**Some images of private security cameras to which EL PAÍS has had access show the police error in the detention of 27 people who were at a party** The urine had reached his bare feet. Dante Cristóbal Macías, 26, was the first to realize that the man who had shouted a few hours before going to the bathroom had not endured. The rest, 26 people, with their shoes on, just argued desperately how they ended up there. They were detained, with their wrists cuffed behind their backs, divided into two armored trucks of the Mexican Public Security Secretariat (the local police) known in the neighborhoods as rhinoceros or rhino. More than five hours overcrowded until they were transferred to the police station. Enough time to store a ton and a half of drugs and long weapons as evidence . The anguish would last about 48 hours more. Intelligence reports from the new investigative police (from the local Prosecutor's Office) had been targeting a housing complex in the Bravo neighborhood of Tepito for months . A neighborhood with more than 100 departments, of which at least two were key points of distribution of drugs and weapons. There was, according to their records, the bastion of one of the most powerful and historic cartels in the capital, that of the Tepito Union. And on the morning of October 22, Tuesday - the only day of the week that there is no market in this area of ​​the city center -, they gave the green light to the first major operation against the narco of the administration of Claudia Sheinbaum . He was the first also for the new local police chief, Omar García Harfuch , who inherited the post a month ago with the highest homicide and robbery figures in recent decades. García Harfuch premiered the charge with a hook to organized crime that resulted in 32 detainees, 1,639 kilos of marijuana, 21 kilos of cocaine, eight long weapons from the Army, including a bazooka and a million and a half pesos in cash. Everyone celebrated it. A meticulous blow, they planned, that would not require a single shot. Just four days after the disaster in Culiacán , where the Mexican Army ended up beset by the men of the Sinaloa cartel to such an extent that President López Obrador positively valued the release of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán's son , Ovid, to avoid a butcher shop . The capital plan was then an example for the country. But the celebration did not last more than 48 hours. On Thursday, Judge Jesús Delgadillo Padierna released 27 of the 32 detainees and ridiculed the police report presented in full hearing. He laid down the arguments of the Prosecutor, because in his opinion they were "unlikely" and "contradictory." It was not even necessary for the defense of the 27 to present the corresponding evidence: videos of private security cameras - to which EL PAÍS had access - that showed how they had been arrested in the middle of a party and not in the middle of the street with kilos of drugs, as the accusation argued; also how they were in a different building from the property where the entire arsenal was hidden. On Wednesday, October 30, a judge released three others. Four hours before the operation At 9 p.m. on October 21, Dante Cristóbal Macías was playing a soccer match south of the city. He received a call, he was his mother's cousin. José Antonio Bustamante, Tony , turned 24 and he had organized a party himself. He had hired a singer known in Tepito as Héctor El Serafín de la Salsa and some relatives were going to gather in the courtyard of the neighborhood of Peralvillo Street, at number 25. 10 of his relatives came, all were arrested like him for a few hours later. In the departments of the building lived his aunts who watched what happened from the windows. Macías did not arrive in Tepito until 12.30 at night, after having dinner with his teammates, shortly before the neighborhood became the zero zone of an anti-arc operation . From the party they were handcuffed to the salsa singer. Macías lives with his mother in an apartment in the Buenavista neighborhood, 3 kilometers from Tepito . And he had returned to the capital a month ago, after working as a clerk in the department stores of Palacio de Hierro in Cancun. Now he was looking for a job. That night he was still wearing the equipment of his football team. And some sports sneakers, which the police snatched at the time of the arrest. His father was in prison when he was a teenager accused of belonging to a network forgery of documents. A judge declared him free without charge two years later. "Put my name, I have nothing to hide. What happened that night has marked me for life. When we went to the audience, I looked at the street and I thought for a long time that they were going to imprison me for a crime that didn't I had committed, just like my father. We all know what is happening in Mexico and the prisons are full of innocent people, "he recalls in an interview with this newspaper. 1:43 in the morning, the police break into the party The images of private security cameras of the Peralvillo 25 housing complex show how a group of more than 40 agents enter the party courtyard at 1:43 a.m. on October 22. From four different chambers you can see how the police enter through an open door to the street, continue through the corridors that flow into the inner courtyard and point their weapons at the group of people celebrating the birthday. At 1:46 all the members of the party throw themselves to the ground, according to the images, while the agents walk on them handcuffing their wrists. At no time did the detainees show resistance or attempted to flee. A few minutes later, everyone was detained in the direction of the armored police trucks. 22 men and five women. During the party, Macías and many of his cousins ​​had received messages from their families about the police and military operation that surrounded the neighborhood. "Innocently, we thought that as long as we did not go out, there would be no problem," the young man says. By then, half an hour earlier, almost a thousand agents, including police and seafarers, had cut the streets around Peralvillo, as their goal was to enter the number 33 and find the niche of the Tepito Union . Why they broke into the party and took 27 people arrested remains a mystery two weeks later. In the report that the police presented to the Prosecutor's Office there was no mention of the operating macro of that night. As published in local media present at the hearing, the accusation alleged that the 27 were captured in the street - specifically, in Jesús Carranza with Estanquillo, a few blocks from Peralvillo -, which were in a circle, with a separation of about two meters each, surrounding 336 kilos of marijuana, 90 joints and a gun. That a single agent had reviewed all the suspects and had seized the drug in 30 minutes. "When I heard the accusation I couldn't believe it," says Macías. After these statements by the Prosecutor's Office, the judge called the version "implausible" and said: "The police action was not clean. It has been a constant that people detained in operations who want to pass them before this criminal justice center as perpetrators of a crime. Now they will say that the judges are the ones who throw the operations, "according to the newspaper Reforma. A few hours later, the 27 were released. Both the head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum, and the new police chief, Omar García Harfuch , lamented the ruling. Although Garcia has acknowledged a week later that there were "errors" and "inconsistencies" in police reports. When the police entered the party, Serafín stopped singing and threw the mike to the floor. Macías, who resisted supporting his chest on the wet floor, remembers how an agent kicked him and lowered his pants. "They treated me like a dog. At no time, during those two days I felt they were respecting my presumption of innocence," he says. And he adds: "None of the 27 had belongings when we arrived at the Prosecutor's Office. They took our cell phones and wallets. Today I had to go get my license," he says from his home. More than five hours held in the van Already climbed in the truck, with his feet soaked in urine, Macías heard how a policeman demanded that another one go down to the four more "chacalones", with worse pints. They took him, his uncle and two others, the biggest ones, according to the young man's version. They were taken to Peralvillo 33, where he remembers seeing the agents break walls - they found different tunnels - and take out the seized drugs in garbage bags. "They asked all the time for the Chief Chief. Then he approached us and told my uncle that if he was the one who controlled all this. He said no. They did the same to me. And he scolded the agent saying that had brought him to the most assholes, "he recalls. Back in the van, he waited with the rest of the detainees for five hours in that suffocating space until they were transferred to a police station. Two weeks after the operation, Macías is afraid when he sees a policeman. "What gives one the most courage is that they believe that they release us and that's it. But this is not right. I even see news in which they point us as drug traffickers and I don't know if this is going to hurt me to find a job." , worried account. The boss whom the authorities pointed out as the leader of the band, the owner of the seized drug and weapons arsenal, is Oscar Flores, known as El Lunares . Almost 15 days later, there is no trace of his whereabouts. The mission of the megaoperative of a thousand agents and sailors in Tepito was not - according to police sources consulted - their capture, but to burst their shelter. They have not explained, however, what sense was then the detention of 32 people who could not prove any crime. "There is no assembly on this operation. What we have is a series of errors in the police reports of which we are going to ensure that they are not repeated," García Harfuch defended the press a few days later. He did not rule out, although he has not recognized it yet, that the arrest of the 27 of the party was a mistake. "It is not my goal to contradict a judge," he said. And he has insisted that more operations like this will be carried out. Well, he added: "Everything insured shows that with this coup we fight organized crime." https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/11/04/mexico/1572883023_889585.html