Shipments Belonging To The Guadalajara Cartel Had Judicial Police Officers As A Security Detail

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

The former judicial police officer, José Reyes, one of the witnesses obtained by the DEA in the investigation of the murder of his agents in Mexico, detailed how the corporation to which he belonged protected shipments of marijuana

The United States is the main market for Mexican drugs.

"We went from Saltillo to La Poncha to bring loads of marijuana. We went to Saltillo and then to Monterrey, and to Laredo or Ciudad Mier.” Police officer José Reyes García Álvarez was keeping his word. Years before, he had approached the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to report what he had experienced as an agent of the Federal Judicial Police: he, along with other colleagues and his superiors, had accepted a million-dollar offer from the Guadalajara cartel to escort trucks full of marijuana on their way to the United States, the main market for Mexican drugs.

Between 1984 and 1985, García Álvarez was a federal judicial police officer in Saltillo, Coahuila, and Guadalajara, Jalisco. In this last state, together with his immediate superior, Commander Ramón Cosío de la Mora, he aligned himself with the organization led by Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca and Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo to provide protection for their drug shipments. .

According to the ex-police officer's account, contained in United States court documents, the cartel had managed to put enough police and authorities on its payroll so that its convoys were not detained on, at least, the northern route of the country, which included the states of Jalisco, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.

García said that there were police ahead of and behind each convoy with marijuana and that he, personally, had participated in four or five transfers. The rewards came shortly after, when his commander Cosío de la Mora went personally to Guadalajara to receive a check for 60 million pesos as appreciation for the support.

Cashing the check was the task of policeman José Reyes. According to him in his testimony, it was difficult for him due to the high amount of money, but he succeeded. The loot was distributed. 20 million for a prosecutor, 15 million for two high-ranking officers from the Federal Judicial Police, and 10 million for the other police officers to share. García remembers that he kept a million pesos, but shortly after he was arrested. The reason: having cashed a check from the Guadalajara Cartel.

But fate, or justice, brought the policeman back together with the Guadalajara Cartel. In the Reclusorio Oriente, where he was detained for nearly a year, he met Raúl López Álvarez, a former Jalisco state police officer who, shortly after, would be accused in the United States of having witnessed the torture and murder of Enrique Kiki Camarena, former special agent of the DEA, and the agency pilot, Alfredo Zavala.

Thus, García obtained a testimony that, shortly after, was used by the United States anti-drug agency to accuse and convict the state police officer of such crimes. In exchange, García, who also confessed to his criminal actions, obtained financial support from the DEA of at least $30,000.

Reclusorio Oriente aka Eastern Men’s Prison

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