Rogue Police in Mexico
WITT, ADDISON DE
POVERTY AND CORRUPTION Rogue Police in Mexico By Addison De Witt Guadalajara A grim joke currently circulating among retired foreigners living around here compares the Mexican...
...But Alcalâ claimed Defense Secretary Cervantes, a major player in the affair, was hooked up with the rival Baja California narcotics mafia...
...But the posse couldn't prevent it from gaining the safety of the state's downtown headquarters...
...The bitterest respondent was...
...You complain higher up and the director will order the cuartelero not to charge you for a pistol...
...One reason for Mexico's pandemic of police corruption, it is widely acknowledged, comes down to pay...
...By shaking down a drunk I can make at least a day's pay and maybe more...
...The judicial police responded to the incarcerations with an assassination campaign that claimed the lives of the State Attorney General, the head of the state judicial police and several lower-level officials...
...On May 31, 1998, for instance, five of them broke into the house of a Guadalajara baker and kidnapped his 20-year-old son...
...All the money is for the cuartelero (barracks chief)," an anonymous cop protested to a Guadalajara daily doing an article on the conditions the police work under in Mexico...
...In the meantime, the baker called the state judiciales, who were only too happy to strike a blow at their rivals...
...Judicial police exist at both the state and Federal levels...
...But bigger fish may have gotten away...
...William F. Gately, the Customs official who headed the operation, told Golden that some of the bankers approached the disguised agents about laundering an additional $ 150 million...
...Of the suspected drug dealers arrested in the sting operation, the best known is Victor Alcalâ Navarro, believed to be a high-ranking member of the Ciudad Juarez cartel...
...Addison de Witt is the pseudonym of a freelance journalist who lives in Mexico...
...Payoffs are also necessary to avoid such "Siberia" assignments as low-income, high-crime barrios...
...Also discouraging to corruption fighters is the harsh fact that moves toward reform have a way of getting reversed...
...Particularly vicious killers in Guatemala were assigned to the Treasury Police...
...The two others escaped on foot and alerted comrades, who immediately organized an automotive posse and set off in pursuit of the vehicle containing the state judiciales and their prisoners...
...There are those in the public sector and the media who are genuinely determined to do something about the sad state of the country's various law enforcement agencies...
...The Federal judiciales have an especially malodorous reputation...
...The event was as cataclysmic as, say...
...That would appear to reflect the Clinton Administration's policy of avoiding anything that might prejudice Mexico's annual certification by Congress as undertaking a credible antidrug effort...
...Moreover, if a New York Times article can be credited, this charade is being abetted by some high-level people on the U.S...
...The most popular targets are streetwalkers, lovers on park benches, and customers emerging from cantmas a little the worse for wear...
...In 1996 Antonio Lozano, head of the Mexican Attorney General's office (PGR), fired 800 judicial police who did not "fill the required ethical profile...
...He added that the average police officer in Guadalajara "has one foot in the grave and another in jail...
...What distinguishes them from virtually all other police branches is that they are much more involved in the drug area (and hence have more contact with dealers...
...side of the border...
...Secretary of Interior Francisco Labastida Ochoa is another foe of the Federal judicial police...
...The state cops rescued the baker's son and captured three of the Federal police...
...What is the outlook for police reform in Mexico...
...Today, 643 are back on the job, with 66 more scheduled for "reintegration...
...In Mexico they'udiciales have scarcely been known for judicious restraint in the performance of their duties...
...The situation is more complicated, of course...
...Despite a nationwide rash of bank robberies, bank guard duty is still considered a plum and is much favored by the lazy...
...Drug Agents," Tim Golden reported that undercover U. S. Customs agents, posing as Colombian money launderers, had "insinuated themselves deeply into the Mexican underworld, helping...
...They claimed they were acting on behalf of clients, one of whom they allegedly identified as General Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, Mexico's Secretary of Defense...
...This effort, code-named Operation Casablanca, ended on May 16, 1998, when a number of Mexicans, including suspected drug dealers and bank executives fronting forthem, were scooped up in San Diego and Las Vegas...
...Some of their units have committed outrages that qualifythem as rogue forces...
...If true, though, Alcalâ's account of Gutierrez' downfall detracts considerably from this rosy picture...
...Alcalâ has said that 16 Federal judicial police functioned as bodyguards at a meeting of top drug lords, held in Mexico City on May 16, 1997...
...It was widely hailed as a sign that Mexico was at last serious about stamping out high-level corruption...
...traffickers hide more than $60 million...
...Jorge Madrazo, who succeeded Lozano as Attorney General, explained that he had no choice because the 800 were unconstitutionally fired without a hearing...
...When the culprits returned—in the Jetta, accompanied by the youth—there was a brief shootout...
...Citing their links with local criminal elements, he said, "On three or four occasions we had to put some of them in jail...
...But the cuartelero will claim that there aren't enough pistols to go round...
...Demanding $6,000 in ransom money, they said they would be back in an hour to collect it...
...But its members are still widely referred to as judiciales...
...This episode was followed by a tense confrontation between high-level state and Federal officials, and the eventual release of the captives...
...POVERTY AND CORRUPTION Rogue Police in Mexico By Addison De Witt Guadalajara A grim joke currently circulating among retired foreigners living around here compares the Mexican government's ongoing pledge to clean up police corruption to O. J. Simpson's promise to conduct an "aggressive" investigation of the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman...
...an officer under investigation on a homicide charge...
...At a June 27,1998 press conference, his voice breaking with emotion, he related his experiences with them while serving as Governor of Sinaloa State between 1986 and '92...
...I earn 70 pesos a day that way," said a third interviewee...
...to improve and transform" the Federal judicial police...
...More apt than the Simpson analogy, perhaps, would be the Sisyphean one...
...Out of this meager stipend officers must buy their uniforms and, more frequently than not, rent their side arms...
...It is increasingly clear that for those at the top the "fight" against police corruption is pretty much a sham...
...In Latin countries the most hated police organs tend to have the most innocuous-sounding names...
...Barring major changes in pay and professional standards, the picture is not encouraging...
...As he explained it, the drug czar was caught in a power struggle between two competing cartels...
...In an obvious gesture of disassociation, the state judicial police in Jalisco have now officially changed their name to "Investigative Police...
...A second policeman alleged that middle-level officers not only fleece the lower ranks but encourage them to supplement their incomes through shakedowns...
...Time and again, popular indignation triggers what look like moves toward reform—then hopes are dashed and cynicism is reinforced by some fresh outrage...
...The average police salary in Mexico is about S260 a month for a beat cop, and $365 for a member of the judicial police...
...Director of National Drug Control Policy, being arrested for having ties with the Gambino family...
...He said the widow of a cop killed in the line of duty had to gratify her husband's former chief with sexual favors to collect her insurance claim...
...After an exchange of insults, the Federals withdrew...
...Ultimately, Labastida had to expel the Federal judiciales from Sinaloa en masse...
...According to one of the Casablanca agents, Alcalâ had an interesting version of the February 22, 1997 arrest of General Jesus Gutiérrez Rebollo, then serving as Mexico's drug czar...
...He concluded the interview, however, by praising Attorney General Madrazo as "an honest man" who has "the same vision I do...
...The same officer also told of having to make payoffs to get a police car in good mechanical condition—and, in cases of cars that weren't, of having to pay for repairs out of his own pocket...
...They shoved the youth into their van and also stole the baker's car, a green 1992 Volkswagen Jetta...
...Gutierrez was indeed, as charged, involved with the Juarez group...
...Gately, who resigned from the Customs Service in 1998, complained that he was under constant pressure from the Justice Department to limit the scope of his investigation...
...While there will always be isolated instances of valor and decency, it will indeed be a Sisyphean task to dent a culture of corruption that has become so institutionalized...
...In a March 16 story headlined "Top Mexican Off-Limits to U.S...
...General Barry McCaffrey, the U.S...
Vol. 82 • April 1999 • No. 5
