Cartel Gunmen Are Targeting Police and Politicians in Mexico's Jalisco State Duncan Tucker - VICE News
go to original March 5, 2016

Mexican security experts have warned that local authorities are at risk of losing control of certain parts of the western state of Jalisco amid mounting attacks on security forces.

Five police officers were murdered in two separate gangland-style shootings in Jalisco in the past week, while a local mayor survived an assassination attempt on Tuesday for the second time in the last six months.

...It was not immediately clear who was responsible for any of these attacks but the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, has been implicated in the assassinations of dozens of police officers and public officials across the region in recent years. These include the murders of the Jalisco tourism secretary in 2013 and a federal congressman in 2014.

State authorities have blamed the latest wave of attacks on long-standing municipal-level corruption, or sought to cast it as organized crime kicking back against their successful operations.

Jalisco's governor, Aristóteles Sandoval, implied the killings were the result of corruption within local police forces — a problem that he stressed predates his time in office. When his term began in 2013, he said this week, "we clearly identified that in terms of security Jalisco's greatest vulnerability was the infiltration of organized crime in its security apparatus."

Read the rest at VICE News

Related: Jalisco's 'New Generation' Is Becoming One of Mexico's Most Powerful and Dangerous Drug Cartel (VICE News)

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