A former Tijuana city official was arrested on Monday on allegations he and an ex-chief of police collaborated to torture members of the police force. 

According to Mexico News Daily, former Minister of Public Security Gustavo Huerta Martinez and former Public Security Secretary Julian Leyzaola tortured four police officers nearly a decade ago. 

The torture allegedly occurred after four municipal police officers-including Jose Luis Hernandez Galvez-were accused of extorting money from a group of Korean athletes who attended a Tae Kwon Do tournament in the city. The officers involved claimed they were tortured by Leyzaola and Martinez to make them confess. 

Officer Galvez claimed the accused officials used rebars and an AR-15 rifle to conduct the brutal beatings that caused 18 separate wounds on his body, including a broken pelvis. The torture, Galvez said, lasted four months. 

Authorities are now looking for the police chief whose current whereabouts are unknown. 

Julian Leyzaola

The former public security secretary was once called a "supercop" after he successfully lowered the rates of murders, extortions and kidnappings in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez during critical years when both cities were seeing waves of drug-related gang violence. 

In 2017, municipal officials in Cancun hired the cop to help take on the unprecedented wave of violence in the city. The effectiveness of the strategies he implemented in Tijuana and Juarez persuaded the mayor to invite him to "reestablish order, peace, and security." 

Leyzoala became police chief in Tijuana in 2007 when it had high rates of criminal activity. During his tenure, he was able to reduce crimes by 70 percent. 

In 2011, he was invited to become the police chief in Ciudad Juarez that, at the time, was considered as the murder capital of the world. Under his management, crime rates in the city decreased by 85 percent. 

His performance and his leadership earned him accolades from the United States. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) also commended his success. 

The police chief was the target of at least seven attacks. In May 2015, Leyzoala was shot twice while waiting for his wife and their young son in his vehicle. A police patrol was able to capture the shooters who admitted they had been paid to shoot the police chief. The incident left him paralyzed from the waist down. 

Leyzoala ran twice for mayor of Tijuana. In 2017, he was named a security advisor to police in Cancun. 

While some cheered his success in lowering crime rates, he was also accused of torture and other crimes, especially in the northern border cities. Leyzoala was also sanctioned for human rights violations. Human rights organizations, including the Baja California Human Rights Office, Amnesty International, and The Washington Office on Latin America, have all denounced the police chief for abuses committed in 2009 and 2010.

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