Mexico sends reinforcements to Sinaloa

Houston Chronicle:

About 200 Mexican federal police reinforcements flew into Sinaloa Tuesday as authorities struggled to control the narcotics-related violence roiling the Pacific Coast state.

The police, sent to beef up a force of 3,000, were dispatched amid escalating bloodshed that includes two massacres in recent days that killed a 12-year-old girl, at least four teenagers and several other apparent innocents.

There had been reports that the victims of the most recent massacre were caught in a cross fire between rival gangsters as they rode in four cars on Guamuchil's main street about 1 a.m. Sunday.

But Martin Robles, a senior police investigator, said his agents believed that the victims were intentionally targeted. He said the agents were uncertain whether the attackers were gunning for one or more of the people in the cars or were simply trying to terrorize the local population. Police recovered more than 300 spent shells from the scene.

"There's no evidence that would make us presume there was some sort of clash between rival criminal bands," Robles told a local newspaper in an interview later distributed by his office. "The evidence indicates the shots were directed at the vehicles."

The Sunday attack came just days after gunmen killed 2 state policemen and nine civilians in apparently related attacks in the center of the state capital, Culiacan, about 60 miles south of Guamuchil. Police have arrested eight suspected gangsters in the Culiacan attacks, which took place shortly before noon Thursday.

Angry civic leaders were trying to organize citizen protests against the violence. But such efforts in the past have had little success in building a civic movement for security, activists say.

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While 200 more federalis may help somewhat they will not be enough to address the force to space requirements needed to stop the movement of the drug insurgents. With adequate force to space ratios the enemy finds it difficult to impossible to move to contact and do the kind of ambushes that triggered the latest reinforcement. Otherwise, the police are just reactive bringing out the crime scene tape and counting the shell casings after the fact. The civic leaders are going to have to become angry enough to post their own watches with cell phones to call police to help create the forces needed.