State security strengthened with 211 trained military personnel in response to the Chapos-Mayos war.

CULIACÁN, Sinaloa ( Proceso ).- 211 active-duty soldiers, trained at the Police University, will join the ranks of the Sinaloa State Preventive Police (PEP) this year, a corporation that has been facing a security crisis since 2024 due to the war between the Mayos and Chapitos for control of the Sinaloa Cartel, the side effects of which have included, among others, the murder of officers.

These new military personnel, now considered preventive agents, will be integrated into a civilian corporation whose police force is one of the weakest in the country. Until 2024, Sinaloa ranked 29th among states with the lowest rate of police officers per thousand inhabitants, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), at 0.5. The national average is 1.0.

And according to the same statistics, Sinaloa is only slightly surpassed by Querétaro and Baja California, with a rate of 0.3 and 0.2 police officers per thousand inhabitants.

From September of last year to last August, at least 50 local police officers have been murdered in the state, of which 35 have occurred in 2025, placing the entity with the highest rate of intentional homicides against local police officers nationwide, above Guanajuato (28), Michoacán (23) and Guerrero (21).

Among the most notorious crimes against the corporation is an armed attack against Commander Nitro , an agent named David Cristóbal, who was shot and killed on Pedro Infante Boulevard, in front of the offices of the Ministry of Public Education and Culture in Culiacán. The attack was reported around 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 15.

Increasing number

The announcement of the incorporation of military personnel into field activities within the State Preventive Police was made by Governor Rubén Rocha Moya at one of his weekly press conferences, where he clarified that initially, 150 military personnel would be authorized as officers. However, by that time, a squad of personnel from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) was already operating, wearing the state corporation's blue uniform and aboard recently acquired Rino-type vehicles.

Initially, 61 uniformed military personnel, PEP agents, operated in Culiacán under the guise of driving these armored vehicles donated to the state by the Ministry of Defense (Sedena). This was announced by the governor on Monday, August 4, during his weekly press conference.

"We're bringing 61 police officers here who specialize in handling these vehicles. They're also on our payroll. We're already talking about 211 who we'd be incorporating into the ranks of the State Police, so we're on track. Hopefully, we can have a few more," he said.

The agreement to formalize the activities of military personnel in state police uniforms was reached two weeks later, on Monday, August 18, between Rubén Rocha and the Secretaries of National Defense, Ricardo Trevilla, and Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, during one of the federal security cabinet's visits to Culiacán, as part of the supervision of strategies to address the escalating insecurity in the state.

In this regard, the governor also insisted that this is not a militarization of the corporation.

This training is conducted at the Police University (Unipol), created during the current administration and previously operating as the State Institute of Criminal Sciences. As a police school, the agency has trained just 546 new state police officers for Sinaloa from 2022 to 2024, of which 443 are part of the PEP (Prosecutorial Police Force) and 103 are part of the Investigation Unit assigned to the State Attorney General's Office (FGE).

"Recruitment is already underway; there's six months of training, and they'll start immediately. We'll hire them as police officers as we recruit them," Rocha said.

In 2022, its first year as Unipol, this academy graduated 262 state agents, including investigative and state police, the highest number since its creation. For subsequent years, 123 were reported in 2023 and 161 in 2024.

And this year, almost nine months later, 211 more soldiers will be certified as state police officers. This means that almost 39% of new officers in Sinaloa starting in 2022 will be military personnel.

However, according to the governor, this does not represent a militarization of the civilian police forces: "There is no militarization, there is no militarization, these will be ordinary citizens. They will help us train the Army, but not just the Army, but also the Unipol."

Effectiveness in doubt

Local police forces in Sinaloa have long maintained military leadership positions, such as the current state Secretary of Security, Óscar Rentería Schazarino, who has been a brigadier general since 2022. He obtained this rank from then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

At that time, he served as commander of the 43rd military zone in Apatzingán, Michoacán, and since December 21 of last year, he has been the head of the Public Security Secretariat in Sinaloa.

The previous secretaries were also military generals. Before Rentería Schazarino, there were Gerardo Mérida Sánchez and Cristóbal Castañeda Camarillo.

In the municipalities, military changes began in Culiacán with the replacement of Sergio Antonio Leyva as head of the municipal police. His place was taken by Alejandro Bravo Martínez, nominated by the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) to fill the position.

Sergio Leyva stepped down as head of the Municipal Public Security and Transit Secretariat (SSPyTM) on June 3, amid a dispute between corporations and members of the State Police. The incident resulted in the arrest of seven municipal police officers by the National Guard and the State Police for allegedly protecting a man with a gunshot wound.

However, military commanders in civilian corporations continue to fail to report positive results in terms of prevention. As a recent example, on the night of August 29, the Culiacán Civil Hospital was the target of a shooting attack by an armed group, which killed three people and injured four others.

There was no surveillance in the area, even though protocol indicates that any hospital providing medical care to gunshot wounds must report it to the security authorities.

Without social proximity

The dilemma of maintaining civilian bodies and not militarizing them is not new. This is the warning from Miguel Calderón Quevedo, general coordinator of the State Public Security Council (CESP).

"This dilemma between defining our police commands with a military or a civilian profile is not a new dilemma; it's been going on for decades. However, recently, our state has always leaned toward a military command, and there are many reasons for this. One of these reasons has been the level of honesty shown by our civilian commanders versus our military commanders," he said.

The State Police have maintained this type of leadership, especially due to the constant threat of drug trafficking.

However, the dilemma had always been about police commanders, and now military personnel will be donning uniforms as part of the state corporation's rank-and-file, which maintains a deficit in its local corporations with a considerable decline in its police force.

And given the security crisis that Sinaloa has been experiencing for a year, the dilemma is becoming more acute, according to the general coordinator of CESP, Miguel Calderón.

This necessitates military presence, not only in command but also in street operations, in matters that are very civil due to social proximity and which unfortunately today, due to various circumstances, cannot fully operate from this ideal of citizen profiles versus military profiles.

Furthermore, according to INEGI data, in Sinaloa, 0% (yes, zero) of personnel performed social outreach work, a task that requires close contact with citizens. The census also notes that nearly 50% of state security personnel performed prevention duties, and 12.4% performed immediate incident response duties.

The soldiers who will soon be authorized as State Preventive Police officers will face a year-long war between rival factions of organized crime, which has resulted in approximately 50 casualties among local police forces during that time, all killed in direct attacks.