Thread: Police Chief of Mexico Border City Is Missing

Police Chief of Mexico Border City Is Missing


MEXICO CITY February 19, 2013 (AP)

The police chief of the violent Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo is missing, authorities said Monday.

Tamaulipas state prosecutors said they have opened an investigation into the whereabouts of Roberto Balmori Garza, police chief of the city across the border from Laredo, Texas.

Tamaulipas prosecutors said in a brief statement that state officials in Nuevo Laredo will be in charge of the investigation.

Local media reported that two of Balmori Garza's brothers were found shot dead Sunday inside the trunk of a car in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon. One of his brothers was a federal investigator, media reported.

Tamaulipas prosecutors' spokesman Ruben Dario said Balmori Garza disappeared over the weekend. He said he couldn't give any other information on the case or confirm the media reports of the death of Balmori Garza's brothers.

Nuevo Laredo, a stronghold of the Zetas drug cartel, has been the scene of bloody drug-gang turf battles since the beginning of the year.

Two years ago, gunmen killed a retired army general who had been police chief of Nuevo Laredo for a month. Two of his bodyguards also were slain and two suffered wounds.

The Zetas, known for its viciousness, has been fighting its former ally, the Gulf cartel, in Mexico's northeast since early 2010.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/police-chief-mexico-border-city-missing-18533635

Police chief of Mexico border city missing, brothers killed

Jason Buch STAFF WRITE, Express-News.
Published 12:08 pm, Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Mexican authorities are investigating the disappearance of the chief of police in Nuevo Laredo.

Roberto Alejandro Balmori Garza has been missing for several days, prosecutors in the border state of Tamaulipas announced Monday. Balmori oversees the largely defunct police force in the troubled city, located across the Rio Grande from Laredo.

Balmori's brothers were found dead in the neighboring state of Nuevo León, according to media reports.

Nuevo Laredo is the most important smuggling corridor used by the Zetas drug cartel, and its police force has been targeted by narcotics traffickers for years. It's common to see soldiers and state police officers patrolling some areas of the city, but municipal and transit police are seldom seen on its streets.

In the summer of 2011, shortly after an earlier police chief was gunned down, the military took over duties performed by municipal police officers.

The killing of former general Manuel Farfan in February 2011, only a month after he took office, happened amid a series of attacks targeting municipal police.

In a May 2011 report, a Nuevo Laredo consular official speculated that rivals of the Zetas were targeting officers, who they perceived to be in the gang's pocket.

In 2005, the former head of the Nuevo Laredo chamber of commerce, Alejandro Domingez Coello, was gunned down only hours after being named the new chief of police.

The city has seen nearly a decade of cartel-related violence, which continued Monday, according to prosecutors, when two men in their 20s were killed by gunmen using AR-15 and AK-47 rifles.

jbuch@express-news.net

Police chief of Mexico border city missing, brothers killed - San Antonio Express-News