Authorities in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas are looking into members of their own police force in connection with the underground trade of weapons and ties to drug cartels.
Two cases point to a network of current and former cops working with drug cartels. One of the cases occurred last week when police forces in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, arrested Oscar Eduardo Soria Hernandez — a local man who allegedly threatened his wife with a rifle.
While investigating the case, investigators learned that Soria allegedly ran an underground weapons store in Ciudad Victoria. Breitbart Texas obtained exclusive information that revealed that Soria was working with a group of Tamaulipas police officers assigned to the northern part of the state. The police officers allegedly would provide Soria with weapons for profit.
In a separate case last week, detectives with the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office arrested 41-year-old Roberto Martinez Lugo, a former state police officer on weapons charges. The arrest occurred in Ciudad Victoria, where Martinez was coming out of his home carrying four rifles wrapped in a blanket.
Even though Martinez tried to run away, authorities chased him down and seized the weapons. The weapons included four AR-15-type rifles. The rifles had logos and letters from the CDN faction of Los Zetas and are believed to have been used by cartel members in Ciudad Mante and neighboring cities. Authorities believe that Martinez was guarding and moving the weapons for cartel members.
Martinez had been a member of the Tamaulipas State Police but was dismissed for alleged ethical violations. The discharged cop is in the process of suing the police force in an attempt to get his job back.
Law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that Martinez is tied to a group of corrupt police officers from a motorcycle unit disbanded after a 2018 attack on the Tamaulipas governor’s house. Three officers from that unit faced charges for that attack. That now-defunct motorcycle unit was also tied to the local distribution of drugs.
While authorities have linked Martinez to the cops from that unit, they never arrested him in those other cases.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas, including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.
