Preemptive Scorch

Approximately 30 police trucks were torched by a group of armed arsonists early Tuesday morning, December 8. The newly equipped vehicles were located in a Mazda agency on Via Rapida Poniente and were being prepared for use in the city to bolster cop convoys that prowl the calles looking for criminal activity.

According to a dealership guard (who was bound and held at gunpoint under threat of death during the arson), windows were broken and the interiors of the vehicles were doused with gasoline and set aflame.

An investigator for the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Vicente Sánchez, said that the destruction of the patrol units was a not-so-veiled threat sent to law-enforcement officers who have taken to patrolling the city in convoys of three and four vehicles in an attempt to protect themselves.

Tirso Liévano Hernández, president of the Colegio de Abogados (lawyers’ college) in Tijuana, believes that the arson was a retort to well-publicized statements made by law-enforcement personnel regarding the direction of their efforts to squelch criminal activity. Hernandez said that such an open declaration challenging criminals will only exacerbate the situation, a situation that he feels is best viewed as a labor of intelligence rather than a lucha libre between cops and criminals.

Sources: Frontera, El Mexicano

Photo: flickr.com/photos/22421801@N00/87533996