Police Trade Guns for Guitars in Hope That Music Restores Public Trust Andrew O’Reilly - Fox News
go to original September 19, 2017

A Federal Police Unit Takes Up Instruments to Fight Organized Crime (Esplendido Channel)

As Mexico’s security situation continues to deteriorate - along with public trust in law enforcement - some police officers in the country are trading in their guns for guitarrónes in an effort to help improve the image of the force.

A group of 21 federal police officers, who also just happen to be professional musicians, have formed a mariachi band in order to show the human side of law enforcement and break down widespread mistrust in the force - a chronic issue in a country plagued by the underreporting of crimes.

Playing one of the country’s most famous and popular styles of folk music is meant to show that cops are present in some regions of Mexico - Michoacán, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, for example – that have been hotspots for a drug war that has raged for more than a decade, Federal Police Mariachi Musical Director Juan Ramón Soto said to El Universal.



"Citizens have an erroneous perception of the Federal Police," Soto said. "We're providing crime prevention through music and trust."

Mexico’s drug war, which began in 2006 when then-President Felipe Calderón declared an all-out military offensive on the country’s narcotraffickers, has left at least 200,000 dead. While current President Enrique Peña Nieto came into office in 2012, a time when violence was on the decline, the bloodshed continues and in June the country saw a record number of killings: 2,566 homicide victims being the most in a month since the Mexican government started releasing that data in 2014.

While never particularly high, public trust in the police, at both a federal and local level, has plummeted in recent years amid widespread reports of corruption, extrajudicial killings and collusion with drug traffickers.

Read the rest at Fox News

Related: Mariachi Herencia de Mexico Create Historic Debut Album (ABC7)

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