A gang leader in Mexico City is accused of using corrupt detectives as drug mules to hide product in police vehicles, according to recently surfaced details from an ongoing investigation.
Details trickling out on the case against Edgar “El Barrabas” reveal how he used a network of corrupt detectives in Mexico City’s Attorney General’s Office to allegedly move drugs to a nearby suburb.
Earlier this year, Mexico City’s Attorney General’s Office arrested El Barrabas as part of an investigation into a small gang distributing drugs and engaging in extortion in the suburb Milpa Alta, Infobae reported. Authorities arrested gang members in August who revealed they had been getting help from dirty detectives.
Corruption has increasingly made headlines in recent years, reaching the highest levels of power.
Prosecutors in New York are expected later this year to start the drug trafficking trial of Genaro Garcia Luna, a the former top-ranking police officer in all of Mexico. In 2019, U.S. authorities arrested Garcia Luna in Dallas based on allegations of helping the Sinaloa Cartel while serving as Mexico’s Public Security Secretary.
In 2019, U.S. authorities also arrested Gabriel Garrido Isaias in Laredo, Texas, allegedly driving more than 80 pounds of methamphetamine. According to information released by the US. Department of Justice, Garrido was a police officer in Mexico City. Court documents revealed that he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges and received an 8-year prison sentence.
In previous years, U.S. authorities have taken into custody, charged, and convicted Mexican police officers for their involvement in drug trafficking and organized crime. Some were detained at the border and in the interior of the country smuggling drugs. Others were extradited after the fact, Univision revealed.
In October 2018, California authorities arrested Miguel Ángel González Patrón, a cop with the Ensenada Police, when he was allegedly transporting more than 50 pounds of methamphetamine along Highway 5 between Orange and San Diego Counties.
At the time of the arrest, Gonzales showed his Mexican police credentials.
In 2018, a U.S. federal judge in El Paso sentenced former Chihuahua State Police Officer Mario De La O Lopez aka “Flaco” to 27 years in prison for his role in Sinaloa Cartel’s narcotics distribution operations. The former cop was one of 24 charged in a criminal indictment which included Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
While Zambada remains on the run, El Chapo is serving a life sentence in the U.S.
Several former Mexican police officers became heads of criminal organizations. The most prominent is Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka “El Mencho,” leader of Cartel Jalisco New Generation. Other former cops include former Juarez Cartel lieutenant Vicente “Viceroy” Carillo Fuentes and the late Juan José “El Azul” Esparragoza Moreno, a former cop-turned-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the 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 “C.P. Mireles” de Tamaulipas.