Mexico cartels target police cadets

MEXICO CITY — Suspected drug-trafficking groups are killing Mexico's future police commanders before they can even emerge from the much-touted academy that is supposed to transform them into world-class officers.

In the past two weeks, five officers-in-training have been gunned down while traveling to and from the Public Security Superior Academy in the central state of San Luis Potosi.

Analysts said the new tactic was a warning to both the cadets and the government, which is waging an unprecedented fight against drug cartels.

"These groups no longer have any fear that by attacking police there will be some type of retribution," said Mexico City police instructor Arturo Yanez, a former adviser to the federal attorney general's office. "Their only limit is their imagination."

The attacks sparked a partial strike this week by some academy students, who are demanding the right to carry guns and are calling for police roadblocks to intercept drug gunmen.

In an open letter to Public Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna, the strike leaders complained that students have been left defenseless in the face of drug hit squads that operate in and around the state capital, also called San Luis Potosi.

"They commissioned us to San Luis Potosi to be trained, when in reality they put us at the disposition of organized crime," said the letter.

It said the cadets, who number 800 to 1,000, are first-time students training to be federal police and current officers from different law-enforcement groups around the country. They are taking part in a one-year program designed to elevate the commander corps of Mexico's often-criticized police forces. Graduation is in six weeks.

Local media estimated 200 students skipped morning classes in protest.

Cadets have said FBI agents have given four-week classes at the school, although Mexican and U.S. authorities could not say immediately if there were any U.S. trainers there now.

Security analyst Carlos Antonio Flores Perez said the brazen attacks "are very serious because they are directed at high-level police officers" taking specialized training to make them more effective against organized crime.

Still, Flores cautioned that in the murky world of drug trafficking, it's hard to discern the motives of the killers. Police in Mexico are sometimes killed for helping rival cartels or for failing to provide protection to drug gangs.

Of the record 2,200 drug-related slayings this year, 320 were police officers — also a record.

At the San Luis Potosi academy, the striking cadets changed out of their uniforms while skipping morning classes, both as an act of protest and so as not to be identified when they left the academy, they said.

Still, they complained that they were easily recognizable in the capital city "because of the haircut that is required."

The ministry declined to comment on the student strike, but officials from Mexico City visited the facility Wednesday, promising security for the students, who later returned to class while waiting for their demands to be met. Those demands also include a special investigator for the five killings.

Four of the officers were killed while returning to their hometown — Morelia, Mexico — to visit their families over the weekend. The fifth officer was intercepted in his car and killed while traveling back to the academy after a visit to his hometown in the central state of Mexico near Mexico City.