[JURIST] Acapulco Mayor Luis Walton Aburto [official website, in Spanish] announced on Friday that he will be firing 500 of the city’s police officers after they failed a test used to weed out corrupt officers. The city currently has only 1,700 officers, and the 500 who failed the test [AP report] will be fired in January. Aburto said he will be asking the federal government to send agents for support until the officers can be replaced. Acapulco is one of Mexico’s top cities for tourism and has a population of more than 800,000 people.

Combating issues with police corruption has been an ongoing struggle for the Mexican government. Last year, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission released a report [JURIST report] describing a “systematic pattern” of illegal police activity in conducting searches for drugs. The report was released a month after 111 officials were charged with corruption [JURIST report] by the Mexico Attorney General’s Office following the resignation of Attorney General Arturo Chavez. The alleged corruption is tied to the government’s efforts to combat a drug trade that has been the cause of an estimated 47,515 deaths [NYTimes report] in the country since 2006.