The Deadly Betrayals Of Sinaloa Cartel's Dirty Cops Who Kidnap & Execute For CDS In Rosarito

"HEARST" for Borderland Beat

One of the eight dead men who were allegedly kidnapped by Rosarito police officers working with the Sinaloa Cartel. 

Criminals kidnapped or detained in police operations have gone missing, some are found dead. A group of uniformed officers from Rosarito, Baja California is currently being accused of serving the Sinaloa Cartel (Cártel de Sinaloa, CDS) and handing over the men they detain to CDS members who later torture and execute them. 

Recently, Baja California’s Attorney General Guillermo Ruiz, and the Central Prosecutor Hiram Sanchez, were threatened via messages allegedly sent by members of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generation (CJNG). In these messages, the Attorney General and central prosecutor are accused of supporting and protecting Rosarito police officers, who are collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel. 

They allege that these Rosarito police officers are kidnapping members from other cartel groups, then the officers either hand the kidnapped men over to CDS groups or simply murdering the kidnapped cartel members themselves. There is evidence to support these claims as the State Attorney General's Office (FGE) is currently handling multiple cases related to corruption in the Rosarito Municipal Police department.

The following is the story of the alleged backroom cartel dealings, deadly betrayals and police-sanctioned torture perpetrated by the Rosarito municipal police officers working for the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as the accused protection they receive from the Attorney General’s office.

Between 2019 and August 2020, Rosarito’s police director Carlos Meza Avila, his deputy director César Pedro Silva Ibáñez, and officer Raúl Javier Paredes Esquer were believed to be working in tandem, all three colluding with the cartel leader Pedro Fausto Fernández López, alias "El Cremas".

It is believed both Officer Paredes and Director Meza Avila were involved in aiding El Cremas in his fight against Diana Marlén Montes de Oca, a municipal judge, in a bidding war to buy a plot of land in the Vista Marina subdivision.

On January 17, 2021, it was discovered that Diana Marlén Montes and her elderly mother were murdered in the Vista Marina neighborhood of Rosarito, solving the property dispute which plagued criminal boss El Cremas. 

FGE investigators believe that police officers who were called to attend a kidnapping complaint reported in Oceana condominiums planted a gun on the two drug dealers they arrested on scene, Hugo Reyes Almanza and Austin Lee Waller. The gun the FGE believes officers planted on the men was later found to have been used to murder the Diana Marlén Montes’ elderly mother. 

Video camera surveillance footage shows that a group of thugs, including men aboard a white, unmarked patrol-type vehicle, were closely following Officer Raúl Javier Paredes Esquer and his wife as they walked on a sidewalk in the Benito Juárez neighborhood while he was off duty. Officer Paredes had recently had a falling out with friend police director Carlos Meza Avila for unknown reasons. 

Pulso Ciudadano writes that at roughly 12:30 pm, the men following Officer Paredes and his wife took out firearms and shot at the couple, causing both of them to fall limp on the sidewalk in broadlight. Officer Paredes received more than 20 gunshot wounds. The emergency line was called and paramedics were sent to the shooting location however Officer Paredes was pronounced dead at 12:48pm. His wife was injured and she was able to be treated by the paramedics. She later recovered and survived the attack. 

At 12:50 PM, municipal police reported the seizure of a gray 2014 Volkswagen Jetta belonging to the attackers who had just shot Officer Paredes and his wife. 

The vehicle seizure occurred on Calle Dátil in the Villafloresta subdivision. Official witness statements reported that 10 patrol cars came chasing after the Jetta. Then the driver crashed and fled the area on foot.

Other witnesses unofficially told Zeta Tijuana "It was very strange, there was a chase, a supposed shooting of which no shell casings were found, and the release of the alleged perpetrators." 

Unofficially police officers report that police director Carlos Meza Avila chased down the shooters in the white unmarked vehicle, caught up with them and intervened. Director Carlos Meza Avila then allegedly let the perpetrators go, "and there is video". The officers unofficially concluded that "Raul Javier's problems were inside the corporation... not outside." 

Eight men who were taking care of roosters used in a popular local cock fighting ring were inside a house under construction in Rosarito when they were suddenly attacked and kidnapped, allegedly by officers of the police force of Rosarito. Officers are accused of handing over the kidnapped men, who were associated with the CJNG to Sinaloa Cartel members. 

Four of the eight kidnapped men were found dead in the early morning hours on Bulevar 2000 in Tijuana. The other four were soon found under the Punta Bandera vehicular bridge. All eight of the dead kidnapped men showed signs of torture prior to death.

Around this same time Gabriel Carmona Rodríguez, also a cockfighter, was shot and killed. He was identified as the "criminal right-hand man" of "El Güero Tavo," the head of the CJNG in Rosarito. 

The FGE began looking into the Rosarito Police department. Some police officers had anonymously accused police director Carlos Meza Avila of being involved in the freeing of Officer Paredes' killer in the shooting from July 16 and the FGE began requesting information on the patrols, weapons and agents that had participated in some operations implemented.

Allegedly the police department was non compliant to downright obstructive to the FGE's requests for these records. When the Secretary of Security Francisco Javier Arellano Ortiz was asked by reporters about the police department's refusal to cooperate in the investigation, he said that he did not possess the ability to make the department comply. However it was later pointed out that Francisco Javier Arellano did in fact have access to all the records being sought by the FGE and could have provided them.

According to El Imparcial, on August 14, 2021, a group of armed men shot at a vehicle that Rosarito police deputy director César Pedro Silva Ibáñez and his bodyguard were riding inside while in the Rancho Chula Vista area. The men allegedly shot at the police director from inside their Ford Expedition SUV at approximately 7:47 pm. 

Zeta Tijuana writes that unofficially it is known that this attack against police deputy director Silva occured as retaliation for the aforementioned police kidnapping of the eight men in July, making it likely that the attackers were members of the CJNG. 

In a later operation, it is officially reported that three men were apprehended on suspicion of being the shooters involved in the attack on the police director. These three are Walter Geovanny ‘N’, Marco Antonio ‘N’ and José Luis ‘N’. In the struggle to arrest them, one of the men, Walter Geovanny "N", ended up being shot in the back five times by officers. 

According to the lawyers of the three men apprehended, the police officers arrested an additional three cartel members alongside Walter, Marco and José Luis. 

In the amparo filed on August 15, 2021, their lawyers allege that Gerardo López Valdovinos, José Antonio Cárdenas Cinco and Héctor Manuel Valadez were also arrested at the time but have since gone mysteriously missing; the subtext being that the officers extrajudicially killed the three missing men as retribution for the shooting or handed them over to the Sinaloa Cartel. 

On the morning of August 17, 2021, the wife, daughter and mother-in-law of Rosarito’s police deputy director César Silva were kidnapped by cartel members. Zeta Tijuana writes that unofficially it is believed the women were kidnapped as retribution for the police kidnapping of the eight CJNG men and the “disappearing” of the three men arrested alongside Walter, Marco and José Luis. The alleged purpose of kidnapping the women related to the police director, Zeta writes, was to get them to admit to the wrongdoing. The three women were released from captivity later on the same day that they were taken. 

Despite the women having been freed, the Attorney General's Office still ordered that a “mega operation” be performed in the Soler neighborhood of Tijuana on August 18, 2021 to “search for the wife, daughter and mother-in-law”.

It is at this point that some have questioned whether Attorney General Guillermo Ruiz and Prosecutor Hiram Sanchez supported or enabled the Rosarito police department's collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel, as it is important to note, again, the women being searched for by instruction of the Attorney General's office had already been freed and located.

The operation was carried out by members of the State Police (GESI) and supported by deputy director César Silva. The location of the operation was determined based on information received “anonymously”. 

The accused prosecutor, Hiram Sanchez denied having supported the Rosarito police director in organizing his planned “mega operation” to locate women who had already been found and denied that the Attorney General’s office ordered the operation. 

However Tijuana's Secretary of Municipal Security, Pedro Cruz Camarena, later admitted to local reporters that the Attorney General’s office was indeed the one who ordered the operation.

On Wednesday, August 25, 2021, the Army (SEDENA) disarmed all Rosarito municipal police officers. They seized and held 250 weapons from the Rosarito police for three days. In these three days they performed ballistic tests on the Rosarito police firearms. 

They reported that this was merely a routine procedure that was regularly scheduled however Zeta Tijuana reports that this “routine procedure” was almost never done and had been ignored for years. The article alleges that the real reason behind the seizure of the officer’s weapons and ballistic testing came from a suspicion that these police firearms had been used in recent crimes. 

They were seeking to create a kind of ballistic “fingerprint” of the firearms that could be used to compare with the ballistic “fingerprint” found on kidnapped and executed cartel members.

The report detailing the conclusion of the ballistic tests is still ongoing as of the writing of this story but Zeta reports that unofficially it is known that some of the seized police firearms presented evidence of modification and tampering, suggesting that some officers had tried to disguise the ballistic signature of their weapon.

On August 28, 2021, just a few days after the weapons review began, Director Carlos Meza Avila became incapacitated and was replaced by interim Director Andres Garcia Curiel.

Sources

FGE Official Press Release,  Medios BC, Pulso Ciudadano, PSN,  Sintesistv, Noticias BC, Rosarito Noticias, El Mexicano, , Analilia Ramirez

El Sol de Tijuana Article 1, Article 2, Article 3

Cadena Noticias Article 1, Article 2, Article 3

Uniradio Informa Article 1, Article 2

Zeta Tijuana Article 1, Article 2, Article 3, Article 4, Article 5

La Jornada Article 1, Article 2

El Imparcial Article 1, Article 2

Punto Norte Article 1, Article 2