A Security Cabinet operation led to the arrest of 14 people for possession of firearms in Navolato, Sinaloa, on Wednesday. The Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch, assured that among the detainees is José Socorro ‘N’, alias L-12, who the authorities identify as a “priority target” and who has three arrest warrants for murder and violence in Tijuana, Baja California. Furthermore, officers seized 13 long weapons and a machine gun during the maneuvers.
The Sinaloa Public Security Secretariat specified that the operation was activated when an anonymous person reported by telephone that several armed people were in a hotel in Navolato, a city of 150,000 inhabitants 34 kilometers west of Culiacán. That territory, the domain of the Sinaloa cartel, was the scene of the war within the criminal group by the Los Chapitos and La Mayiza factions. Last May, the authorities killed Jorge Humberto Figueroa, alias El Perris, one of the main traffickers of Joaquín’s children, in that same place. El Chapo Guzman.
Upon arrival at the hotel, National Guard and state police officers from the Sinaloa Special Operations Group (GOES) arrested the group of 14 people, all but three Mexicans, two from Guatemala and one from Venezuela. They carried with them weapons for the exclusive use of the army, such as long weapons and a machine gun, as well as cartridges and magazines for the rifles.
Harfuch indicated on his social networks that in the hotel they also managed to arrest José Socorro ‘N’, alias L-12, who he describes as a “priority target with three arrest warrants for murder and with activities related to acts of violence in Tijuana”. His name appeared in a drug cartel last September in the capital of Baja California, where he was accused of having worked for Erick Almanza García, alias 81, carrying out murders, extortion, kidnappings and robberies.
“These findings are part of the Government of Mexico’s ongoing effort to prevent criminal groups from continuing to compromise the safety of communities,” Harfuch wrote in his profile. Furthermore, he celebrated the confiscation of military weapons in the group’s possession, as this prevents “their use against the population and against the authorities”. The Sinaloa cartel’s war capacity provoked the latest clash between the Security Cabinet authorities and organized crime, which caused 13 deaths in Guasave, about 60 kilometers south of Los Mochis.
On the same day as the operation in Navolato, the Interinstitutional Group for State Security captured a civilian carrying an AK-47 with a disc magazine containing 64 cartridges. Furthermore, they dealt further blows to drug trafficking with the dismantling of a clandestine methamphetamine laboratory and another seizure of weapons, homemade explosives and marijuana in Badiraguato. “The economic impact on organized crime amounts to 7,469 million pesos,” Sinaloa’s Secretary of Public Security said in a statement.
