Bad Guys Attempt Assassination on Chihuahua State Police Commander
2011-03-21
Posted by: badanov
by Chris Covert
One unidentified Chihuahua state police agent was shot to death and another was wounded Sunday morning in an apparent assassination attempt on a top state police commander in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, according to Mexican news accounts.
The commander, so far identified only as Commandante Aguilera, was unhurt in the attack.
The attack took place near the intersection of calles Arkansas and Georgia in the Quintas del Sol y Las Aguilas colony, near the residence of the commander. Armed suspects aboard a convoy of three or four vehicles were the apparent shooters.
News reports say a Ford Expedition, a Dodge Avenger, a Nissan Sentra and a Jeep Liberty were used by the suspects. The Avenger was reported as stolen. The other vehicles are very likely to have been stolen as well.
The attempt was close enough to the commander's residence that it was hit by stray gunfire.
One of the vehicles used to transport the suspects, the Ford Expedition SUV, was found nearby minutes later on calle Arkansas. Reports say the suspects carjacked another vehicle driven by a female victim, and abandoned the SUV. The SUV had been damaged by gunfire, hit as the suspects left the scene.
In a related development, narcograffiti, which is graffiti written on a wall purporting to be from drug criminals, has threatened another state police commander, identified only as Comandante Solares with death if he did not resign.
The graffiti was found Sunday morning near the intersection of Calle Sexta and Avenida Juan Escutia near Aceros de Chihuahua in Chihuahua city.
The writer claiming to be from La Linea, an armed wing of the Juarez drug gang, said that the Chihuahua attorney general, Carlos Manuel Salas, was supporting Sinaloa driug cartel leader Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, known as "El Chapo."
The writer said that if Solares did not resign, one state police agent per day would be executed.
A second graffiti site was found in northern Chihuahua city near the corner of Avenida De las Industrias and Poste 21 containing the same message.
Such messages are a common stable of communication from the Juarez drug gang as well as from their bitterest rival, the Sinaloa drug gang, but the messages aren't always actually from drug gangs. In the past local police in Juarez, for example, had been caught writing graffiti claiming to be from one criminal gang or another.
Two recent examples of government involvement with drug gangs have shown that some of the issues are serious enough for drug gangs or even government to take action.
Patricia Gonzalez, former Procuradora General Justicia Estado, left her office in October 2010 at the end of the term of Governor José Reyes Baeza Terrazas under a cloud of suspicion that she was in the pay of La Linea and the Juarez drug gang.
Her brother, Mario, was abducted from his law office in Chihuahua city within days of the end of her term, and was forced by presumed Sinaloa drug gang members to confess his sister being on the Juarez drug gangs' payroll.
To read Rantburg reports about the abduction and "confession" of Mario Gonzalez, click here
Ms. Gonzalez has vehemently denied the allegations, but in spite of that, she was placed under investigation with the Procuradora de la Republica, or the national attorney general which, even five months later has not been concluded.
Mario Gonzalez was found murdered three weeks after his abduction in a remote area near Chihuahua city. A video recently surfaced which showed how Mario Gonzalez was brutally tortured with repeated beatings by his captors using large rubber truncheons.
To read Rantburg reports on the murder of Mario Gonzalez, click here
Towards he end of Gonzalez's tenure, narcograffiti appeared in Juarez several times protesting her alleged involvement in organized crime, yet despite that it wasn't until her brother was tortured and murdered that national authorities took action.
The second example involved allegations that the local detachment of Policia Federal were involved in criminal dealings in Juarez. The allegations surfaced in narcograffiti, but it wasn't until a threatened strike by several agents, and numerous and repeated ambushes by armed suspects of Policia Federal patrols in Juarez that action was taken.
That detachment was rotated en mass out of Juarez August, 2010 and replaced with another one. Two of the Policia Federal commanders were arrested for their alleged involvement in crime.
To read the Rantburg report on the Juarez detachment of the Mexican Policia federal click here
An unrelated attack on a Chihuahua city police commander took place only last week. Commandante Federico Balderas and another unidentified female police officer were wounded in an ambush on a city police surveillance operation.
To read Rantburg reports on the ambush of Commandante Federico Balderas, click here.