Officials announced on Thursday they were questioning 13 state police officers about ties to drug trafficking and the murders of at least 12 people, feeding fears that police in this gritty border city take part in the crime they should be fighting.
The announcement came on the same day that investigators found a 12th body buried in the yard of a house in a middle-class Ciudad Juarez neighborhood.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A police spokesman said that authorities had been unable to clean up the force despite firing some 300 officers in the past two years. Thousands of other local, state and federal lawmen have been fired from posts nationwide.
The money from drug trafficking is "too tempting for people who are not committed to public service," Mauro Conde said. Later, in a news conference, Deputy State Attorney General Oscar Valadez called the arrests a "terrible blow to a police force that has been trying to clean up its image."
Hundreds of murders are unsolved in Ciudad Juarez, including the cases of dozens of young women who were strangled and dumped in the desert outside of town.
Conde said the 13 officers focused on drug cases and were not involved in the investigations of the slain women. But they were linked to the bodies of 12 men unearthed so far this week.
Federal Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos also told W Radio in Mexico City that "some elements of the state judicial police" were involved. He said that type of people "are nothing more than delinquents disguised as public servants, at the service of the interests of drug traffickers."
Later, Vasconcelos, accompanied by a team of soldiers, toured the house where the bodies were found, but made no comment to reporters.
The man who rented the house, Alejandro Garcia, was arrested on Tuesday and told police he took part in the killings at the order of several state police officers and members of the Vicente Carrillo drug gang.
That led officials to investigate all state police officers on the night shift in Ciudad Juarez. Thirteen were taken into custody when they showed up for work on Wednesday night, and four others, including their commander, are being sought.
The commander, Miguel Angel Loya, didn't show up for work on Monday and hasn't been seen since, Conde said.
The officers were flown to Mexico City, where federal agents were questioning them about possible ties to drug trafficking and the bodies found at the house.
The discovery of the bodies led relatives of some of the dozens of other missing men to ask police for information. Late Wednesday, relatives were allowed into the morgue to try to identify the remains found at the house, some of which had been buried months before.
Lorenza Benavides, the vice president of the Association of Relatives and Friends of the Disappeared, said her organization had the names of 197 missing men.
"We have always said police officers are involved in all of these crimes," Benavides said.
"But our complaints have always fallen on deaf ears," she said.
She said they had asked federal authorities to search three more houses around Ciudad Juarez where neighbors reported hearing screams. Officials said those were among six houses for which they were seeking search warrants.
Many locals say they aren't surprised by the arrests. Luz Elena Caraveo, whose brother disappeared along with his friend a year ago, said witnesses told her that police kidnapped the two men.
"One is always afraid to talk and look [for answers] because one could easily become a target," she added.
Conde blamed violence in this city of 1.2 million on a growing drug war that has claimed dozens of lives so far this year.
"Juarez is a tough city, but it's a city where people still live," he said.
"Those who live their lives honestly don't have a reason to feel persecuted or harassed. Everybody is exposed, but the victims are usually part of organized crime," he said.
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