Pubdate: Tue, 17 Apr 2007
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2007 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Laurence Iliff, The Dallas Morning News

100 POLICE OFFICERS HELD IN MEXICO

Military, AG Target Drug Corruption In Border State

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican soldiers detained more than 100 police 
officers Monday in the Texas border state of Nuevo Leon, and 
authorities said the officers would be held in custody and 
investigated for allegedly helping drug traffickers.

The joint operation between the army and state attorney general's 
office targeted allegedly corrupt police in a dozen towns, and also 
in the state security ministry and the state police, authorities said 
in a statement.

The officers were identified as a result of recent information 
obtained in the town of Marin, and more arrests in additional towns 
could be in the offing as a result of the ongoing investigation, the 
statement said.

Detained officers would be replaced by state police and those from 
other towns, authorities said.

So far this year, 32 people have been killed in Nuevo Leon as a 
result of a turf war between the Gulf cartel, based along the 
Mexico-Texas border, and the Sinaloa cartel, based in the northern 
state of Sinaloa. Fourteen of those killed have been police officers, 
according to a count by the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.

Pictures posted on the Internet by Mexican media organizations on 
Monday showed army convoys escorting buses full of officers, and the 
Mexico City newspaper Reforma said the suspects were being held at 
the state police training school.

Since taking office Dec. 1, President Felipe Calderon has used the 
military on three other occasions to help civilian authorities detain 
police officers.

In Tijuana, the entire police force was disarmed and their weapons 
checked to see if they had been used in a series of cartel killings there.

Army soldiers also have intervened in the police forces of 
Villahermosa, Tabasco and Oaxaca City. In Oaxaca, police were 
investigated for a series of political killings related to street 
protests, and in Tabasco their weapons were checked against bullets 
found at crime scenes.

Monday was a bloody day even in cartel-ravaged Mexico, with 21 
drug-related killings reported, including the discovery of five 
bodies inside a truck in the resort city of Cancun. The five were 
apparently shot execution-style and their heads covered in tape.
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