A recent wave of violence against traffic authorities in Ecuador exposes the importance of these entities for criminal groups looking to deepen their control over the country’s streets.
In the early morning of June 15, three individuals attacked two traffic officers in the southern coastal city of Machala, injuring one and killing the other. A few days earlier, on June 6, hitmen murdered Víctor Francisco Villa Gómez, a traffic officer in the coastal city of Manta. Villa Gómez was the twelfth employee of Manta’s municipal transit agency (Empresa Pública Municipal Movilidad de Manta) to be killed since 2022, according to Primicias.
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Violent incidents against transit officials have also occurred in Durán, adjacent to Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most-populous city. Kelvin Jarama, an official of the Durán Transit Authority (Autoridad de Tránsito de Durán – ATD) and TikTok influencer with nearly 300,000 followers, was murdered in a drive-by shooting outside the entity’s offices in February.
“Knowledge defeats corruption,” reads Jarama’s TikTok bio, where he posted educational videos about motorcycle safety and answered followers’ questions about traffic fines.
Durán also saw a string of violent attacks against traffic authorities in 2024. In September, unknown attackers burned a truck belonging to Ecuador’s national transit commission (Comisión de Tránsito del Ecuador – CTE) on Durán’s main road, while the ATD’s offices suffered an “armed attack” in May, though no one was injured.
In all, at least 39 violent incidents against traffic officials or infrastructure have occurred in Ecuador since January 2024, resulting in 25 total deaths, according to InSight Crime monitoring supplemented by data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED).
Of these attacks, 15 were carried out against the CTE, while the rest were against municipal transit agencies. The CTE is in charge of traffic flows on national highways and around border areas, while transit agencies manage many traffic tasks at the municipal level, including levying fines, maintaining vehicle registries, and responding to crashes. They also manage multimillion-dollar budgets and have their own contracting processes.
Attacks on transit officials have been overwhelmingly concentrated on Ecuador’s coast, which has also been the epicenter of its homicide crisis. The Ecuadorian government’s heavy-handed security response has so far failed to slow the violence, which has reached historic highs in 2025.
The Criminal Appeal of Transit Agencies
Many attacks against transit officials are a direct result of the key role that traffic agencies play in Ecuador’s criminal underworld. Criminal groups have forged networks of allies within transit entities and even placed their own members in key positions.
Gang insiders take advantage of transit agencies’ close relationships with the police and military, gaining access to information on security operations. Additionally, a portion of fines — and bribes — collected by traffic cops are passed to criminal groups. Official vehicles are also important assets for gang operations.
“They have vehicles authorized to move around the city carrying who knows what: weapons, drugs,” said Interior Minister John Reimberg on June 27, speaking on a local talk show.
In Durán, criminal actors have infiltrated the transit authority in pursuit of another treasure: public contracts. A 2024 InSight Crime investigation uncovered how a company belonging to the family of Washington Sellán Hati, alias “Washo,” a prominent Durán drug trafficker, won an ATD contract for the construction of a vehicle retention facility in 2023. Following Washo’s murder that same year, Julio Alberto Martínez, alias “Negro Tulio,” a leader of the Durán-based Chone Killers gang, also won ATD contracts, prosecutors alleged, based on messages between the crime boss and the deputy manager of the ATD.
These contracts are a lucrative target for criminal groups looking to siphon funds and launder money. By ensuring gang-linked companies win contracts, criminal groups receive clean payments from the government, while doing little to no work on the project for which they were contracted.
“They have already realized that this is the fastest way to make money,” a Durán contractor, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told InSight Crime in 2024.
The Choneros and Manta’s Transit Agency
Criminal infiltration of transit agencies is perhaps most evident in Manta, Ecuador’s most dangerous city for traffic officials.
Manta is the homebase of the Choneros, one of the country’s most powerful criminal groups. The Choneros have been continuously linked to corruption schemes within Manta’s transit agency, leading Reimberg to claim that the entity “works for the Choneros.” The agency did not reply to InSight Crime’s requests for comment.
Past employees have included relatives of now-deceased leader Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias “Rasquina,” and current leader Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito.” When security forces captured Fito on June 25 near Manta, the Choneros leader was found together with Cristian Mendoza, an employee of Manta’s transit agency for 13 years. Authorities reported that Mendoza was part of the gang boss’ security outfit, and also owned the house where Fito was hiding.
SEE ALSO: The Fall of Fito: What It Means — and Doesn’t — for Ecuador’s Underworld
“This cannot be seen as an isolated episode,” said Marciana Valdivieso, the mayor of Manta, referring to Mendoza’s arrest in a June 29 social media post. “For years, [Manta’s transit agency] has been infiltrated and weakened by networks with no interest in the principles of public service.”
The array of advantages provided by transit authorities means positions are highly contested, with criminal groups targeting operatives of rival groups embedded in the agencies. Local media has attributed the attacks in Manta to battles between the Choneros and rival groups for influence within the agency. Meanwhile, other attacks against transit officials around Ecuador could be attributed, like in the case of the TikTok influencer Jarama in Durán, to eliminating officials in key positions that do not comply with gang demands.
Still, other attacks appear to be acts of passion or revenge with no ties to organized criminal activity. Transit officials, who do not carry weapons in the line of duty, are more defenseless than other security forces in these situations.
Featured image: Ecuador’s Minister of the Interior John Reimberg stands outside the offices of Durán’s Transit Authority following a police raid on July 7. Source: Teleamazonas