The Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, said this week the “shameful” incident in which a man arrested for drug trafficking was found drinking alcoholic beverages with his police guards demonstrates that the power of drug traffickers is present “in all places.”

Last Sunday, Colombian drug trafficker Jaime Alonso Calle Muñoz was caught drinking alcohol with a police patrol group that had checked him out of jail in order to take him to a local mall.  The officers in question have been placed under arrest.

“This confirms what we have been saying for some time: certain members of the national police force must go,” the cardinal said.  He called the incident “shameful, unjustifiable, and reprehensible” and said it proves that drug trafficking has great power in the Dominican Republic.