Pubdate: Tue, 22 Nov 2005
Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Copyright: 2005 Sun-Sentinel Company
Contact:  http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159
Author: James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times
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FOR POLICE, A PERILOUS RESORT

Nine Killed In Acapulco In Past Year

ACAPULCO - Someone is terrorizing the police of this beach resort, and the
sudden surge in violence has so far baffled authorities.

In the past year, nine police officers have been killed in this city
of 700,000. Since January, there have been 20 execution-style
killings, including the municipal police chief, two Mexican tourists,
a prominent disco owner and an investigator for the state attorney
general's office.

Thugs in cars have thrown grenades twice at a police post in a popular
tourist area. Another attack occurred in mid-September when a group of
men with machine guns strafed a police station on a road leading out
of town, wounding three officers. On the same day, the head of the
patrol division of the state police was gunned down in the inland
capital, Chilpancingo, about 75 miles northeast. It remains unclear if
the two events are related, the police said.

"It's getting very dangerous to be a police officer here in Acapulco,"
said one young city officer, who asked not to be identified out of
fear for his personal safety. "There have been weeks when three
officers have been killed or wounded."

Law enforcement officials say some of the attacks on police are linked
to the spreading war among drug lords over turf.

One theory is that the Zetas, who are enforcers and assassins for a
drug gang known as the Gulf Cartel, are punishing the police for their
supposed alliance with Los Pelones, a gang in the employ of Mexico's
No. 1 public enemy, Joaquin Guzman.

But other law enforcement officials say those theories have come from
unreliable witnesses and suspects in some of the crimes. What seems
certain is that the struggle for control of the drug trafficking that
flows through the state of Guerrero and along the roads toward the
northern border has heated up, and this normally tranquil tourist town
is now another headache for the federal government.

Shipments of guns from China and cocaine from Colombia have been
seized in Acapulco's port, and law enforcement authorities say
smugglers are increasingly using the entire Pacific coastline in the
state of Guerrero. In addition, the state is known for marijuana and
poppy production.

Still, the tourist town on a bay has until now escaped the kind of
drug-related violence that has cropped up in places such as Cancun on
the Caribbean coast and in border cities, Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana,
Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros.

The violence in Acapulco hit a high point in June, when the chief of
the state police, Julio Carlos Lopez Soto, was gunned down in the
heart of the tourist zone after leaving a well-known steakhouse, La
Mansion. Two days earlier, Lopez Soto had taken part in the seizure of
an arms cache in an upscale neighborhood. The weapons seized included
automatic rifles, grenades and high-caliber handguns.

The gunmen also abducted Lopez Soto's bodyguard, Pedro Noel Villega
Aguilar, beat him and forced him to memorize a message for the
authorities: that there were already 120 members of the Zetas in town
who were intent on killing allies of Guzman.

Around the same time two men arrested in a gangland shooting in
Zihuatenejo, another resort town 150 miles up the coast, identified
themselves to the police as Zetas.

But Heriberto Salinas Altes, the state public security secretary,
discounted these assertions, saying they could be lies intended to
mislead investigators. There is also evidence some of the police
killings were linked to personal motives, not organized crime, he said.

Still, he acknowledged that the killing of Lopez Soto appeared to be
"some kind of vengeance" from mobsters.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin