MEXICO CITY (AP) — The police chief in a small town in central Mexico committed suicide Friday as troops closed in to arrest him as part of anti-corruption raids that also saw the mayor of another city arrested.
The raids took place in two rural towns in Mexico state, west of Mexico City, and in a densely populated suburb on the outskirts of the country’s capital, where an assistant police chief was arrested.
Prosecutors say the police chief of the city of Texcaltitlan killed himself with his own gun as Marines, National Guardsmen and soldiers closed in on him in an attempt to arrest him on unspecified charges.
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And troops also arrested the mayor of the nearby town of Amanalco on “various charges.” The area around the two cities has long been dominated by the violent gang La Familia Michoacana, which deals in drugs, kidnappings and extortion.
While the first two raids focused on rural areas, authorities also arrested the assistant police chief of Naucalpan, a sprawling suburb of 775,000 on the northwestern edge of Mexico City.
Although prosecutors did not specify the charges against the officials, local media reported that they were accused of colluding with organized crime gangs.
Gangs and drug cartels have long infiltrated, intimidated or bribed local officials into working for them. They often went so far as to cut municipal budgets or use local police forces to warn or protect them from federal raids. Sometimes police officers simply profit from the drug trade on a freelance basis.
