Ciudad Juarez.– The El Paso driver who attacked a traffic police officer 40 days ago in line at an international bridge, and who was arrested driving a vehicle while intoxicated on Friday, only received a fine and 36 hours of arrest.
“Since there is no flagrant offence, we cannot do anything else, specifically the 36 hours and the fine of 13 thousand pesos. There is a complaint for damages in the Prosecutor’s Office and the legal department will have to see what is appropriate,” said César Tapia Martínez, head of the municipal Road Safety Coordination. The official pointed out that the detainee still has to be made to pay for the damages he caused to the motorcycle of the agent he attacked. “Now that is the main objective, that he pays with the hours imposed by the judge, the fine of 13 thousand pesos and that he pays for the damages to the motorcycle,” he pointed out.
Other cases
In addition to this case, there have been other cases in which citizens physically assaulted highway patrol officers. For example, on July 25, a driver from El Paso, Texas, was arrested for assaulting a highway patrol officer who warned him and pulled him out of the line he had formed to get to the ‘Libre’ bridge, which he had cut into in an abusive manner, reported Arlín Vargas, a spokesperson for the police. After being warned and removed from the line, he insulted the highway patrol officer, so the officer told him to stop so he could be fined; however, the driver escaped and they managed to stop him on Heroico Colegio Militar y Universidad Avenue after a chase. The driver was accompanied by his son, a three-year-old minor, who was handed over to his paternal grandparents. On July 13, the now detained man assaulted a Traffic Coordination agent by pushing and dragging the officer’s motorcycle with a trailer that he was carrying on the back of his vehicle on the line of the Córdova-Américas bridge. After the assault, which was recorded by users of the international crossing, the man and his companion fled. The assaults were seen in a pair of videos posted on social media. One is seen from the agent’s perspective, who placed his motorcycle in front of the driver of a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck that was pulling a trailer to ask him to get out of the line because he was pointed out by other drivers for having gotten in. The second video shows how he is beaten by the driver after he rammed the officer’s motorcycle and then moves forward. Tapia Martínez estimated that there have been more than 300 fines on international bridges to people who recklessly join the lines to cross into the city of El Paso, of whom at least 80 percent are drivers with foreign license plates.
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