ONLY IN MEXICO

The Secret Meeting Between Police and Narcos

By Sol Prendido from El Universal

Borderland Beat
November 14, 2019

Several Commissioners of Security and Traffic of the State of Mexico were summoned last January to meet with organized crime operators, according to an intelligence report from the state government. Meetings between officials and suspected members of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación were held in restaurants.

The report consulted by this columnist indicates that the Commissioners were gathered by regions. The different calls were attended by directors from the Amecameca area (consisting of 13 municipalities), Tultitlán (four municipalities), Cuautitlán Izcallli (three municipalities), Ecatepec (consisting of two municipalities) and Zumpango (five municipalities).


These meetings were allegedly organized by one of the Security Commissioners, who was responsible for transmitting the invitation to his colleagues. Criminals asked officials not to interfere with their activities and focus instead on common crime. In return, neither they nor their men would be touched.

The report argues that only one of the Commissioners reported the fact to their municipal president. According to the version he offered, there was no offer of money: only the proposal that "everyone should go their own way." "Don't mess with us and we won’t mess with you”.

The report does not specify which directors attended these meetings. In those days the Commissioner of Tecámac was dismissed, for he “did not meet the confidence control exams” and only remained 23 days in office. After the arrival of the new director, two municipal police officers were killed in the Héroes Tecámac while they had dinner at a tamales stand: the aggressors parked their vehicle a few meters from the food stand, approached the officers and opened fire. Later it was learned that municipal agents were involved in the service of the mafia.

In just nine months, four security directors were in charge of the police in Tecámac. When they separated from office, some claimed "family reasons." Simultaneously, Mayor Mariela Gutierrez began receiving death threats. In February, in a manta signed by one "Comandante Catrina" she was required to release, "within 24 hours", a group of criminals interned in the Chiconautla prison. The alleged Comandante announced that his people were "going to start killing all the police in the municipality."

New threats against the mayor were repeated in March. In the middle of that month, Salvador Alejandro Sánchez, who was known as El Comandante Catrina, the main operator of organized crime in that municipality, was slaughtered next to his wife (also an ex cop). In August, new death threats appeared against Mariela Gutiérrez, signed by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación.

A month later, the Tecámac regional prosecutor and two of his bodyguards were shot at a seafood restaurant located on the Pachuca-Mexico highway. In mid-October, another officer was killed in the streets of the municipality in front of his daughters of 5, 6 and 8 years of age.

Valle de Chalco is part of one of the regions (Amecameca) whose Commissioners, according to the intelligence document, were summoned to meet with the alleged Jalisco Cartel operators

Although it is not known if the director of this municipality answered the call, on October 28, Mayor Francisco Fernando Tenorio was injured in the head by a young man who had previously crossed words with him during a tour. According to the state prosecutor, Alejandro Gómez, the murderer is linked to "a well-known drug shooter who operates in Valle de Chalco."

How many Commissioners yielded in January to the demands of organized crime? According to the intelligence work, the fact that most of them have not informed their superiors sends tremendous signals: it speaks, as in Culiacan, of entire regions overtaken by criminal groups dedicated at kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking and theft of cargo vehicles. Entire regions in which the local police are looking the other way. Areas in which citizens have been left alone.

There is other bad news. The strategy described in the report is not exclusive to Edomex: security directors of several neighborhoods of Mexico City have already been approached by representatives of criminal groups. Many mayors know it. And they have preferred to remain silent: here we are also alone.