Four Sinaloa Cartel operatives facing kidnapping charges were busted out of jail this past Saturday in the northern Mexican border state of Chihuahua.
State officials are investigating the jailbreak, according to local reports. Mexican army personnel previously transferred the four kidnappers to a jail in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo, located approximately 290 miles south of the state capital.
Within hours of the transfer, cartel gunmen arrived and entered the installation to free the four prisoners. Investigators are trying to determine if members of the Guadalupe y Calvo municipal police or other agencies assisted in the escape. Police launched a major operation led by ministerial agents of the state prosecutor’s office and army personnel.
Guadalupe y Calvo is located in the southern section of the state and is well known for a heavy cartel presence. Members of “La Línea” (Juárez Cartel) are engaged in a bitter turf war against the Sinaloa Cartel and affiliated gangs. The region provides valuable smuggling routes to the U.S. drug market.
Breitbart Texas recently reported on the kidnapping and murder of four municipal police officers in the area. The bodies were abandoned in Valle de Zaragoza, located in the southern section of the state near the city of Parral. Local law enforcement sources reported the presence of large convoys of heavily armed cartel operatives roaming the region.
Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce completed work assignments in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year tour in Monterrey, Mexico, for the U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program. As the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico in charge of the Mexican states of, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas) You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at robertrarce@gmail.com.