In Mexico, a police victory against smuggling brings deadly revenge

Juan Jose Soriano, deputy commander of the Tecate Police Department in Mexico helped U.S. authorities find a drug-smuggling tunnel. The next morning, gunmen shot him 45 times in his bedroom, writes Richard Marosi.

The veteran officer told only a few trusted aides about the tunnel. Later that day, the officers went into the U.S. and traversed the length of the passageway to an empty building, where they found computers, ledgers and other key evidence.

For U.S. authorities, it was an encouraging example of cross-border cooperation in the drug war. For Mexico's crime bosses, it was a police victory that could not go unpunished.

That night last December, while Soriano slept with his wife and baby daughter, two heavily armed men broke into his house and shot him 45 times. The 35-year-old father of three young daughters died in his bedroom. He had lasted two days as the second-in-command of the department.

The death of a police officer is generally greeted in Mexico with a knowing smirk. All too often, it is assumed the cop in question was playing for both sides in the raging drug war that has claimed at least 2,000 lives in Mexico this year.

But all indications, from U.S. and Mexican sources, suggest that Soriano was among the good ones, poorly paid but somehow immune to the lure of big money and the threat of deadly firepower from Mexico's violent drug gangs.

Read more of Marosi's report on Juan Jose Soriano and Mexico's drug wars here.

For complete coverage of Mexico's drug wars, go to our Mexico Under Siege page.

And click here for more on Mexico.

Image: Amid vendors and musicians in the tree-lined central plaza, police in Tecate, Mexico, handcuff a man on unspecified charges. Last December, deputy commander Juan Jose Soriano was assassinated after he reported a cross-border smuggling tunnel. Some suspect the police force has been corrupted by drug lords. Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[MB]

That man is a hero. I am the first to rail against illegal immigration (and the planned reconquista that is underway)...but we must realize the drugs people use in the US end up as cash in the gangs hands that buys off cops and buys weapons.

these gangs know no borders and will soon be assasinating cops here in the US....they already have.

the drug money and weapons flow southward must be stopped.

[southoc]

Now can we have secure border?