Fired MexFed Cops face quick
hiring
A CNN headline today says: “More than 3,000 Mexican federal police
fired.” Of those, 465 were charged with
crimes according to Mexican officials.
In addition, buried at the end of the story was a comment from Mexican
officials was that the dismissed officers are banned from future employment
with Mexican police forces at the local, state or federal levels.
A key point omitted from
the brief story is that, in a nation where the drug cartels are waging pitched
battles against civilian authorities, that’s a pool equivalent to two U.S. Army
combat battalions. These are men trained
in tactics and weaponry. Furthermore,
they are privy to the normal strategies employed by Mexican federal police in
many different areas, including routine law enforcement, drug interdiction and
small unit tactics – virtually all the combat intelligence and skills the drug
cartels need to vanquish police in any encounter.
For Mexican authorities,
it’s a Catch 22, they can’t undo the knowledge and skillset
acquired by the corrupt police, nor can they simply imprison them for an
undetermined period. It would be akin to
pulling the pin on a hand grenade then manually holding the ignition lever to
prevent detonation. It would only be a
matter of time before the imminent explosion rips apart Mexican penal
facilities and, perhaps, the entire government.
But for the drug cartels it
is like a gift from the ancient gods of the Olmecs, Maya, and Aztecs. Imagine being presented with 3,000 trained
warriors with a grudge against the established regime. A small number of the ex-police could be used
as cadres to train more skilled cartel fighters while others could be used as
cartel shock troops. In addition,
imagine if a 10-man squad of trained paramilitary types, armed to the teeth
with the latest armaments were to accompany each caravan of mules smuggling
drugs across the U.S.
border.
The
U.S. Border Patrol, already stretched to absurd limits would be vastly
overmatched. Rather than two-man border
patrol teams, the United
States would have to field platoon sized
units to interdict the smugglers. That
concept is accompanied by its own set of problems as U.S.
troops are prohibited from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States.
As a
former soldier and sheriff’s deputy, this columnist’s best wishes go out to the
men and women fighting a never-ending battle to secure U.S. borders
from drug smugglers, terrorists and illegal immigrants who seek to invade this
nation for illicit purposes. Thanks to Mexican corruption, the job just got
a lot tougher.
Larry Moniz
Aug. 30, 2010
