REYNOSA, Tamaulipas – Six state police officers from the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas remain jailed after a judge charged them with aggravated kidnapping.
The ruling followed a weekend hearing where a Tamaulipas state judge ruled prosecutors had enough evidence linking the five male and one female police officers to a kidnapping that allegedly took place on February 13 in the border city of Reynosa. The judge ordered the officers are to be held without bond for a three month period while the case moves forward. Another hearing will be scheduled. Details of the kidnapping and the victim’s name have not been released.
According to information released by the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office, the six police officers have been identified as Antonio “L”, Tarsizo “S”, Saul “O”, Ricardo “V”, Jesus Emiliano “V” and Litzy Brisa “H.”
Breitbart Texas confirmed that the six officers and two others who have since been released were initially arrested on February 22 during a sting operation. Law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that a squad of police from Reynosa that included the six charged officers were called to the state capital for a training event of sorts. When the group arrived, state prosecutors arrested them and moved them to the state prison in Reynosa.
Earlier this week, unconfirmed information from two separate law enforcement sources in Mexico pointed to police officers arresting a local cartel operation in Reynosa. Officials released him after he allegedly paid a bribe. In recent weeks, the city of Reynosa witnessed a spike in shootouts and murders.
Just last month, eight police officers assigned to the border city of Rio Bravo went on the run in order to avoid being prosecuted for shooting an innocent motorist. As Breitbart Texas reported, a manufacturing plant engineer was driving to a convenience store when the police officers allegedly mistook him for a cartel gunman and fired more than 200 shots into the victim’s vehicle. The victim was unarmed.
In January, Breitbart Texas reported exclusively that a Tamaulipas state police officer who shot his partner and an innocent bystander in Ciudad Victoria tested positive for meth. That officer, who then died in a shootout with responding officers at a convenience store, had been arrested in 2014 in for being part of a group of officers who were on the payroll of Los Zetas. The other police officer who was the first murder victim also tested positive for meth leading to state officials to conduct a series of random drug tests where several police officers failed.
In September, a special unit of Tamaulipas state police officers reported killing eight cartel gunmen in a shootout in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. Since then, two officers have been arrested and others remain on the run after a cartel-connected human rights activist claimed that the officers killed the organized crime members in an extrajudicial manner.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A.C. Del Angel” from Tamaulipas.
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