About $4.8 million in security assistance has been given to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's murder capital, the Chihuahua state government said.

The funds were frozen late last month because federal officials claimed Ciudad Juarez had failed to improve the quality of its police force.

The funds were restored thanks to the efforts of Chihuahua Gov. Cesar Horacio Duarte, who spoke with Government Secretary Francisco Blake, state officials said.

The subsidy from a fund to improve municipal public safety nationwide was frozen on July 28, the National Public Safety System Executive Secretariat, or Sesnsp, said in a statement released last week.

The Subsemun is one of three funds set up by the federal government in an effort to professionalize state and local police forces and equip them with the resources to take on heavily armed, well-funded drug cartels.

Juarez authorities failed to meet a series of requirements for receiving the subsidy, including evening out officers' salaries and adopting a personnel management system aimed at boosting professionalism, the Sesnsp said.

From 2008 to 2010, Juarez, a city of 1.2 million people, only trained 145 police officers with Subsemun funds, equivalent to "just a 6 percent advance in the professionalization of (the municipal police personnel)," the Sesnsp said.

Athe same period, not a single command-level officer was trained in the border city, whose homicide rate is among the highest in the world, the Sesnsp said.

More than 3,100 people were murdered in the border city last year, making 2010 the worst year since a war between rival drug gangs sent the homicide rate up in 2008.

The murder rate remains high this year, with more than 1,000 people slain thus far in Juarez, but is down from 2010.