(StraightNews.org) A Mexico City police chief has been murdered amid rising violence against legal and political officials across the country. Writing on social media, a local official explained that Chief Commissioner Milton Morales Figueroa died in a “cowardly attack” and vowed to bring those responsible to justice. Morale Figueroa was responsible for intelligence operations aimed at fighting organized crime and was shot dead while shopping at a grocery store.
Mexico City Mayor Marti Batres said the Chief Commissioner was intent on providing safety and security in the city, where drug trafficking cells connected to major cartels operate. Local reporters suggested that Mr. Morale Figueroa was making significant headway in his war against the cartels.
The police officer’s murder occurred just days after an Indigenous rights activist was shot dead in his car, along with his wife and daughter. Lorenzo Santos Torres and his family were traveling in the southern state of Oaxaca when the shooting occurred.
The Center for Human Rights and Advice to Indigenous Peoples said Mr. Torres had received numerous threats for his work, particularly “injustices committed by municipal authorities.”
Days before the Torres killing, six people from two families died in a hail of bullets in the state of Guanajuato, where drug cartels are reportedly engaged in a violent turf war. The six victims included a woman and an adolescent boy, and the local Mayor said they were working at a construction site when they were murdered.
Guanajuato has the highest violence figures in Mexico, where the powerful Jalisco cartel attacks local organized criminal gangs for dominance. The state also holds the record for the highest number of police killings, and the US State Department warns Americans against traveling there.
Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said that cartel assassins target families, including children, to “disperse rival cartel structures” and to serve as a warning that retaliation will not be limited to rival gang members but their relatives too.
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