marla
Nomad
Posts: 287
Registered: 10-29-2003
Location: Long Beach
Member Is Offline
|
|
News story on Rosarito beach cops (long)
Copyright 2004 Copley News Service
Copley News Service
April 18, 2004 Sunday
SECTION: MEXICO WIRE
LENGTH: 1036 words
HEADLINE: Mexican police corruption caught on tape, man claims
BYLINE: Sandra Dibble Copley News Service
DATELINE: ROSARITO BEACH, Mexico
BODY:
All Lex Miles wanted to do, he said, was film sexy, funny footage of young Americans on spring break in this seaside community of 90,000.
Then opportunity knocked - quite literally - on March 26, when city police officers came to the door of the house that Miles and his crew were
renting. A silly story suddenly turned serious, and now Rosarito Beach's police department confronts accusations of corruption and a scandal dubbed
"Videogate" by the local weekly Ecos de Rosarito.
As a camera secretly recorded the action, the armed and uniformed policemen came into the house about 4:30 a.m., rounding up Miles and his friends,
asking about drugs and underage girls. The officers agreed to leave only after he handed over $6,000 in rolled-up $20 bills, the 41-year-old Oxnard
resident claims.
"This is what's going to make the project," Miles said this week of the nearly eight-minute video of his encounter with Rosarito Beach police. "This
ridiculous set of circumstances made me a documentary filmmaker."
His footage is fueling Rosarito's own version of videotaped corruption scandals that are rocking Mexico. In recent weeks, a video showing a
businessman handing bags of dollars to Mexico City officials has caused serious damage to the administration of Mayor Andres Lopez Obrador, often
mentioned as a presidential hopeful in Mexico's 2006 election.
Rosarito Beach Mayor Luis Enrique Diaz Felix went on the offensive this week, suggesting that Miles may well have provoked the entire incident. If
Miles' allegations can be proved, the officers will be punished, the mayor said; if not, the city intends to bring defamation charges "against someone
who seeks to twist the law for economic benefit."
Miles' business card lists him as executive producer and director of "Hard R," the movie project that brought him to Rosarito in the first place; as
originally conceived, it had no script, just comical situations involving spring breakers unwittingly interacting with actors. In Miles' words, it was
to be "a sexy spring-break movie that was supposed to combine elements of 'burro' with elements of MTV's 'Real World."'
Miles' moviemaking credentials are slim. He said he is a former stockbroker and personal trainer who moved to Southern California from the East Coast
14 years ago and was bitten by the movie bug. A previous project, dubbed "One Bad Day," about a janitor who becomes a killer, has never found a
bidder.
"Unfortunately, we made the mistake of not having proper sound," Miles said.
His Rosarito tape shows police officers walking through the front door of a house, and its residents being ordered to put their hands up. "I never had
anyone point a loaded machine gun at my face before," a man is heard saying in English.
At one point, the camera is carried upstairs and placed on a bed. A policeman's voice says, "Right here, you have some drugs." Miles is heard to
answer: "I, me, have no drugs. ... You can do a blood test on me."
The video does not show any money changing hands.
Miles said he and about a dozen others were staying at the house, overlooking the ocean on Via de las Olas, which he had rented for $3,000 a month.
Encounters with Rosarito Beach police happened soon after he came to town, Miles said. He was stopped twice by agents for traffic violations, and
directly paid them a $45 fee each time to avoid having to go to the police station for a $67 ticket.
Miles said that during the group's first encounter with police March 24, officers threatened to seize the parked vehicles of several people who were
waiting outside for Miles to arrive with the house key early in the morning. The officers agreed to leave after being paid $500, Miles said.
The second encounter came March 26, according to Miles, when several members of the crew were gathered in the living room after a night of videotaping
at Papas & Beer, a nightspot popular with spring breakers. They were taping their conversation when police knocked.
"One of the guys videotaping the conversation just prior to that puts the camera on a table and secretly records the whole thing," Miles said.
He said he was separated from the group. "They start saying, 'We think you have underage girls; we think you have drugs; we want to see all the
tapes."'
Miles said the officers then took him to an upstairs bedroom and told him they would arrest everyone. He said that's when he began bargaining with the
English-speaking officer, offering money.
"I brought it up, because they'd been harassing us all week long," Miles said. "I was able to negotiate it to $6,000."
Investigators for the Baja California Attorney General's Office and Rosarito Beach's internal-affairs office are poring over the tape as they look
into Miles' claims. Four police officers have been identified. If the allegations can be proved, the officers face dismissal from the force as well as
jail time.
But for now, they are still working members of Rosarito Beach's 125-member police department. The four men - Supervisor Mario Herrera Sanchez,
Assistant Chief Carlos Sanchez, Commercial Police Supervisor Francisco Castro and Officer Cristian Javier Peralta Lopez - admit they are on the tape.
But they say they went to the house only in response to a neighbor's complaint about loud music.
All four have denied that they took $6,000. Fernando Serrano Garcia, Rosarito's director of public safety, says he needs more evidence if he is to
take any action. He also wonders whether Miles cares more about making a video than seeking justice.
"We believe that the gentleman prepared the situation for commercial purposes," Serrano said. "I am not protecting the policeman, but I need more
proof in order to reach a conclusion."
Others are saying the incident points to a potential case of police corruption in Rosarito.
"This shames us, because we live here, and it's our community, and our police force," said former Rosarito Mayor Hugo Torres Chabert, owner of the
Rosarito Beach Hotel and president of the Business Coordinating Council. "When we finally see his video, and see it completely, then we'll have a
better idea of who's telling the truth."
LOAD-DATE: April 19, 2004
|
|
|
Mike Humfreville
Super Nomad
Posts: 1148
Registered: 8-26-2003
Member Is Offline
|
|
Thanks Marla...
This smacks of an individual looking for attention. It'll be interesting to see the results, if there are any...
|
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xmbforum/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
