Drug gangs take aim at police officers amid coca crackdown
BOGOTA — With a shot to the chest, Alejandro Caro fell from his motorbike while on patrol in a small town in northern Colombia, another victim of criminal gangs who have killed 11 officers over the past month, mostly in gang-dominated regions.
Caro’s mother, Consolacion Jabe, is still stunned by his death. She said the youth had always dreamed of being a policeman and even after being injured earlier, he “survived and kept fighting for his country. … Now he is definitely gone.”
Colombia’s largest illegal organization, the Gulf Clan, has distributed leaflets that call for killing police, and police intelligence officials say the gang members are offering would-be assassins up to $600 per death — nearly triple the nation’s monthly minimum wage.
Authorities compare the killings to Pablo Escobar’s “pistol plan,” a strategy the drug kingpin devised in his final years to target officers. Hundreds of policemen were killed in the city of Medellin alone before Escobar was gunned down there in 1993