Careful at La Ropa

That is what I was thinking, too. The locals will not stand for this happening in their beautiful town.
I agree that the police in Zihuatanejo are a joke. I have always felt the military has done a better job at maintaining safety.

Didn't the entire Zihua police force...and the police forces of many other communities in Mexico..... go through some serious vetting a few years back, presumably to address the kinds of problems that once again seem endemic?
What happened?

No. Under then mayor Gustavo García Bello, the current director of FIBAZI, the police force was arrested after he told them to carry firearms they weren't authorized to use then he turned them in. Most of them got out of jail, but we are still in the same place. A little over half the police force has been "vetted" to carry firearms. They still have no independence and very little professional training.

As far as the military is concerned, I doubt they're trained to do police work, (is ANYONE in Mexico trained to do common or garden-variety police work?) and what "safety" the military may provide seems limited to driving around town and "showing the colours." I can't imagine any self-respecting bad guy considering the military as much of a deterrent.

You appear to misunderstand what's going on here. The military is pretty much the only deterrent we have against a full narco takeover of the region until the Guardia Nacional gets better established with a few more years of training and experience and a few thousand more members. Yes, they do a lot of posing at the bidding of políticos, but they also do the heavy lifting keeping a lid on things.

If only the USA would end its War On Drugs and Prohibition policies. But they've enabled and empowered so many organized criminals for so long that we may be past the point of no return. Here in our region of Guerrero we want to see more military employed. It's what we've been calling for for decades.

Wasn't Calderon's decision, a few administrations ago, to use the military to handle the Mexican War on Drugs a total failure, especially when the Army General he appointed to lead that war was discovered to be on the cartels' payroll?