Police chief resigns in Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez amid wave of killings

Right: Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

The Associated Press
Published: May 18, 2008

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico: The police chief of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez has submitted his resignation following a string of killings that included some of his top officers, officials said on Sunday.

City spokesman Sergio Belmonte said Public Safety Director Guillermo Prieto would be replaced by a military officer on leave from the armed forces, but declined to release the name of the new police chief.

Murder rates have spiked this year in this city across from El Paso, Texas, and at least seven city police commanders were killed by hit men believed to be linked to drug cartels.

On Saturday, the bodies of a federal consumer-protection official and two other men were found in a car just hours after they were kidnapped by armed, masked men in Ciudad Juarez. The official had been strangled to death; the other two men have not yet been identified.

State spokesmen in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located, did not offer any information on a possible motive in the killing.

Local media also reported a series of killings over the weekend, including an attack by gunmen in the town of Ahumada, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Ciudad Juarez, and a shooting at a nightclub involving assault rifles.

Officials were not available to confirm the deaths reported in either of those incidents.
As police chief of Ciudad Juarez, Prieto served during a period in which drug cartels grew increasingly bold, advertising for drug couriers, shooting it out with rivals in the streets and issuing a hit list threatening 22 top city police officials.

Of those 22, seven have been killed, three more have been wounded in assassination attempts and the remainder, save one, have left their posts.