Zacatecas state police strike, demanding dismissal of their own chief

Most Zacatecas state police began an indefinite strike Thursday to demand the dismissal of the state’s police chief.

About 800 of 1,000 officers stopped work to pressure authorities to remove former army general Adolfo Marín Marín as Zacatecas minister of public security.

The strike comes after Marín dismissed seven officers on Wednesday. At least five of those were among a group of  officers who petitioned authorities for better working conditions at a meeting on March 20.

Officers have called for a meeting with Governor David Monreal, and say they won’t return to work until Marín is gone. They say they fear more unfair dismissals if he remains public security minister.

The striking officers are also demanding the dismissal of three other high-ranking police officials.

Police went on strike for two days last month to demand that Deputy Security Minister José Anciano Medrano, police force director Israel Reyes García and state forces division chief Lisbeth Takahashi Castañeda be removed from their positions.

They accuse those officials, all of whom previously worked with the now-defunct Federal Police, of corruption. Marín agreed to dismiss the officials at the March 20 meeting, bringing last month’s strike to an end. But he didn’t follow through: all three remain in their positions, police officers said.

Since 2020, the Zacatecas state police force has been divided into two groups, the newspaper La Jornada reported. One group is made up of approximately 800 police considered career officers of the Zacatecas state force, while the other group consists of some 200 officers who transferred into that force from the Federal Police.

While members of the former group strike, municipal police, the National Guard and the army are carrying out public security tasks in Zacatecas, a highly violent state where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel are engaged in a turf war.

The newspaper El Universal reported in November that eight municipalities in Zacatecas had few or no police because officers abandoned their jobs due to high levels of violence.

With reports from La Jornada and Milenio