Police in a cartel-dominated Mexican city are pulled off the streets after army takes their guns

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Local police in the cartel-dominated city of Culiacan, Mexico have been pulled off the streets after the army seized their guns, officials announced Monday.

The move came just one day after about 1,500 residents of Culiacan, the capital of the northern state of Sinaloa, held a march Sunday though the city’s downtown to demand peace after weeks in which cartel gunfights have killed dozens of people in and around the city.

But rather than announcing a stepped-up police presence, Ruben Rocha, the state’s governor, said Monday the entire 1,000-member municipal police force would not return to duty until they get their weapons back. Soldiers, state police and National Guard will take over patrolling until then.

Rocha said the seizure of the weapons for inspection of their permits and serial numbers was not a routine check, but rather was “exceptional,” and said “we hope it will end soon.”

Historically, the Mexican army has seized the weapons of local police forces they distrust, either because they suspect some local cops are working for drug gangs or because they suspect they are carrying unregistered, private sidearms that would make abuses harder to trace.

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In 2018, the army seized the weapons from the municipal police in another state capital, Cuernavaca, to conduct a similar inspection. It said at the time the measure was aimed at ensuring “trustworthy security forces.”

Hundreds of army troops have been flown into Culiacan since fighting broke out between factions of the Sinaloa cartel after drug lords Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López were apprehended in the United States after they flew there in a small plane on July 25.

Zambada later claimed he was kidnapped and forced aboard the plane by Guzmán López, causing a violent battle between Zambada’s faction and the “Chapitos” group lead by the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Sunday’s protest was the first such march residents have dared to hold since factional fighting broke out following the events of July 25. Gunbattles have broken out even in downtown areas and upscale neighborhoods of Culiacan, and parents have been loathe to send their children to school since early September.

Schools in Culiacan have largely turned to holding classes online to avoid the near-daily shootings. On Monday, gunmen shot to death the leader of the local cattle rancher’s union, Faustino Hernández, in broad daylight on a downtown street.

The civic group “Culiacan Valiente,” or Brave Culiacan, organized residents to dress in white Sunday as they carried banners reading “Take back our streets!”

“We want a return to in-class learning, but only if the safety of the schoolchildren is guaranteed,” the march organizers wrote in statement.

Rocha acknowledged the battle is between two cartel factions — he called them the “Chapitos” and the “Mayitos” — and pledged to fight both equally.

“There are two groups that are confronting each other here,” Rocha said of his state. “The authorities are here to face them down equally, both of them without exceptions.”

The two groups have taken to leaving strange factional markers on the dead bodies of their rivals: The “Chapitos” leave pizzas (derived from their group’s collective moniker in Spanish, “La ChaPIZA”), while Zambada’s supporters leave their trademark cowboy hats on dead bodies. The cowboy hats reflect the belief that Zambada’s faction is more old-school than the young Guzmáns.

But the situation has gotten so out of control that cartel gunmen have taken to hijacking buses and trucks and burning them to block highways leading in and out of Culiacan.

Rocha acknowledged that he himself got caught for hours in traffic Friday after one such cartel blockade, after he went to the nearby resort city of Mazatlan to meet with outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Rochas said he had to drive past the burning remains of one vehicle that had been torched.

On Monday, the governor promised to set up five “anti-blockade” squads with state police and soldiers on highways near Culiacan. But in acknowledgement that the squads wouldn’t be able to stop the hijackings, he said they would at least be equipped with tanker trucks to puts out the flames and tow away the wreckage.

Even the local army commander, Gen. Francisco Leana Ojeda, acknowledged recently that “We want this to be over as soon as possible, but it doesn’t depend on us, it’s up to the warring groups to stop confronting each other.”