Mexican federal police protesting corruption detain commander in violent border city

Protesting federal cops detain commander in Juarez

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Some 200 federal police officers assigned to fighting organized crime in this violent border city detained one of their superiors at gunpoint Saturday to protest alleged corruption.

The protesters complained that the commander, identified as Inspector Salomon Alarcon Olvera, had ordered the detention of another officer who had criticized him. They accused Alarcon of having links to drug cartels and participating in kidnappings, killings and extortion.

The demonstration in front of a hotel that houses some federal police offices led to a confrontation with other policemen supporting the commander. Some blows were thrown, and one injured officer was taken away on a stretcher.

The federal police headquarters in Mexico City said officials from the agency were going to Ciudad Juarez, which sits across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, to hear the protesters’ complaints.

Ciudad Juarez has been the most violent city in Mexico as a result of drug-related violence that has killed more than 28,000 people across the country since President Felipe Calderon ordered a crackdown on cartels in December 2006.

In April, federal police took over public security duties in the city after nearly two years in which the military was primarily responsible for fighting crime.

About 5,000 federal officers are deployed in Ciudad Juarez, which the government says is a battleground between the rival Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels.

While the officers were protesting, a federal policeman on patrol in another part of the city was slain, Coahuila State Attorney General Arturo Sandoval’s office reported.

Earlier Saturday, authorities aid Mexican marines rescued 12 people who allegedly were kidnapped by an organized crime gang in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon, another of the Mexican regions grappling with drug violence.

The Department of Navy said the people had been kidnapped Aug. 3 and 6 and were found Friday in a house in the municipality of Guadalupe, near Monterrey, the state capital.

None of the abductors was arrested and their gang affiliation had not been determined, the statement said.

Nuevo Leon and other areas in Mexico’s northeastern border region have seen escalating violence between rival drug gangs as well as the cartels branching out into kidnapping and extortion.

In the western state of Michoacan, authorities reported late Friday that about 40 men entered the town of Tanhuato, locked up 12 local police and then kidnapped at least five people.

Police later found two charred bodies inside a van left on a nearby road, but it was not clear if they were linked to the abductions in Tanhuato.