A large force of federal and state police and the military will be part of a new security strategy in Tijuana, Baja California, next week in response to a spike in the number of homicides.
A record 2,518 people were murdered in the border city last year, almost seven times the total in 2012.
President López Obrador this morning presented the rough draft of a security plan that will be implemented beginning Monday with the deployment of 1,800 military and police personnel. It was well received by local authorities.
Municipal Public Security Secretary Marco Sotomayor Amezcua said the city had repeatedly requested the intervention of federal forces for two years.
“If it is as announced and we get a real presence of a large number of [federal agents] . . . I believe it will work in reducing the number of homicides.”
The president of a public security citizens’ council, Juan Manuel Hernández Niebla, took the president’s announcement as a clear sign that Tijuana is a priority.
“We must applaud and congratulate ourselves for the fact that the president of the republic is turning around and looking at Tijuana in terms of security,” he said.
Local and state officials say the spike in homicides is not the result of drug cartels fighting over trafficking routes into the United States as it has been in the past, but local drug dealers fighting each other.
They estimate that 90% of homicides are now related to local drug sales.
