Colombia Police Chief Killed by Drug Traffickers

Drug traffickers Friday shot to death a provincial police chief who had led a campaign against drug dealers in this cocaine capital.

It was the second drug-related slaying in Colombia in three days, and it came amid a strike by the nation’s judges, who are protesting the violence and what they say is a lack of protection for members of their profession.

Franklin Quintero had recently given up his official bodyguards and asked that they instead be assigned to protect judges.

He left his home in Medellin, 150 miles north of Bogota, Friday in his chauffeur-driven car. It had traveled only about 450 feet when it was cut off by another car and five gunmen emerged, officials said.

“They fired without mercy for several minutes at the colonel, who was hit more than a hundred times,” an unidentified witness told Radio Caracol. The witness said the chauffeur also was wounded.

Witnesses said Franklin Quintero’s car was destroyed by gunfire. The interior was covered with blood.

Franklin Quintero, 46, directed the local campaign against cocaine trafficking and led several major raids that resulted in the seizure of tons of the drug and the arrest of several dealers.

According to Antioquia’s governor, Helena Herran de Montoya, the colonel recently surrendered his bodyguards. “He thought it was more important to use this personnel in protecting judges,” she said.

She said he had not mentioned any recent death threats.

The police official’s death was only the latest killing blamed on the Medellin cartel, which is believed responsible for 80% of the cocaine that reaches the United States.

On Wednesday night, Magistrate Carlos Valencia Garcia was shot to death in Bogota, hours after rejecting appeals filed on behalf of two Medellin leaders.

On Thursday night, an armed band intercepted a police van carrying 18 arrested people and set them free. They included several suspected drug traffickers, officials said.

“It’s terrifying what is happening in Colombia,” said Justice Minister Monica de Grieff.

“The only way to confront this challenge is by fighting together, the government, judges, the armed forces and the citizenry to stop the wave of violence,” she said.

She appealed to the country’s more than 4,000 judges and magistrates to end their strike so traffickers don’t “achieve their goal of halting the administration of justice.”

The judges struck Thursday in response to Valencia Garcia’s murder. His death also prompted 48 magistrates in Bogota’s Superior Court to hand in their resignations en masse.

Judicial sources said they expect the strike to continue until at least Tuesday, when the resignations will be reviewed.

The Defense Ministry said military and police forces will increase protection for judges and intensify their crackdown on the cocaine industry.

National police officials, providing details of a two-day sweep that ended Thursday, said they arrested 61 people in 100 raids on suspected drug-processing and -smuggling locations. They also confiscated arms and, at a house in suburban Bogota, $7.7 million in cash, gold, checks and jewelry.