Mexico Trucker Online

MEXICO CITY (MTN) — Mexico City’s police chief and its top prosecutor were forced out of office on Tuesday following a [cref 12-people-trampled-to-death-in-mexico-nightclub-raid botched nightclub raid that resulted in the deaths of 12 people], including a 13-year-old girl.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said the resignation of Police Chief Joel Ortega was the first step in a plan to reconstruct the police force. Ortega had held the post since 2004, when he replaced Ebrard - who was fired in a different police scandal.

The mayor made the announcement shortly after Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission presented a report alleging rampant misconduct by officials in the June 20 raid on the News Divine nightclub that it said “created a death trap.”

City prosecutor Rodolfo Felix Cardenas offered to step down and later Tuesday he told a news conference that Ebrard had accepted his resignation. His replacement has not been announced.

A criminal investigation did not find evidence that Ortega had committed any crime, but he has been the target of harsh criticism.

Ebrard said that he wants to “make major institutional changes” to the city’s police department to avoid such tragedies in the future.

“We have to build a different kind of police force,” he said.

He appointed Health Secretary Manuel Mondragon as interim police chief.

Officers responding to reports of drugs and underage drinking blocked the club’s lone exit, creating a deadly stampede in which nine young club-goers and three police were asphyxiated or crushed to death. Among the dead were teens aged 13 and 14.

Thirty-nine police and borough officials, as well as the club’s owner, have been charged in the case. The precinct police chief who led the raid, Guillermo Zayas, faces 12 counts of homicide. Zayas said in a television interview Tuesday that he’s being made a scapegoat.

The raid showed “systematic abuse, mistreatment and negligence by police,” said Emilio Alvarez, president of the city’s human rights commission.

“These acts cannot be seen as isolated events,” Alvarez said. “They constitute systematic and institutionalized practices, which must be eradicated.”

The human rights commission said police only had one bus to load up the detained youths.

“The lack of buses motivated the decision to block the exit with a large group of police,” causing the youths to pile up in a narrow hallway where many died, the report stated.

Ebrard himself was fired as Mexico City police chief in 2004 when his force was accused of dawdling while a mob seized, beat and burned to death two federal police officers.

The club’s owner faces charges of involuntary homicide for allegedly overcrowding the club and blocking emergency exits. He also is charged with corruption of minors for allegedly allowing youths to drink.

This report indicates what we have been trying to explain since the beginning. That while things me seem different to most people, uneducated to the laws and customs of Mexico, Mexican citizens or held to a standard of personal responsibility for their actions.

While it may seem as if things such as the Mexican trucking industry is nor as highly regulated as the American trucking industry, and this is true, Mexican drivers know their responsibilities and act accordingly. What might be a civil matter in the US is a criminal matter with severe penalties in Mexico, as the arrest and detention of these officers indicates.