TIJUANA – The number of high-profile crimes in this city has dropped considerably this year and groups tied to drug cartels are no longer terrorizing residents, forcing them to stay home, as happened in 2008 to 2010.

That’s not to say that killings related to the sale and transportation of drugs have stopped altogether.

State authorities logged 300 murders from January to July of this year in Tijuana, 181 fewer than the same period last year.

That’s the reality two new state crime fighters are inheriting.

They are Abel Galván and Joel Hidalgo Dueñez, who became Baja California’s deputy attorney general for organized crime and director of internal affairs, respectively.

Both are attorneys and Mexicali natives. And both worked for the state Attorney General’s internal affairs unit, officially called Visitador General de Justicia, Galván as its director and Dueñez as head of the Mexicali office.

Galván assumed his new role after Fermín Gómez, who was deputy attorney general for organized crime for four years, was promoted to be the Baja California representative of the federal Attorney General’s Office, known in Mexico as the PGR.

On Monday morning, in the courtyard of the Tijuana office of the stolen car agency, the two officials pledged to safeguard the security of the state’s residents.

The new deputy prosecutor said he will continue the policies implemented by his predecessor to fight traffickers.

For his part, Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno said he expects the two departments to continue to work in coordination with the PGR and the Mexican military to fight crime.

Authorities say that the carnage unleashed by cells working for the Arellano Félix and Sinaloa cartels against each other produced a new criminal order in the border.

The state government implemented an effective strategy where the commander of the Second Military Zone acted as the field general to coordinate the work and operations of not only the army but state and municipal police agencies; which led to raids against traffickers, confiscations of drugs and weapons and the detention of cartel lieutenants.

Currently, smaller criminal groups are operating in the border, including loosely organized bands that once worked for the cartels and are fighting to regain control of it.

Omar.millan@sandiegored.com