By The Opinion
Dec 21, 2024, 1:37 PM EST
Violence in Mexico has claimed the lives of at least 310 police officers so far this year, which represents an average of one police officer killed per day.
According to figures from the non-governmental organization “Causa en Común”, 297 municipal, state and federal police officers have been killed by crime, between January 1 and December 12.
For its part, the newspaper El Financiero carried out a newspaper review between December 13 and 19, finding 13 cases of murdered police officers, which adds up to 310 homicides of Mexican police officers in the year.
The states with the highest incidence of police homicides are: Guanajuato, State of Mexico, Guerrero, Chiapas, Nuevo León, Baja California, Jalisco, Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas and Colima.
In contrast, the states of Campeche, Yucatán, Aguascalientes, Baja California Sur and Nayarit have recorded ten or fewer police homicides in the last six years.
In Guanajuato, 52 police murders have been documentedmainly in the municipality of Celaya; also in Abasolo, Apaseo el Alto, Apaseo el Grande and Maravatío. This week, four police officers were murdered in Jerécuaro and two in Uriangato.
In 2023, in the same period, 410 police officers were murdered, that is, 100 more than this year, while in 2022 the murder of 398 officers was recorded.
In 2021, 394 police officers were killed, and 2020 is the year in which the most homicides were recordedwith the death of 514 police officers.
According to the Mexico Peace Index 2024, “being a police officer in Mexico is almost four times more dangerous than being a member of the general public,” since the more than 2,600 murders of police officers recorded in the last six years are equivalent to an approximate annual rate of 96.8 deaths per 100,000 agents.
The murders of police officers have an impact not only on their families, but also on society as a whole, as “they can undermine public safety, weakening the ability of law enforcement to protect citizens,” states the Peace Index.
The document considers that police killings also directly attack the rule of law, challenging the authority of the state and damaging trust in institutions.
Keep reading:
– A police officer who revealed links between a Mexican mayor and the CJNG is murdered.
– The decapitated body of a police officer is found on a highway in northern Mexico.