STATE INVESTIGATOR SLAIN IN JUAREZ

Attacks against Mexican law enforcement officials continued Monday in
Juarez with the killing of a state investigative agent.

Erasto Cano Carrasco, 37, was shot to death inside a car Monday
morning behind the Plaza Juarez Mall, Chihuahua state officials said.
He appeared to be off duty because he was driving a nongovernment vehicle.

The state agent was found dead in a gold 2004 Nissan Sentra about
8:30 a.m. in a neighborhood off Mexican highway 45 in central Juarez.
Police found 19 bullet casings at the crime scene. Cano Carrasco died
of gunshot wounds to his torso and arms.

Officials said Cano Carrasco was married and had three children. He
was an investigative officer for the state of Chihuahua's preventive
and intelligence gathering police, known as Cipol. He had worked for
the agency for two years.

Law enforcement in Juarez work at the epicenter of Mexico's drug
cartel violence.

In total, close to 5,100 people have been murdered since 2008, when
murders skyrocketed. About 850 people have been killed this year.

Most recently, on April 23, six federal police agents and a local
policewoman were ambushed by several gunmen in an attack in
retaliation for arrests made the previous day, officials said.

The killings of the federal agents took place weeks after the
president gave the corps the patrolling duties in the streets of
Juarez. More than 5,000 federal police officers replaced the
soldiers, whom the government withdrew from the murder capital of
North America.

Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said in a news statement Monday that
he was discussing with federal police officials ways to continue
heavily guarding police command centers and hotels where they are
staying. Reyes Ferriz said he wants to protect law enforcement
officials without making Juarez look like a police state.

In other Mexican cities, a surge in attacks against law enforcement
has also been reported in the past few weeks.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in a speech last month that
about 5 percent of the close to 23,000 people murdered in the past
three years' drug cartel violence were police officers and soldiers.

Corruption within law enforcement agencies has been an ongoing
problem in Mexico, U.S. Department of State reports said.

Cartels traditionally recruit and bribe Mexican police officers and
kill those who do not cooperate. Some of the members of "La Linea,"
the Carrillo Fuentes cartel, were former police officers.

In 2008, the former Juarez city police director Saulo Reyes Gamboa
pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and bribery charges in U.S.
federal court in El Paso. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Cartels have openly targeted police, including listing names of
officers to be killed in banners hung at public places.

Since January 2009, 39 city police officers have been murdered in
Juarez, said spokesman Jacinto Segura.

Chihuahua state officials did not immediately release the number of
state officers killed in Juarez. But state agents, with Cipol, have
been hit in previous attacks.

At least five investigative agents were killed in 2009. Two Cipol
police officers were killed in November, one in October, and another two in May.