Chief, others resign amid threats
Read more: National, International, Crime, Mexico
CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO (AP) -- Drug cartels are sending a brutal message to police and soldiers in cities across Mexico -- Join us or die.
The threat appears in recruiting banners hung across roadsides and in publicly posted death lists.
Cops get warnings over their two-way radios.
At least four high-ranking police officials have been gunned down this month. That includes Mexico's acting federal police chief.
Mexico has battled for years to clean up its security forces and win them the public's respect.
But Mexicans generally assume police and even soldiers are corrupt until proven otherwise.
They also think the honest ones lack resources, training and the assurance that their colleagues are watching their backs.
Police who take on the cartels feel isolated and vulnerable when they become targets.
Take, for example, 22 commanders in the border city of Ciudad Juarez who were named on a handwritten death list left at a monument to fallen police this year.
Of the 22, seven have been killed and three wounded in assassination attempts. Of the others, all but one have quit, and city officials said he didn't want to be interviewed.
Juarez city spokesman Sergio Belmonte confirmed today that the city's police chief had submitted his resignation.
The chief would be replaced by a military official on leave from the armed forces.
Juarez is across the border from El Paso, Texas.
(Copyright ©2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
