Tecate mayor calls out her cops to face down the Baja state police

Last Wednesday, October 21 around 3:00 pm, 30 officers from the state prosecutor's office and state security and intelligence guard arrived at Tecate's city hall to make a warrant effective against Tecate’s mayor Olga Zulema Adams and two other public servants.

To avoid arrest, Adams locked herself in her office and used almost 100 municipal police to block the building entrances; they guarded Zulema Adams for at least four hours.

According to state prosecutor Hiram Sanchez Zamora, the warrant was issued by a civil judge because of city of Tecate debt totaling 5,567,000 pesos ($265,981) to a gasoline supplier company (Gasmart), that had not been paid.

Adams, according to prosecutors, has been urged to pay since 2019, but the notification has been ignored. For this reason, she was accused of contempt of state authority. Though the warrant was sent out October 16, it was not until last Wednesday that authorities tried to make it effective.

Almost all the municipal police officers of this small city were there, even some who had finished their daily shift already. This action was criticized the next days because the murder of a 40-year-old man took place at 5:00 pm one mile away, while the police focused their elements on the guarding of Adams.

At 6:00 pm, a Tecate civil court employee arrived with a document signed by the judge Manuel Castro that made the warrant without any effect. One hour later, Adams got out of city hall and said that the debt was paid entirely one day before, and she claimed to be a victim of political violence from Baja California’s governor.

“To make an arrest always two or three people are sent, but yesterday was 30 elements, they closed streets and came with press. They wanted to make a political circus in front of the city hall. The order was to take me, even when we already have paid," she said on Thursday at a virtual press conference.

On the other hand, the governor Jaime Bonilla on his daily virtual press conference noticed that warrants need to be carried out even if they are against mayors. And he criticized the use of municipal police forces. “On photos, it looked like a security house, just as in the movies where criminals protect themselves”.

Zulema Adams stressed that since June of this year they had denounced this political prosecution to the prosecutor's office in Mexico City.