"Fuerza Civil" - The Best Police in Mexico?
Nuevo León's Civil Force aimed to transform Mexican law enforcement. It struggles amid a Gulf-Northeast Cartel war.
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Juan Alberto Cedillo and Ioan Grillo
In the sweltering central square of Mexico’s business capital of Monterrey, the officers of the Fuerza Civil police force squatted down in a tight combat formation raising their AR-15s against the cartel thugs. The criminals were armed and ruthless but not accustomed to fighting such organized officers and got swiftly taken out with no civilian casualties. Above them flew a formation of helicopters that looked like a scene from the movie “Apocalypse Now.”
The sequence may sound too good to be true. It is. The description is not of a real confrontation but a simulation put on for the media by the Fuerza Civil, or Civil Force, the police of Nuevo León state, home to Monterrey in the arid northeast of Mexico. Created in 2011, the Fuerza Civil was billed as an alternative to corrupt and inept Mexican cops, and would instead be honest, efficient and up to the enormous challenge of combating heavily-armed cartels. The force was accompanied by an aggressive marketing campaign, and huge recruitment posters adorn walls in Mexico City calling them “the best police in Mexico.”
Academics and business leaders from Monterrey’s booming companies got involved in the force’s creation to think outside the box. Salaries were hiked and are now at about 29,000 pesos, or $1,500, a month, which is very high by Mexican police standards. It also serves as an example to transform cops across the country, its architects say.
Murders were at a peak in Nuevo León in 2011, especially in the massive urban sprawl that makes up the Monterrey metropolitan area, but by 2014 they had plummeted by three quarters, showing the force seemed to be having the desired effect. Yet since then violence has crept back up as the state faces a battle between the Gulf Cartel and Northeast Cartel, which are both headquartered in the neighboring state of Tamaulipas. The mobs shift drugs through Nuevo León, sell doses on corners and do kidnappings and shakedowns.
Still, Nuevo León officials say they are fighting back. In a new offensive, which they have dubbed, “Operativo Muralla,” or “Operation Wall,” the Fuerza Civil is hitting cartels aided by new hardware including dozens of Mexican-made “Black Mamba” armored vehicles and an expanded helicopter fleet with a Black Hawk.
Gerardo Escamilla Vargas, the security secretary of Nuevo León, explained the game plan to CrashOut in an interview.
“The security strategy for Nuevo León is known as ‘Total Presence.’ We want to have…
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