A series of high-profile shootings has left four Mexican public officials dead in less than a month, highlighting the persistent dangers facing local office-holders and police commanders across the country. On 16 June, gunmen entered the municipal palace of San Mateo Piñas, Oaxaca, and killed Mayor Lilia Gema García Soto inside her office. She is the second female mayor murdered in southern Mexico this year, according to regional media. The same day in Zapopan, Jalisco, assailants fatally shot Lázaro Gambino Espinoza, head of Sinaloa’s labour arbitration board. Gambino, who had faced allegations of links to organised crime, was a brother-in-law of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, a leader of the “Los Chapitos” faction of the Sinaloa cartel. Violence against law-enforcement chiefs intensified on 14 July, when sub-commander Roberto Méndez Arreola was killed outside his home in Mexicali, Baja California. The attack occurred only hours after Julián Leyzaola resigned as the city’s security director and Luis Felipe Chan took over the post. Municipal authorities said no suspects have been detained and vowed not to be intimidated. A day later in Culiacán, Sinaloa, gunmen ambushed Commander David Barraza Sainz, known as “Comandante Nitro,” as he drove with his wife, who was wounded. State investigators have opened inquiries into both police killings but have not announced arrests. The four assassinations, spanning Oaxaca, Jalisco, Baja California and Sinaloa, underscore the continuing reach of criminal groups and the challenges facing Mexico’s security strategy ahead of next year’s federal budget talks on public-safety funding.