Governor to Change State Investigative Police

(Chilpancingo, NA 27 November) Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo announced he would convert the existing “Ministerial Police” into a “Forensic Police.” The ministerial police are subordinate to the office of the state prosecutor with the mission to investigate crimes once they have been committed and detected. The governor wants to turn them into a high-tech criminal investigation force. He said that over the five years of his mandate, he has straightened out up the state preventive police (public safety and law enforcement), but not the ministerial police, and that he recognized that a new Forensic Police force is necessary instead, to improve the level of technology and professionalism of the crime investigators. “Not all of those in the current structure are inadequate,” he added, leaving the clear implication that he felt that many were. The governor emphasized the need to make public safety organizations healthy again, paying close attention for any breach of norms and procedures and then taking swift action to sanction or fire those who do not comply. Tacitly the governor was referring to both corruption and incompetence among law enforcement employees of the state government. “The certification and evaluation of police forces is our obligation, and we would go back to the old system only if the legislatures, federal and state, were to require it of us. But I do not think the Mexican population would accept that.”

When asked about the kidnapping of the former Rector of the Autonomous University of Guerrero, Arturo Contreras Gómez, the Governor responded that it seemed to him to be the work of common criminals. It should not become a matter for accusations or disputes in the political campaigns for governor. On Thursday the former Rector was kidnapped while out jogging, and later released unharmed. Press reports pointed to indications that a ransom was paid. Because Contreras is so strongly associated with Manuel Añorve Baños and the PRI in Acapulco, some speculated that the brief kidnapping was just an intimidation tactic or “dirty trick” in a hotly disputed governor’s race. Governor Zeferino was emphatic that the crime had no political motive, and that it should not be allowed to “contaminate the air” of the campaigns. He said that soon he would be able to release details that prove that view of the case.