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By Laurence Iliff
The Dallas Morning News
MEXICO CITY — Suspected drug trafficking groups are killing Mexico’s future police commanders before they can even emerge from the much-touted academy that is supposed to transform them into world-class officers.
In the past two weeks, five officers-in-training have been gunned down while traveling to and from the Public Security Superior Academy in the central state of San Luis Potosí.
Analysts said the attacks were both a warning to the cadets and to the government, which is waging an unprecedented fight against drug cartels.
“These groups no longer have any fear that by attacking police there will be some type of retribution,” said Mexico City police instructor Arturo Yañez, a former federal police adviser. “Their only limit is their imagination.”
The attacks have sparked a partial strike by the nearly 1,000 academy students, who are demanding the right to carry guns and are calling for police roadblocks to intercept drug gunmen.
In an open letter to Public Security Minister Genaro García Luna, the cadet strike leaders complained that students have been left defenseless in the face of drug hit squads that operate in and around the state capital, also called San Luis Potosí.
“We are commissioned to San Luis Potosí to be trained, when in reality they put us at the disposition of organized crime,” according to the letter, which was also sent by cadets to journalists. “Five of our colleagues have been executed in a cowardly and criminal act, unable to defend themselves since our superiors force us to leave our weapons behind when we travel.”
The letter said the cadets are both first-time students training to be Federal Police and current officers from different law enforcement groups around the country. They are taking part in a one-year program designed to elevate the commander corps of Mexico’s often-criticized police forces.
The striking cadets removed their uniforms while skipping morning classes, both as an act of protest and so as not to be identified when they left the academy, they said.
Still, they complained that they were easily recognizable in the capital city “because of the haircut that is required.”
Mr. García Luna, the police minister, has said the academy is the core of his program to root out corruption and create a new class of police officer using best practices found in law enforcement throughout the world.
“What we want,” he said in a September 2007 interview with The Dallas Morning News, “is that in a year we would have a thousand police commanders who will go all over the country to start the entire new police model that we need.”
The ministry declined to comment on the student strike, but officials from Mexico City visited the facility Wednesday, promising security for the students, who attended classes normally today while waiting for their demands to be met. They include guns, roadblocks and a special investigator into the five killings.
Four of the officers were killed while returning to their hometown — Morelia, Mexico — to visit their families over the weekend. The fifth officer was intercepted in his car and killed while traveling back to the academy after a visit to his hometown in the central state of Mexico near Mexico City.
Copyright 2008 The Dallas Morning News