92 Mexican Police Arrested in Drug Cartel Probe

Federal agents arrested 92 police officers accused of working in conjunction with the Zetas, a gang of assassins employed by the infamous Gulf Cartel in Mexico.

These arrests occurred on Wednesday in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. Luis Cárdenas Palomino, director of intelligence for the Mexican federal police, confirmed that 83 of the officers arrested were police from the municipality of Pachuca, Hidalgo’s capital city, and nine were government agents. Palomino stated that the Zetas paid police officers between 3,000 to 5,000 pesos ($228 to $380) every two weeks. He also acknowledged that the number of Hidalgo police on the Zetas’ payroll has grown drastically over the past few years. Initially, the crime group paid 600 thousand pesos biweekly for police protection. For at least the past two years, however, the Zetas have been paying the Hidalgo police force an estimated 300 million pesos biweekly. The Zetas have been responsible for much of the drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping in the Hidalgo area. Mexican officials now believe that many of these crimes were carried out with the aid of the Pachucan police.