MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — Transit police officers in this and other border cities are now being targeted by state and federal authorities since the agencies have a long history of serving as lookouts for local drug cartels.
Tamaulipas state authorities began a series of operations aimed at rooting out municipal transit cops working for the various organized crime groups that operate in the border cities of this state.
The operation comes after state authorities received anonymous complaints about officers from the various transit agencies in the cities of Matamoros, Reynosa, and Rio Bravo are working for the Gulf Cartel. In response to the complaints, members of the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office and the Mexican Army raided police offices to carry out a series of investigations.
As a result, three local transit police officers confessed to being pressured by the Gulf Cartel to provide information about security operations or military movements.
Authorities carried out 180 interviews from a pool of 300 agents in the various transit police departments in the northern part of the state.
In the border city of Rio Bravo, which is immediately south of Donna, Texas, authorities were not able to locate the transit director Javier Hinojosa Hinojosa for questioning. Investigators obtained an order for his detention so he can be questioned under a “presentation order”.
Transit police agencies in the various municipalities of northern Tamaulipas were originally created by local governments so they could assist local police, however, those agencies carry out a series of tasks for organized crime such as extortion through arbitrary fines and demanding bribes, as well as in providing cartel members with security information.
Unlike state and federal officers, local transit police are not subjected to detailed background checks. Local agents are not properly investigated or vetted before being sent to the field.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.A. Espinoza” from Tamaulipas.
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