By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Last week's ambush and the deaths of three Chihuahua state police agents were a reaction by criminal groups to new measures taken by Chihuahua state's Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE), or attorney general according to Mexican news reports.
A published report which appeared in the online edition of La Polaka news daily quoted an anonymous source within the FGE office, saying that Chihuahua state FGE Jorge Gonzalez Nicolas had been tasked with "dismantling the connections" between local criminal groups on the western sierras of Chihuahua state and the ministerial police agents who had been posted there by the previous Fiscalia, Carlos Manuel Salas.
According to the report, as a solution Gonzalez Nicolas began to rotate state security officials among several offices in Chihuahua state municipalities, including the southern municipalities of Cuauhtemoc and Creel.
The report goes on to note that the latest state police counternarcotics operation, which took the lives of six people in Bocoyna municipality, was part of a change in tactics in which police agents aggressively entered into areas known to be ruled by local criminal gangs, as happened in Bocoyna.
A previous report posted on the online edition of La Parada Digital news daily said FGE Gonzalez Nicolas told a Chihuahua state Chamber of Deputies budgeting committee last December, the Junta de Coordinacion Parlamentaria, that his plans for the year 2014 included building a new regional police headquarters, presumably in southern Chihuahua, as well an intensifying police operations in the Mexican sierras with newly expanded Policia Preventativa elements.
Gonzalez Nicolas was a regional attorney general for the northern district of Chihuahua state before he was appointed to his new post last October.
In 2011 Gonzalez Nicolas had undergone withering criticism from grieving relatives of the Reyes Salazar family which lost several of its members to separate violent incidents including a triple murder in February of 2011. The claim at the time was that the three family members killed in 2011, Elias Reyes Salazar, Malena Reyes Salazar and Luis Ornelas Soto, were kidnapped by a "paramilitary group", which is a buzzword for unofficial state sanctioned killing. Since that time little evidence has surfaced that the 2011 deaths had a nexus with Gonzalez Nicolas or the Chihuahua state attorney general's office.
Meanwhile in southern Chihuahua state, three individuals were killed or were found dead in ongoing drug and gang related violence.
- Sunday two brothers were shot to death in Parral. The victims were identified as Jesus Carrete Pereira, 28 and Eduardo Yañez Varela. They were found inside their Datsun pickup truck on Calle 10th de Mayao in Morelos colony at around 1530 hrs when nearby residents heard shots fired.
- Saturday night, also in Parral, a man in his 30s was shot to death. Felix Barraza Barraza, 31, was shot by armed suspects traveling aboard a Volkswagen Jetta sedan and a Jeep Cherokee SUV near the intersection of calles Raúl Soto Reyes y Francisco Morales in PRI colony. The victim was known by the alias El Foco.
Police have been conducting counternarcotics operations in municipalities of southern Chihuahua.
- In Parral last Wednesday night a joint local, state and federal counternarcotics operation seized a number of weapons and stolen cars. The raid took place on Calle Galeana in Centro colony. The raid netted eight vehicles including five luxury sedans, and three pickup trucks including a Ford F-150. Among weapons and armaments seized were one AK-47 rifle, five weapons magazines, a small quantity of ammunition and one fragmentary hand grenade.
- Last February 11th, Chihuahua state police agents seized 200 kilograms of marijuana in Moreolos municipality. Police agents happened upon a Dodge Ram pickup truck at a location called Cienega Prieta where the drugs were found wrapped in 17 nylon bags. The news report says the suspects traveling aboard the truck abandoned it when they observed the state police units nearby.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com