http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09mexico.html
MEXICO CITY — Gunmen assassinated the acting chief of Mexico’s federal police early Thursday morning in the most brazen attack so far in the year-and-a-half-old struggle between the government and organized crime gangs.
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Omar Torres/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Edgar Millan Gomez, the acting chief of Mexico's federal police, in January.

Mexican police have been under constant attack since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2007 and launched an offensive against drug cartels who had corrupted the municipal police forces and local officials in several towns along the border and on both coasts.

Since then, Mr. Calderón has sent thousands of federal agents and troops into those areas to establish law and order, provoking a powerful backlash from drug cartels, who have killed some 200 officers, among them at least 30 federal agents.

The police chief, Edgar Millán Gómez, was ambushed by several men wearing rubber gloves and carrying weapons as he entered his apartment building in the Guerrero neighborhood of Mexico City with two bodyguards at 2:30 a.m. He was hit nine times in the chest and one hand. He died a few hours later at Metropolitan Hospital.

Commander Millán was the highest ranking official to be killed since President Calderón’s campaign against drug dealers began. Intelligence officials said it is highly likely he was murdered in retribution for the arrest on Jan. 21 of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, one of the leaders of a cartel based in Sinaloa state.

“It was in response to his role in the arrest,” said one intelligence officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release classified information. “It’s the worst casualty we have suffered so far.”

Commander Millán, 41, had served for the last year as the federal police official in charge of the anti-drug operations throughout the country. A month ago, he was promoted to become the acting chief of the entire force.

His death was the tenth assassination of a federal police official in the last two months. Last week, gunmen also shot and killed the head of the organized crime division in the public security ministry, Roberto Velasco Bravo.

One of Mr. Millán’s bodyguards, though wounded, managed to wrestle an attacker to the ground and arrest him. The man, Alejandro Ramírez Báez, 34, was wearing rubber gloves and carried a pistol with a silencer, the police said. Shells from an assault rifle were also found at the scene. The police said Mr. Ramírez has a criminal record, having been convicted twice for stealing cars. Still, it remained unclear who, if anyone, had hired him as an assassin, they said.

Mr. Millán, 41, started his carreer in Mexico’s intelligence service and then switched to the newly formed Federal Agency of Investigation in 2001, where he rose quickly to become the chief of the kidnapping division. He dismantled several notorious kidnapping rings and managed the successful release of Rubén Omar Romano, a well-known professional soccer coach.

Since 2006, he had overseen regional deployments of federal officers, even as a number of federal police forces were consolidated and given more authority. Last month, he took over the reins of the reorganized federal police as acting chief, when the previous chief was promoted, officials said.

“Early this morning, Mexico lost one of its bravest men, a police professional at the service of the nation,” the public security secretary, Genaro García Luna, said in a statement.