Cartel gunmen are targeting police and politicians in Mexico’s Jalisco state
Two state police officers were shot dead in their car in Guadalajara on Monday.
Mexican security experts have warned that local authorities are at risk of losing control of certain parts of the western state of Jalisco amid mounting attacks on security forces.
Five police officers were murdered in two separate gangland-style shootings in Jalisco in the past week, while a local mayor survived an assassination attempt on Tuesday for the second time in the last six months.
The first attack took place on February 24, when a team of gunmen shot dead three municipal police officers in their patrol car on a busy road in Tlaquepaque, a popular tourist district within the state capital Guadalajara.
Cellphone footage showed the assassins firing off at least ten rounds before driving away, leaving a thick trail of blood streaming from the police car. The Tlaquepaque police chief and his deputy both resigned the next day, citing personal safety concerns.
State police incinerated almost 90,000 marijuana crops at a plantation in Jalisco on Monday.
Five days after that attack, assailants armed with assault rifles killed two state police officers in their car in Guadalajara. The pair’s baby daughter survived the attack with minor injuries from shards of broken glass.
The next evening, on March 1, the mayor of Ahualulco, a small town to the west of Guadalajara, survived an assassination attempt when gunmen opened fire on his bulletproof vehicle. They also shot at the town’s police station, causing material damage but no casualties…
The Tequila Files 