Drug insurgents kill 9 police in Mexico

AP/Houston Chronicle:

In what appears to be a bloody counteroffensive by drug cartels responding to a government crackdown, nine federal police officers, including the chief of the organized crime division, have been killed in the past three weeks.

The brazen killings demonstrated not only the inability of the federal police to protect their own from hit-and-run attacks, but also that the anti-drug offensive that President Felipe Calderon began last year still faced powerful resistance.

"These are difficult times for the federal police and for Mexico," the public security secretary, Genaro Garcia Luna, said at an event honoring the fallen police officers on Saturday. "The nation has lost some of its best men."

Mexico has suffered a wave of violence since Calderon sent troops and federal officers into drug-plagued towns and states last year to restore order and clean up corrupt local police forces. At least 3,500 people have died in the mayhem, among them at least 200 police officers.

More than 30 of them were federal police officers, who are generally better-trained and less corrupt than the local police, and who were usually killed in ambushes.

The commander of the organized crime division, Inspector Roberto Velasco Bravo, was shot in the head on Thursday afternoon by two men who made off with his luxury car. The police say the motive for the killing remains unclear.

On Friday, less than 24 hours later, a second high-ranking federal police official, Inspector Jose Aristeo Gomez Martinez, was gunned down as he left his house in the wealthy Coyoacan neighborhood. Police say the motive also remains murky.

Also on Friday, four federal police officers were ambushed in the city of Culiacan, the headquarters of a loose federation of cartels that control the illegal drug trade along the Pacific coast and the border at Ciudad Juarez.

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Those, like UN officials and terrorist rights groups, who have argued that Mexico should not be using the army to fight the drug insurgents should take note of this story. The fact is that the police are out gunned even when they are not corrupt. Mexico will continue to need teh army to suppress the insurgents for some time to come. Mexico also needs the US assistance that the Democrats have stalled.