fired outright.
The bodies of 4 men and a woman were found in an abondoned car in the municipality of Ecatepec (near Mexico City). All the bodies had signs of torture and a message directed towards the La Familia Michoacoana drug cartel. In Condesa, the trendy section of Mexico City, 2 men were found shot to death inside their vehicle.
In Navojoa, Sinaloa, the bodies of 2 ministerial police agents were discovered (they had been reported missing since the 25 of May). In Los Mochis, Sinaloa, the son of the former Academic Coordinator for the Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Lucio Tarín, was found executed. A unidentified man was discovered shot to death in Culiacán while another unidentified body was discovered on the outskirts of town. Discovered in 3 plastic bags were the remains of 3 bodies in Colima and in Manzanillo a gunman was killed by the police. In Zeutla, Guerrero, the bodies of 2 unidentified men were also discovered plastic bags.
Finally, 14 people were killed yesterday in Juárez and in the Valle de Juárez. The dead included 5 men shot at noon as they bought lunch at a mobile burrito stand near the Zaragoza bridge, apparently the 5 were murdered in front of soldiers and the soldiers did nothing.
This latest killing frenzy of 30 brings the yearly total to 4,406 (6988)
WITO
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How do you differentiate between narco-killings and whatever level of background exists? Is that even possible?
ReplyDeleteThat is a good point. Unfortunately, information is not the best here in Mexico so we draw from media reports (both local and national) and they, in turn, report on what they observe as well as what the police tell them. The best the numbers can do is indicate a benchmark, however suspect, so that we can at least say that the killings are increasing.
ReplyDeleteOn a related point, President Calderon continues to insist that 90% of the narco-killings are bad guys killing bad guys. But, when one considers the atrocious ineptitude of police investigations, how can he be sure of that (less than .1 % of all crimes are even investigated) when even the police do not know much beyond the fact that more dead bodies turn up each day (an average of 38 per day since Calderon began his offensive 3 years ago, according to a leaked government report).