Female Police Chief Murdered in Mexico

Dec. 3, 2010 — -- The newly appointed female police chief of the northern Mexican town of Meoqui was shot and killed on her way to work by a convoy of gunmen who reportedly worked for drug traffickers, authorities said.

Hermila Garcia Quinones, 38, was sworn in on Oct. 9 as chief of the 90-person police force. Despite the growing drug-related violence in the region, "La Jefa," as Garcia Quinones was known, refused to have bodyguards or carry a weapon.

"If you don't owe anything, you don't fear anything," she was fond of saying when asked why she didn't have security. She was killed Nov. 29, another death in what has become a bloodbath in Mexico tied to drug traffickers, whose wares supply users in the U.S.

"This is an area where Los Zetas operate in. Los Zetas are the meanest, most sadistic, most psychotic criminal organization in Mexico," said George W. Grayson, a crime expert and professor at William and Mary College. "I don't know that they did it. But they don't have any regard for gender, age, profession. They enjoy killing. They have raised the bar of brutality."

Meoqui, which borders Texas, was not always a dangerous region. But in recent months it has started to see some of the drug-related violence which has claimed almost 30,000 lives in Mexico since 2006. In the last year, there have been 40 drug-related deaths in the town.

When men refused to take the police chief position in Meoqui, Garcia Quinones stepped forward.

But Garcia Quinones was not the only woman who has stepped up to the plate in Mexico. Marisol Valles Garcia, called "the bravest woman in Mexico," was sworn in last month as the head of a new program of crime prevention in a farming town located in one of the bloodiest regions in Mexico. Since her predecessor's head was left outside the police station over a year ago, no one wanted to fill the vacancy. Valles Garcia, a 20-year-old criminology student and mother of one, took the position.

"I'm doing this for my people," she said then. "This is not for me. I'm tired of all the drug violence."