Six members of the Chapala police force are under investigation for suspicion of collusion with organized crime following the abduction and shooting of two local men reported late Friday, March 22.
The shooting victims were found lying on the roadside at the outskirts of Mezcala by Poncitlan municipal police responding to calls of reporting sounds of gunfire in the vicinity. Officers rushed the pair to the Chapala Red Cross for emergency attention. It turned out that neither of the men was gravely wounded. Their names have not been revealed.
When agents from Chapala’s Ministerio Publico (district attorney office) arrived at the clinic around midnight to take statements, the shooting victims said they had been detained earlier that night by a two-man Chapala police patrol unit. They said the officers then drove off to an isolated point on the Libramiento bypass and handed them over to four armed men. The abductors hustled them off to the spot where they were later rescued, opened fire and then fled the scene, leaving them for dead.
Once advised of the accusation against his men, Chapala Public Security Commandant Ramon del Arco ordered all officers on duty to report to police headquarters where they were disarmed and photographed. After reviewing the pictures, the shooting victims identified Mario Alberto Cruz Calvario and Horacio Efrain Rivera Rosales as the officers who had picked them up.
State police promptly arrested two officers and brought them into Guadalajara for interrogation. As result of the questioning, the authorities subsequently detained officers Isaac Barrios Nuevo Vazquez, Ernesto Chavez Bautista, Juan Garcia Lopez and Felipe de Jesus Ojeda Palacios. All six officers are now being held under house arrest for investigation of possible dealings with the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generation.
According to del Arco, the notorious CJNG crime syndicate has been implicated in a recent series of abductions and homicides against local drug pushers. He told the Reporter that, regardless of the outcome of the investigation, the officers under suspicion must be automatically relieved of duty for loss of trust.