Mexican town’s police force placed under arrest

A Mexican town’s entire municipal police force has been put under arrest on suspicion of hindering an investigation into the murder of a mayoral candidate.

All 27 officers in the rural town of Ocampo, in Michoacan state, were stripped of their weapons and taken in for questioning by state police over the weekend, Mexican news site Sin Embargo reports.

Fernando Angeles Juarez, running for the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, was shot dead as he left this home on Thursday - the second killing of an electoral candidate in Michoacan in a 24-hour period.

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Officials from the government’s ministry of public security arrived in Ocampo on Saturday to detain municipal public security chief Oscar Gonzalez on suspicion of being complicit in the assassination - only to be blocked by local police.

After a “tense” stand-off, federal officials “decided to avoid a possible confrontation”, says Sin Embargo, and left without arresting their target.

However, in an early morning raid on Sunday, state police arrested Gonzalez and the 27 officers under his command. They are now being investigated on suspicion of violating the police code of conduct.

The bizarre incident is part of a wider tide of intimidation and violence in the run-up to the country’s presidential and local elections this Sunday.

Dozens of candidates have been murdered over the past three months by criminal gangs, often with the complicity of local law enforcement.

Electoral corruption and violence may have become depressingly commonplace, but “the fact that an entire municipal police force is being questioned for its potential links to a candidature killing is nearly unprecedented,” says Telesur.

State police officers have been assigned to protect the town’s 24,000 residents while the investigation takes place.