Commander Iván Alfonso Ibarra Gastelum, a Culiacán municipal police officer with 12 years of experience, was hunted down by his killers. They waited for him to finish his night shift and silently stalked him as dawn broke over the city and he made his way home to the Costa Rica district. He was 44 years old, married, and a father. He had been hoping to secure a promotion to improve his life.
He proceeded along Francisco I. Madero Boulevard and turned right onto a diagonal road leading to Venustiano Carranza Street—a bustling area in Culiacán surrounded by shops, banks, and schools. Just as he passed the gas station on his left, an armed criminal cell opened fire on him.
When paramedics arrived and peered inside the white Nissan Sentra, there was nothing left to be done. He had died from .45-caliber gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
On August 13, 2025, Commander Ibarra became the most recent police officer to be murdered in the state of Sinaloa. The crime bore the unmistakable mark of the mafia: a shooting carried out while the officer was off-duty, in a public place, and in plain sight of children and other police officers—just as *MILENIO* has documented.
By that time, a wave of police executions was already becoming apparent—a trend that has only accelerated to the present day, marked by a clear turning point: the betrayal of the capo Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada by the state’s governor (currently on leave), Rubén Rocha Moya.
Project *Azul Cobalto*—which monitors police killings in Mexico under the supervision of researcher Daniel Gómez Tagle—identified a surge in the murders of Sinaloan officers beginning in July 2024. This spike coincided with the moment *El Mayo* Zambada was summoned to a purported political reconciliation meeting between the now-on-leave governor and former university rector Héctor Melesio Cuén—a meeting that ultimately culminated in Zambada’s forced surrender to the United States at the hands of Joaquín Guzmán, the son of “El Chapo.” Since that month, the curve of fallen officers began a silent yet unstoppable upward trend: in 2023—a year without apparent conflict within the local “narco-politics” sphere—there were two killings of police officers; 2024—the year marking the onset of the “War in Sinaloa”—closed with 10 such deaths, driven by a marked acceleration during the second half of the year—a 400 percent increase.
But 2025 shattered all records: it ended with 40 police officers murdered, meaning that the upward trajectory had surged by 1,900 percent over the span of just two years.
“The figures indicate that in July 2024, the risk level for police officers began to rise very rapidly. This cannot be a coincidence; it is a direct response to a very specific political and security context,” asserts researcher Daniel Gómez Tagle.
“This places us in a critical state: in 2023, the police risk rate stood at 33.8 points, yet by 2025, it had skyrocketed to 763.7.”
When viewed through the cold, hard data of police killings, the agreements—and subsequent breakdowns of pacts—between Rocha Moya and “El Mayo” Zambada had clear consequences for the police officers of Sinaloa: they paid for the errors of others with their very lives.
The Risk for Police Officers in Culiacán, Mazatlán, and Navolato
The figures confirm that “the war in Sinaloa” is also a war against police officers: Culiacán—the city hardest hit by the clash between *Los Chapitos* and *La Mayiza*—is the most dangerous territory for a uniformed officer, accounting for 45 percent of all police killings. The capital is followed by Mazatlán and Navolato, where both factions are battling for territory, neighborhood by neighborhood.
There, the *modus operandi* repeats itself: in early January 2026, in the city also known as “The Pearl of the Pacific,” motorcycle officer Silvino Néstor Guzmán Cruz—alias “El Kalimba,” a member of the Municipal Public Security Secretariat’s *Grupo Jaguar*—was ambushed.
When paramedics from the Mazatlán Veteran Firefighters group arrived to assist him, there was nothing they could do: he had been subjected to a direct, unprovoked shooting attack, sustaining wounds to his head, chest, and legs.
This spate of police killings has placed Sinaloa in a critical moment—just as the war has surpassed the 600-day mark and appears to be hurtling unchecked toward 700 days. The state currently ranks first nationwide in terms of the need for federal intervention, surpassing Colima and Guanajuato (which hold second and third place, respectively), according to the “Need for Intervention” scale developed by the *Azul Cobalto* project—an initiative that will soon offer a subscription-based service for universities and public institutions dedicated to security matters.
“So far during the Sheinbaum administration, 300 municipal officers, 95 state officers, 56 investigative police officers, 43 National Guard agents, 25 traffic officers, and eight corrections officers have been killed, for a total of 527 police killings,” state the statistics compiled by the *Azul Cobalto* organization. “The death of a police officer is a tragedy in itself, but it carries many other implications: every slain officer diminishes the force’s manpower—that is, its capacity to protect citizens.
“Today, the operational capacity of police forces in Sinaloa has been overwhelmed, and the operational strain has reached its breaking point. The State and Municipal Police no longer possess the human resources necessary to address the crimes currently taking place within the state,” notes Daniel Gómez-Tagle.
The hypothesis that best explains this exacerbated violence is that, following the betrayal of ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, police officers in Sinaloa were forced to choose a side in the ensuing factional war.
Some sided with ‘Los Chapitos’ or ‘La Mayiza’ and were hunted down by their rivals; others chose to remain neutral—and were murdered precisely because they refused to align themselves with either side of the schism. They found themselves with no escape amidst the restructuring of the Sinaloa Cartel and the betrayals unfolding between public officials and cartel kingpins.
Police Officers Suffer from Political Compromises and Public Suspicion
Bernardo León Olea is a former Municipal Security Commissioner in Morelia and an expert in police training. Over decades of training uniformed officers, the political scientist has confirmed that municipal police—when operating in regions under criminal control—often rely on political arrangements between their superiors and local criminal elements in order to carry out their duties.
“In the case of Sinaloa, municipal police forces find themselves in the same circumstances as every other municipal police force in the country: they tell you—discreetly—that they are watching to see who comes out on top—*Los Chapitos* or *Los Mayitos*—in order to determine which side the police or political leadership will align with.
“That is their greatest limitation, because when you speak with police officers in Sinaloa, they truly are willing to do their job. When you get to know them, you realize that they are good police officers,” asserts León Olea.
In addition to being trapped amidst the machinations of narco-politics, municipal police officers find themselves under siege from public criticism: they are perceived as the most corrupt of all, meaning that public pressure to solve cases of slain officers is remarkably low. There are even those who—mistakenly—justify crimes committed against them, reasoning that “they must surely be involved in illicit activities.”
“Municipal police forces carry the heaviest burden of perceived corruption for a very simple reason: they are the ones closest to the people. If you ask, ‘How would you rate the Army, the National Guard, or the Navy?’ you will invariably receive very high ratings; however, when you ask, ‘What kind of interaction do you actually have with these forces?’ the answer is that there is very little interaction at all. In contrast, municipal police officers engage in daily interactions with the citizenry,” observes León Olea.
“And yes—undoubtedly—there is a segment of the police force that succumbs to corruption, but that proportion is no greater than that found within the National Guard or the state police forces. The difference lies in the fact that you interact with the municipal police every single day. That is the root cause of this perception. And we have the data to prove it,” the expert adds.
His words resonate with the account given by Commander Barrios—a municipal police officer in Culiacán who requested anonymity to describe the morale among his colleagues in the midst of this ongoing war: he and other veterans, some with careers spanning up to 20 years, have never felt as terrified as they do right now.
“We police officers here have lived through the schism with the Beltrán Leyva cartel, the captures of ‘El Chapo,’ the first and second ‘Culiacanazo’ sieges, and the arrests of various mid-level bosses—figures known for their extreme violence—yet we have never experienced anything quite like this.
“It has become truly unbearable. Every day, you head out to work consumed by fear, never knowing if you will make it back alive. And even within the sanctuary of your own home, you remain unsafe; there have been instances where colleagues were dragged from their houses and executed right in front of their own children,” recounts Barrios.
He insists that he never worked for the Sinaloa Cartel. While others chose to do so to earn some extra cash, Barrios opted to stay on the sidelines to protect his family. However, what had been a personal decision for 17 years became an institutional mandate as of July 25, 2025: one must choose a side and participate actively—even if only as a lookout.
Today, he laments with resignation that he has ended up providing protection to a faction he prefers not to discuss over the phone, just in case his cell line is tapped. He is sparing with his words, yet clear: he and other municipal police officers throughout Sinaloa were forcibly dragged into a war they wanted neither for themselves nor for their communities. He could resign from the force, he laments, but he loves his vocation, and his only remaining option would be informal labor—work that offers no social security coverage for his wife and daughters.
“There is anger within the police force—absolutely. I dare to say it, because I’ve had it bottled up inside ever since this war began. But yes: once again, the politicians and their backroom deals have ruined our lives. Their hands are stained with the blood of police officers—many of them, truth be told, very good officers.”
Source: Milenio
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