Authorities finally investigate police death squad

Following up with December's Everything that is wrong in El Salvador, it appears that the country's attorney general is actually trying to change things.

Authorities El Salvador have arrested five police officers and five civilians for alleged ties to a death squad that killed as many as 40 gang members in the eastern part of the country.

Attorney General Douglas Melendez said Friday that a total of 22 arrest warrants have been issued for police officers, businesspeople and others tied to the death squad. But National Civil Police Commissioner Howard Cotto said that so far 10 had been captured from the structure that had been operating since 2014.

According to prosecutors, a group of businesspeople, whose identities were not released, had brought together national police in some towns to offer them money in exchange for killing gang members.

Melendez said they cannot allow El Salvador to become the Wild West.

Given the government's refusal to accept an international commission along the lines of CICIG, I thought that the next attorney general in El Salvador would go out of his way to prove that the country did not need international support. They were not a failed state like Guatemala.

They needed to prove to their own citizens and to international donors that they could right the ship on their own. I've been somewhat skeptical about the ability of Melendez to turn things around on his own, but I have so far been pleasantly surprised with the preliminary results.