What’s the story on this?

"Community police" are formed in Mexico following the same logic that armed militias are formed in the USA -- to meet a law enforcement requirement not being fulfilled by local police authorities. There the similarities stop; Mexican community police as often as not front for organized crime. They are supposedly sanctioned by the state government, and in some areas they are. But if such "sanctions" to not arrive from the state government, who is going to do anything about it?

i disagree somewhat with your characterization of them. While there have been instances of blurred lines and criminal connections, the policía comunitaria mostly enjoy popular support where they are truly the good guys. I Petatlán the jury is still out, but one must remember that conflict in the region has been going on for decades, since the Guerra Sucia.

I've documented quite a bit of the rise and fall of some of these groups back when they were still called Guerrilleros before the rise of the policía comunitaria.

Take a walk down the nostalgia trail and read some of my old forgotten articles on my first blog from over 10 years ago.

Here's a good place to start regarding the problems in the sierra of Petatlán and Zihuatanejo. The articles from this point and more recent may be of interest. Many if not most of the stuff about guerrilleros will be in Spanish.

http://zihuatanejo-ixtapa.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-03-21T13:02:00-06:00&max-results=5&reverse-paginate=true