Ninety state police officers in Tamaulipas have been let go and 100 more are under investigation for corruption and collaborating with organized crime.

The investigation by the internal affairs office of the Public Security Secretariat is a slow process, explained police chief Augusto Cruz Morales, “because it’s not easy . . . we have to demonstrate the reasons they are being dismissed.”

For officers involved in crimes, the internal process becomes a legal one.

“Some leave right away, and they are terminated. We try to not make mistakes and we avoid harming people,” Cruz said, adding that in cases where wrongdoing cannot be proven, police are simply dismissed in accordance with labor laws.

The names of dismissed officers are then entered into the Plataforma México database, a resource that prevents them being employed in other states.

In his second annual report, Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca said that over the past two years the state police force has grown by 43% to about 3,200 officers.

But the goal of the administration is to grow the force to 7,000 members.

The governor told a graduating class of 149 students of the University of Security and Justice that the goal calls for the officers to be well prepared, well trained and supplied with the instruments necessary to carry out their work.

Ninety-eight of the graduates finished the initial police training program and 51 obtained a degree in police sciences after three years of study.

Source: El Financiero (sp), El Universal (sp)