MEXICO

Mexican cartels killing police, including top anti-drug chief

The assassination of the chief of federal police, who oversaw anti-drug operations throughout Mexico, was the latest fatal attack by traffickers who are targeting law enforcement -- and each other.

BY JAY ROOT

McClatchy News Service

AFP-GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTO, 2008

Edgar Millán Gómez, 41, was a high-ranking member of Mexico's Public Safety Secretariat, which is in charge of law enforcement.

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Police increasingly are targeted here and elsewhere in Mexico.

In the latest brazen attack, the acting chief of Mexico's federal police was assassinated Thursday -- shot 10 times after he opened the door to his apartment in Mexico City.

Edgar Millán Gómez, 41, was a high-ranking member of Mexico's Public Safety Secretariat, which is in charge of law enforcement. He oversaw anti-drug operations throughout the country and was involved in solving a number of high-profile kidnappings.

At least 10 federal police officers have been killed in the past three weeks, and pitched shootouts have raged from the Pacific Coast to central Zacatecas, where three died in clashes Wednesday morning, including a young girl believed to have been caught by a stray bullet, authorities said.

A similar scene played out Tuesday in Ciudad Juárez. The lights of his bullet-ridden sedan were still shining when investigators arrived, but Police Capt. Saúl Peña López was already on his way to the hospital.

Under the guard of Army soldiers, the father of four died from multiple gunshot wounds before midnight Tuesday. He was being buried Thursday.

''Even for a violent city like Juárez, this is pretty amazing. It's unprecedented,'' said Tony Payan, a drug cartel expert in El Paso, Texas, across from Ciudad Juárez.

Peña's murder made him the 15th law enforcement agent to be slain in Ciudad Juárez since the beginning of the year, police officials said.

The 14th, a state prosecutor, died 24 hours earlier in front of her home, where authorities retrieved 32 shell casings fired from AK-47 rifles.

In both cases, the armed assailants got away.

Authorities already were grappling with record violence in 2007, when Calderón sent more than 20,000 troops nationwide to battle the cartels. The response from the kingpins was spectacularly swift and bloody.

Suspected drug traffickers gunned down a senior federal investigator in charge of gathering intelligence on drug traffickers in May 2007 and killed a federal police commander last September. They also were blamed for the beheadings of two Mexico City customs officials in December -- presumably revenge killings stemming from a cocaine bust.

All told, the death toll eclipsed 2,500 last year. And 2008, with more than 1,000 killed so far, is on track to match or surpass that record, according to published reports.

It's been a particularly violent year in Ciudad Juárez, the gritty and sprawling metropolis across the Rio Grande River from El Paso.

Once the undisputed domain of the Juárez Cartel, the city of 1.3 million people has become the scene of an epic turf battle, as elements of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel try to muscle their way in.

Nearly 300 have died in the violence so far this year, some of their bodies dumped in mass graves. Among the dead are at least 11 city cops, three state-level officers and one member of the Mexican military, according to published accounts.

The first police official to die in the violence this week was Berenice García Corral, a state criminal investigator, who was killed execution-style Monday night. Before Garcia's family could bury her, word came of the second police slaying.

Saúl Peña López was shot four times with an AK-47, a favored weapon of mafia hit men, as he pulled onto busy Manuel Gómez Morin Avenue about a block from his police station.

Across the street, the owner of an ice cream shop, afraid to give her name for fear of retribution, said she hid under a rack of display freezers until the shooting subsided.

''Panic,'' she said, when asked to describe how it felt. ``I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep well anymore.''

Authorities say the shift that Peña supervised ended at 2 p.m. They were at a loss to explain why he left the office at about 8:30 p.m.

That's when the assailants, reportedly waiting outside for him in a red pickup truck, riddled Peña with bullets before fleeing into the night.

His wife, Gloria Zuniga de Peña, said her husband called at about 2 p.m. to say he expected to be elevated to station commander and would be coming home late.

''I never thought anything like this would happen. He's never done anything bad,'' she said, holding her hands to her face. ``He's been a police officer for 21 years, and nothing has ever happened to him.''

Police spokesman Jaime Torres said no evidence had emerged suggesting that the slain officer had any connection to drug trafficking, which often goes hand-in-hand with the low-paid gig on the city police beat.

Torres said he had no information about any promotion that might have been coming Peña's way.

This report was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.