Mexican president wants to do away with local police

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Chicago Tribune

Mexican president wants to do away with local police
President Felipe Calderon's reform would eliminate Mexico's 2,000 local police departments, seen as tainted by corruption from the drug war. The plan must still be approved by Congress and the states.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
6:26 p.m. CDT, October 6, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City —

Amid a bloody war against drug cartels, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday that he was sending Congress a plan to overhaul the country's police system by doing away with local forces, long a weak link in law enforcement.

The proposed reform, which would require amending the Mexican Constitution, would eliminate the nation's 2,000 municipal departments, where officers tend to be undertrained and ill-paid and are seen as vulnerable to corruption by criminal groups. Patrol duties in towns and cities would be taken over by the 31 states.

The idea, called "unified command," has been debated for months, as the death toll from the nearly 4-year-old drug war surpassed 28,000 and signs of police collusion with crime syndicates continued to pile up.

In August, six municipal officers in the northern state of Nuevo Leon were arrested in the assassination of Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos outside the important industrial city of Monterrey. Local police officers are often swept up in arrests of drug henchmen.

Calderon already is behind a police overhaul at the federal level, where a hiring spree has boosted the number of federal officers to 33,000 and a state-of-the-art academy draws trainers from the United States. That reform drive includes drug screening and polygraph tests to weed out suspect police and recruits, a policy that is eventually to apply to all officers in Mexico.



Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-fg-mexico-police-reform-20101006,0,3365452.story

[KansDem]

1. Federal officers? Better make sure they have badges...

Okay, who's going to provide the quote?

[Duer 157099]

3. :raises hand:

"Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"

[KansDem]

5. thank you

[Brother Buzz]

7. Raise your left hand!

http://www.rudebadmood.com/badges/bandidos.mp3

[Bobbieo]

2. The U.S. can help by legalizing marijuana!!!!

The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy … says that more than 60 percent of the profits reaped by Mexican drug lords are derived from the exportation and sale of cannabis to the American market. … (By comparison, only about 28 percent of their profits are derived from the distribution of cocaine, and less than 1 percent comes from trafficking methamphetamine.) …

Government officials estimate that approximately half the marijuana consumed in the United States originates from outside its borders, and they have identified Mexico as far and away America’s largest pot provider.

[provis99]

4. yes. then the gangs can focus on extortion, kidnapping, and gunrunning.

[Bobbieo]

6. They don't now?

[glinda]

8. cocaine, heroin, meth etc......