Over a Dozen Mexican Police Officers Ambushed and Killed by New Cartel
At least 14 Mexican police officers were killed in an ambush in Mexico’s Michoacan providence, according to a now-retired U.S. narcotics officer who has worked south of the U.S. border.
According to the U.S. source, about four-dozen police officers responded to enforce a federal judge’s order in the township of Aguililla, when they were suddenly ambushed by about 30 gunmen believed to be from the Jalisco New Generation, whose reputation as one of the most dangerous cartel groups in Mexico is now solid with Monday’s vicious attack on the police officers.
The gunmen reportedly opened fire on the officers using .50 caliber sniper rifles, AR-15s and AK-47s. Once the smoke cleared from the intense gun-battle, police commanders discovered 13 cops were shot to death in the battle while nine officers were wounded and taken to area medical facilities.
Photos of the crime scene were published on social media on Monday, many of them showing scorched vehicles with dozens of bullet holes made with varying sized ammunition.
Some of the social media photographs showed the bullet-riddled bodies of slain officers, who had gone to a home in the town of El Aguaje in Aguililla municipality to carry out a judicial order when “several armed civilians fired on them,” Michoacan’s state security department said in a statement.
The Internet-posted images also showed signs reading “CJNG” left on bullet-saturated police vehicles. The letters on the signs are for the Cartel Jalisco New Generation, which is often involved in deadly and destructive violence in Michoacan with opposing Mexican cartels.
The heavily armed CJNG arrived in a number of vehicles, which police reported were armored-plated.
“No attack on police [officers] will go unpunished. This was a cowardly, devious attack because they [sic] laid an ambush in this [part] of the road,” Governor Silvano Aureoles said.
In the aftermath of Monday’s attack, Mexican authorities deployed a surge in manpower throughout the region surrounding the scene of the de facto battle. Besides the local cops, federal and state security forces established checkpoints with heavily armed special weapons and tactics (SWAT) officers to hunt down the fugitive gunmen.
Besides the legal avocado orchards, Michoacan for decades has been known for marijuana (pot, weed) plantations and the making of methamphetamine (crank, speed) in makeshift meth labs. It is the location of the port of Lazaro Cárdenas, which is known to be a key entry point for chemicals used to make synthetic drugs, such as P2P a major chemical used to create crank, according to the CB’s source.
