A Mexican police chief dies by suicide as soldiers close in to arrest him during an anti-corruption raid

The police chief of a small city in central Mexico took his own life on Friday as the military closed in to arrest him as part of an anti-corruption campaign that also arrested other top police chiefs and the mayor of another city.

The raids took place in two rural towns in the State of Mexico, west of Mexico City, and in two densely populated areas on the outskirts of the country's capital.

Federal prosecutors say the police chief of one of the rural towns of Texcaltitlan killed himself with his own weapon as the Marines, National Guard and soldiers were trapped trying to arrest him on undisclosed charges.

The military also arrested the mayor of the nearby town of Amanalco “on various charges,” as well as the town's police chief and another local official. They also arrested the chief of police in the town of Tejupilco, in the far south.

The area around the two cities has long been plagued by violence La Familia Michoacana carteldealing in drugs, kidnapping and extortion.

While other attacks targeted rural areas, authorities also arrested an assistant police chief in Naucalpan, a town of 775,000 residents on the northwestern outskirts of Mexico City.

Later, they announced the arrest of the chief of police in the area of ​​Ixtapaluca, east of Mexico City, which has a population of about 370,000.

Although federal prosecutors did not specify the charges against the officials, local media reported that they were suspected of collaborating with gangs.

The police chief's suicide comes a few days after another police officer in Mexico was involved in a crime. Last week, a former prosecutor and local police chief you are arrested about grisly beheading of the mayor in southern Mexico. Officials said Germán Reyes was arrested on charges of murder for killing Alejandro Arcos a week after he took office as mayor of the provincial capital, Chilpancingo.

Gangs and drug cartels have long infiltrated, intimidated or bribed local officials to work for them, often to the point of cutting municipal budgets or using local police to warn or defend against state attacks. Sometimes, the police simply benefit from the freedom of the drug trade.

Speaking out about cartel corruption and extortion can have deadly consequences.

In July, the head of a federation of Mexican chambers of commerce in the state of Tamaulipas, across the border from Texas, you have been killed hours after giving television interviews complaining about the fraud of drug companies in the state. A few weeks before that, the leader of the fishing industry in Mexico who complained about the extortion of drug companies and illegal fishing he was shot dead on the northern border of the state of Baja California.

Last December, cartel leaders pushed the plan forward killing violence hunting down corrupt officials accused of stealing drugs in Tijuana/