The entire police force of the town of Ocampo, situated in Mexico’s Guanajuato State, were arrested over the weekend by agents from the internal affairs (IA) department in connection to the murder of a mayoral candidate, The Independent reported on Monday. The Michoacán state police force said “all the officers of the Ocampo municipal police force were detained for [an] internal affairs investigation.”

In statements on its Twitter account Sunday, the state police department did not directly tie the detentions to the Thursday killing of Fernando Angeles Juarez, the mayoral candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. Fernando Angeles Juárez was killed on Thursday morning after three gunmen broke into the ranch where he lives just as he was preparing to start a day's campaigning, local media reported. Juarez, a successful businessman with little previous political experience, was the third politician to be killed in Michoacan in just over a week, the BBC reported. Almost all of the 18 candidates killed across the country so far have been running for local posts in the July 1 elections, which will also decide the presidency, governorships and Congress. Ahead of the July 1 elections, more than 15,000 political candidates are campaigning for more than 3,400 local, state and federal positions, according to The Associated Press.
Mexican authorities arrest the entire police force of Ocampo, Michoacán, on suspicion of murdering a mayoral candidate.