Mexico’s top cop gunned down

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s acting federal police chief was shot dead Thursday outside his home – a brazen attack that comes as drug traffickers increasingly lash back at a nationwide crackdown on organized crime.

Edgar Millan Gomez was shot 10 times after he opened the door to his Mexico City apartment complex, where at least one gunman was waiting for him before dawn, the Public Safety Department said. Two bodyguards were also wounded. Millan died hours later in a hospital.

Millan, 41, was named acting chief of the federal police March 1 after his superior was promoted to a deputy Cabinet position.

Police sources told the newspaper El Universal that the so-called Sinaloa Cartel was believed to be behind the attack. The cartel is one of several organized crime groups that have grown rich transporting Colombian cocaine, locally manufactured methamphetamines and other illicit drugs to the United States.

Mexico has suffered a wave of organized crime and drug-related violence in which more than 2,500 people died last year alone.

Since taking office in 2006, President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 24,000 soldiers to drug hot spots, and Millan was in charge of coordinating operations between the federal police and those troops.

Cartels have responded fiercely to the nationwide offensive, killing soldiers and federal police in unprecedented attacks. But until recently, most of those killings took place in northern Mexico where drug gangs rule large areas of territory. Now criminals appear to be getting more brash with daring slayings in the capital.

George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said Millan’s death “shows the increasing audacity of the cartels.”

“This happened in Mexico City where people like Millan tend to be quite cautious, often sleeping in different houses on different nights, and who have their own security patrols,” he said. “When you can get someone like this, no one is safe.”