By IANS/EFE,
Mexico City, April 17 (IANS/EFE) Ten Mexican police officials have been arrested on charges of extortion in Ciudad Juarez, a senior police official said.
The arrests are the “result of the confidence of the citizens to report this type of conduct”, the force’s commissioner Facundo Rosas told a press conference Thursday in the capital.
He said the federal cops stationed in Juarez “are there to serve, and not to exploit the citizens”.
The 10 accused police officers demanded payoffs of up to 50,000 pesos ($4,000) from vendors of pirated merchandise in exchange for not confiscating their stock and allowing them to stay in business, according to press accounts.
Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.5 million people just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, has suffered more than 5,000 murders since January 2008, most of them attributed to turf battles between powerful drug cartels.