Mexico’s Traditional and Indigenous Community Police Come Under Fire from Drug Cartels

Mexico’s traditional and Indigenous community police forces are coming under increasingly deadly fire from drug cartels, authorities said Monday.

Adrián López, the chief prosecutor in the western state of Michoacan, confirmed that gunmen linked to drug cartels shot to death seven members of the community police force in the town of Coahuayana over the weekend.

The community guards were killed just days after seven members of an Indigenous community police force were kidnapped, allegedly by cartel gunmen, and put through “hell” in another Michoacan town before they were freed Friday.

In the face of cartel turf wars that have emptied towns in the Mexican countryside, many places have turned to “community police,” who are relatively untrained members of the town who volunteer or are paid

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