There Go the ‘Marinelas’ of Atizapán. With Honor and Bullets They Beat the Drug Traffickers

On the morning of November 21, 2024, two visions of public safety in Mexico were about to collide: in the municipality of Naucalpan, federal agents mounted a discreet operation at dawn to arrest the deputy director of the municipal police, Omar “N”, while a few meters away, the director of the municipal police of neighboring Atizapán was getting ready with his team to arrest members of organized crime.

Both municipalities in the State of Mexico are separated by a three-lane avenue in the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico. In some neighborhoods, the boundary is even marked by a narrow median or a simple traffic light. And despite this proximity, the two territories are radically different. One has police officers with outstanding accounts with justice; in the other there are uniformed officers who are hunters of criminals.

Operation Swarm, led by Omar García Harfuch, Claudia Sheinbaum’s Secretary of Security, would make it clear that morning and in the following hours, when arrest warrants were carried out in 12 municipalities against mayors and police chiefs who were known to be working for organized crime.

On that Thursday, Omar “N” was handcuffed in Naucalpan de Juárez by federal agents who showed him a federal charge with his name on it for using his badge and gun to extort money on behalf of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel; in Atizapán de Zaragoza, the municipal police opened an investigation to arrest, less than 48 hours later, 11 members of the Nueva Familia Michoacana who used cloned Army uniforms to sell drugs and commit murder for hire.

Two different realities in Mexico. The images that circulated on social media showed this contrast: on one hand, a high-ranking officer arrested; on the other, a pack of criminals defeated in front of their arsenal. The difference is clearer if you look at the numbers from Inegi: Naucalpan has a perception of insecurity of 88% and in Atizapán that figure plummets to 50.6%. That is to say, on one side of the sidewalk there is a fear similar to that which exists in Venezuela; on the other, the neighbors feel a peace similar to that which exists in Canada. 

So this afternoon I am in the offices of the Municipal Public Security and Traffic Department of Atizapán de Zaragoza to understand how this distinction was achieved. And the first thing to note is that the person in charge of the municipal police is anything but a common boss: I have in front of me the lieutenant of the Navy, Fabián Gómez Calcáneo, who carries a 5.56 caliber Israeli assault rifle, like someone who carries a keychain in his pocket.

“Among the criminals in the area, they have a saying: you shouldn’t go into Atizapan,” he tells me with a satisfied smile. “They say it themselves: ‘over there the police are marines, and they will beat the shit out of us’.”

The mission of sweeping the cancer of organized crime out of Atizapán

When someone enters the offices of the municipal police directorate of Atizapán, it is clear that it is an embassy of the Navy. There are miniature battleships, wooden rudders, naval insignia and even a wooden board, like the ones used to physically discipline sailors in training. There are also gifts from businessmen, merchants and neighbors grateful for the purge of criminals.

One hangs on the wall: a poster of the movie Cobra with the actor Sylvester Stallone shooting at random, but intervened with the face of the Navy lieutenant and the phrase “Crime is a disease and I am the cure.”

Gómez Calcáneo is a 38-year-old lawyer who one day threw away his suit and tie and joined the Navy to continue his specialization in organized crime. His reputation for being tough, upright and having experience in criminal intelligence units reached the ears of the elected mayor Pedro Rodríguez, who in 2021 invited him to join the new administration of Atizapán, which in that year faced the invasion of the Nueva Familia Michoacana, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel and splinter groups of the Beltrán Leyva.

Sweeping away that cancer was a complex task that only civilians with a suicidal spirit or a desire to benefit from the economic spillover left by organized crime wanted to take on. The elected mayor thought that only a sailor could face that situation, but there was an obstacle: the Navy Secretariat hardly “lends” one of its own for public security tasks. The risk is very high for the image of the institution, if someone is found guilty of corruption or colluding with criminals.

“I asked for three conditions,” recalls Lieutenant Gómez Calcáneo. “The first: no one could ask me for bribes and anyone who did, I would file a criminal complaint against them. The second: no inhabitant of the municipality – no matter how rich they were – could use the police as private bodyguards, they would all return to public service. And third: to bring the values ​​of the Navy – honor, duty, loyalty and patriotism – to the police.”

To the lieutenant’s surprise, the mayor of Atizapán accepted his conditions, so he requested permission from the Navy to join as municipal police chief. After approval, he himself chose an elite team that has become the key to success: four captains, three officers and 16 sailors. In total, 23 members of the Armed Forces accompany him on each mission and support each other.

“Atizapan was surrounded: to the north are the criminal groups from Izcalli, to the south those from Toluca, and next door Naucalpan. And we are a few minutes by vehicle from Ecatepec, Chimalhuacan and Nezahualcoyotl,” he tells DOMINGA, surrounded by his team of marines. “But we also had enemies within the corporation.”

The cleanup in Atizapán began with the police corporations

That internal problem was the terrible conditions of the municipal police: there were those who earned less than nine thousand pesos a month, those who hadn’t been to a shooting range in 15 years or who had accumulated two decades without a promotion. In the “best” of cases, some left the streets to go to the subdivisions to work as drivers or gardeners; in the worst, they worked with local criminals in poor neighborhoods to give “kickbacks” to the bosses and keep a small percentage for themselves.

The cleanup began from within. Upon taking office on January 1, 2022, Lieutenant Gómez Calcáneo fired more than 400 police officers with accusations of corruption and for not passing the confidence control exams. “They [the neighbors] told me that if I fired them, they would fall into crime; I told them ‘let them dare and I will arrest them myself,'” he says.

The massive dismissals, at first, didn’t go down well with the uniformed officers, who were alarmed to see how the marines took control of the tasks that were in the hands of civilians. The distrust spread to the neighbors, who looked with suspicion at the trucks marked with the image of the Navy, which usually intervenes in the streets when violence has escalated to unprecedented levels. And quietly, among local politicians there was talk of fear of militarization.

But internal criticism was buried when the Navy lieutenant rewarded the municipal police officers: he increased their salaries by 30%, replaced their heavy 24-hour shifts with midday shifts, trained them in shooting, reaction, intelligence and imbued them with the values ​​of the Navy.

In a few months, the police transformed its face and body, because even a fully equipped gymnasium with a boxing ring was inaugurated in a disused warehouse, from which national heavyweight and junior heavyweight champions have already emerged. The skepticism of neighbors, merchants and local politicians also yielded to the changes. Pride was changing sides.

“If no one steals the budget, it will be enough for many things. And that was when we began to gain a reputation as the best police force in the State of Mexico. And we began to hear that the criminals were saying, “The Marinelas are over there, don’t go to Atizapán.”

“Some of them left the municipality because it was no longer profitable to be here. Other criminals learned the hard way, for them, that you don’t mess with us,” says the doctor in Public Security.

The lieutenant from Atizapán crossed paths with the Beltrán Leyva Cartel

The memo that Atizapan was becoming a complicated territory for organized crime didn’t reach the Beltran Leyva clan. Just a year after Lieutenant Gómez Calcáneo initiated the transformation of the municipal police, he learned that one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives was hiding in Atizapán behind a facade of respectable businessman: José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández, El Gato, regional head of this Sinaloa Cartel splinter group who had an outstanding arrest warrant for the murder of a man in Southlake, Texas.

The sailor and his team dedicated themselves to an extraction plan that came to fruition on January 7, 2023 with the help of the Criminal Investigation Agency and the Attorney General’s Office. El Gato, who was worth a million dollars in reward, fell in front of the strategy laid out on the lieutenant’s desk.

Eight months later, the marines prescribed another dose against the Beltrán Leyva: Norberto Valencia González, El Socialitos, the top financial operator of that criminal group was also located in a hideout in Atizapán and arrested in a non-violent operation. Univisión called this disgraced criminal “the last great money launderer of the Beltrán Leyva.” Now, he awaits extradition to the United States.

More operations in Atizapán territory are listed in the police database: the arrest of La Zarigüeya of the Nueva Alianza Cartel, the fall of Memo of the Los Soto Jiménez gang, the arrest of 12 Mexicans and Colombians dedicated to home robberies and even the closure of the Periférico Norte thoroughfare to stop a vehicle that was circulating through the municipality with a kidnapped woman that the corporation rescued from a trunk.

“It’s not common for a municipal police force to have this history of arrests,” I tell him. “They usually use the excuse that organized crime falls into federal jurisdiction so they don’t mess with the most violent criminals.”

The police chief nods, saying that if he followed the guidelines of what is “normal” he couldn’t feel proud of the work he has done with 23 marines and 1,407 police officers in a municipality of half a million inhabitants that, until recently, was taken over by criminals who walked around arrogantly.

This was happening with vehicle theft in Atizapán

Puebla Prosecutor’s Office records increase in vehicle and auto parts theft

Unlike other municipal police forces that focus on controlling the figures for wilful homicide or drug dealing, in this municipality one of the priorities from the beginning was to radically reduce vehicle theft.

“It’s simple: most crimes in Mexico have a black figure of 92%, that is, they are not reported. But vehicle theft is different,” he explains. “People don’t report the theft of tires or their phone, but they do when a car or motorcycle is stolen, because they need the theft report to collect the insurance or because they don’t want to be linked to misuse of their property.”

By following this metric, the municipality has a more accurate diagnosis of security. It can know where patrols are working well and where presence needs to be increased. And with police trained to do investigations, they can also get ahead of crimes. “Why does someone steal a car or a motorcycle? To commit a crime. With this strategy they flee, extort, kidnap, kill. If I prevent them from stealing a car, I tie their hands. They no longer have a way to move and they have to leave the municipality,” he says.

Along with the new strategy, with the money saved in “kickbacks,” the police installed a new C4 (Control, Command, Communications and Computing Center) with 1,250 video surveillance cameras, renovated 220 heavy-duty trucks, changed their outdated armory for an Israeli arsenal adapted to the average height of the police and renewed the old uniforms for the prestigious brand ‘5.11 Tactical’, used by the best corporations in the world, such as those in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Finally, Atizapán had a municipal police force capable of taking down a major drug lord, not just the dealers on the corner. “And we went out to the street: we printed brochures to teach people what to do to protect themselves – how to put up a security camera, what to do in case of extortion – and each police officer handed them out in person, saying their name, their badge number and putting themselves at the service of the people.”

The plan soon paid off: in 2021, Atizapán was in eighth place in the State of Mexico in terms of vehicle theft, with nearly 1,343 thefts per year. By 2022, they managed to drop to 11th place. In 2023, to 13th. And this December 2024, they were placed in 15th place. This decrease caused a domino effect on other crimes such as assaults on pedestrians, home robbery, and commercial premises robbery. In three years, the municipality began to be named as “the safest in the State of Mexico.”

The strategy even led the United States Agency for International Development and the Colombian National Police to give recognition to the Atizapán police for their performance.

But the praise doesn’t give the Navy lieutenant peace, who is far from feeling satisfied. Two evils keep him on his toes: extortion and drug dealing.

Extortion and methamphetamine dealing in Atizapán

As happens in many municipalities with a long history of violence, a trip in a patrol car with a police chief becomes a tour of misfortunes. Each stop has a terrible story, each corner an atrocity. The same thing happens with Navy Lieutenant Fabián Gómez Calcáneo, who drives around Atizapán behind the wheel of an unarmored truck and lists what has changed since the Marines took control.

“There we caught a car theft gang… and in that house was an operator of a criminal group… here lived a heavyweight narco… there was the house of a very violent hitman, a guy who was the terror of the neighborhood,” he says, transforming himself into a dark tour guide. In his voice there is a mixture of pride and pain. It is a tone I have heard in those who manage to return home after years of being displaced by violence. Hope and sorrow. On the one hand, the police chief realizes that his strategy has positioned itself as one of the best; on the other hand, he must change the plan quickly to continue giving good results. So that the disease doesn’t become resistant

“What problem do we have now? On the one hand, extortion of businesses that we have under control, but now I need to provide support, a lot of psychological support to the neighbors. And the one that worries me the most: I see more and more minors using drugs,” he says.

Atizapán, like other neighboring municipalities, suffers from an epidemic of cheap methamphetamines in middle and high schools, where a personal dose can cost up to 20 pesos. Crystal meth is no longer only consumed recreationally by minors under 16 years of age, but some younger people even use it as a pre-workout in gyms or as an appetite suppressant to lose weight. The pressure of perfect bodies on social networks grips youth and requires new tactics against traffickers.

But look… that house is empty because there was a drug dealer there who left as soon as we arrived in the municipality… that soccer field has been cleared of criminals because they were recruiting kids there… and on this street we haven’t had a stolen vehicle for weeks… and that business has reopened because they used to ask for an protection fee and we have already expelled that gang,” he says and returns a hopeful tone.

On the last day of our interview, Lieutenant Gómez Calcáneo is in a particularly good mood: it is Police Day and thanks to the donations of grateful businessmen he will raffle off several prizes, including a house. The tickets to participate, he clarifies, are free for the police. It is the incentive to sweep away the criminals with the same tenacity and courage, as if they had graduated from the Navy.

“Do you know what criminals call the Atizapán police? The crazy sailors,” I tell him, as his troops surround him. “Sounds good,” the lieutenant smiles. “I hope they call us something worse. I want to be their worst nightmare.”

Source: Milenio