TIJUANA ? The bodies started to appear around the city at midnight, and by dawn there were four.
Two of the men, found near a military base, had been beaten and strangled. They were stripped from the waist. A fingernail had been pried from one
man. After being killed, each was shot in the head ? the trademark coup de grace of organized crime.
Detective Juan Manuel Reyna, a 15-year veteran of Baja California's homicide unit in Tijuana, examined the bodies with detached neutrality that
February morning.
"You see these so often that it just becomes a part of the job," he said, as he returned to his office and his colleagues chased leads on the bodies
found in two other locations.
Tijuana's homicide detectives are picking up the pieces from what some say is a renewed battle over who controls the flow of drugs from Mexico into
the United States.
In the first four months of this year, there have been 151 homicides. If the trend continues, Tijuana would log 453 killings by the end of the year.
Last year's total was 355.
In recent weeks, the killers have become bolder.
Adolfo Fregoso Eibeck was snatched by at least 10 assailants from a popular carnitas restaurant April 27. His beaten corpse was found two days later.
Ivan Escobosa met a similar fate after he was grabbed by a team of heavily armed assailants in front of the city's country club May 4.
The director of public security for Rosarito Beach was gunned down Saturday.
Detectives say an upswing in killings usually means the region's long-dominant Arellano F?lix drug cartel is lashing back at rivals or that those
rivals are trying to take over the Arellanos' turf.
The homicide detectives' work is crucial to restoring public faith in law enforcement and the country's justice system. But their investigations into
this secretive world are challenged by uncooperative family members of the dead and the powerful interests of drug traffickers.
The work is gruesome: Chopped appendages, burned corpses and bodies bludgeoned so badly they barely seem human.
Some new homicide detectives have nightmares of dead people. Others don't make it past a few hours, requesting immediate job changes.
The remainder learn to adjust to the violence, developing an emotional barrier out of necessity, and even adopting the lingo adopted in the 1990s to
describe the Arellanos' methods. An "encobijado" is a person killed and wrapped in a blanket. An "encajuelado" is a person who has been killed and
dumped in a car trunk. "Pozole" refers to human remains that have been put through a meat grinder or have been destroyed with acid.
"There are certain deaths that impact you because the bodies are so badly destroyed and you wonder how could someone find it in them to do this," said
Juan Guerrero, 47, who was assigned to investigate one of the four cases that day in February.
Despite what they see on a daily basis, some law enforcement officials say the city's drug-related killings get a disproportionate amount of
attention.
"This is a city with the same problems as any city in the United States, and people do live here peacefully," said Francisco Castro Trenti, an
administrator of the homicide investigation teams in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach and Tecate.
According to Castro, about 20 percent of Tijuana's homicides last year were linked to organized crime groups, such as the Arellanos and their rivals.
About 20 percent are victims of small-time traffickers and people acting under the influence of drugs. The rest come from fights and domestic
violence, Castro said.
The homicide figures don't include an unknown number of drug-related killings in which the bodies are never found. Critics say it's possible that more
organized-crime killings are taking place, but that authorities are including them in other categories.
Some of the homicide detectives said killings unrelated to organized crime are the most satisfying cases because the investigations usually lead to
suspects. Of those kinds of cases, 73 percent are solved, Castro said.
Reyna said that last year he was able to arrest a suspect in less than two hours as he attempted to cross into the United States. The man, a U.S.
citizen, had doused a woman with gasoline and set her on fire in a jealous rage, Reyna said.
Around the clock
Whether it's organized crime or a brawl, Tijuana's homicide agents and their bosses find that their lives revolve around the dead.
On Feb. 16, about midnight, two of the bodies were found in separate parts of the city. Six hours later, the other two were found near the military
base as Castro was on his way to the office.
Castro quickly ate an Egg McMuffin, drank coffee and orange juice and started coordinating the investigations with the Tijuana region's homicide
chief, Honorio Bustamante.
Detectives were trying to figure out if the four killings were linked. Castro went out to where Reyes was checking on the two bodies, snapping a shot
on his cell phone camera of a bloody fingertip. He joined detectives when he heard that a car belonging to one of the victims had been found. He
worked until midnight.
It may have been busier than usual, but Castro said he often works long days like this, including weekends. He tries to find time to see a movie on
Sundays.
"You can't ever really make plans with this job," he said. "You often end up breaking them. There have been times when I went to get food, and had to
leave before it even came. This is a 24-hour job."
Once a body is found, the first step is to identify the victim.
Fifty percent of the time, Castro said, a fingerprint will lead to a match in the police agency's criminal database because the person has broken the
law in the past.
Family members of missing people will also arrive at the coroner's office to see if they recognize any of the recently found corpses. But on this day,
the detectives weren't getting much help from family members.
"They were very closed, and that leads us to believe they were involved in these activities," Castro said. "It makes things difficult."
Guerrero said that in these situations, homicide detectives often rely on contacts developed over the years.
"You need to have sources on the street so you can do thorough investigations," he said.
Guerrero said that one out of three or four cases he investigates is linked to the region's major drug-trafficking groups.
Those cases are forwarded to a special team, formed several years ago, that investigates organized crime cases. The team's work is secret to prevent
retribution from drug-trafficking groups, and it reports directly to the state attorney general. It's unclear how many of those cases are solved.
Comparing cities
Fausto Gonzalez, a San Diego police detective who does liaison work with Mexico, said Tijuana's homicide detectives face challenges that are unheard
of for most U.S. police agencies.
"These guys get threats ? it's a fact of life ? and they are living day to day, but they got to do the job," he said.
Tijuana's 355 homicides last year far outpace San Diego, which had 62 last year, according to the San Diego Police Department. Both cities have a
population of about 1.3 million.
But San Diego has a low homicide rate for a U.S. city its size. For example, Phoenix, a city of 1.3 million, had 177 homicides in 2002, according to
the U.S. Department of Justice.
Some U.S. cities have homicide rates that match or surpass Tijuana's. Detroit, a city of 911,402, had 402 murders in 2002, according to the U.S.
Department of Justice, and Baltimore, a city half the size of Tijuana, had 253. About half of those cities' killings are linked to drug-related
violence, according to studies and news reports.
Tijuana's crime rate is partly because of its location on a major drug-crossing route with links to Los Angeles and other cities.
It's also a city in continuous upheaval, where 41 percent of the population comes from other parts of the country. A portion of its residents are
transients, either on their way to attempt an illegal crossing into the United States or recently deported.
Victims and perpetrators in drug-related killings often come from other states, according to Baja California law enforcement authorities.
"The city has grown rapidly," said Jaime Niebla, who oversees the state police force, including homicide units, in Tijuana, Tecate and Rosarito Beach.
"It presents opportunities for a better life, which attracts a lot of people for its proximity to the United States, and some come here with the
objective of joining criminal groups that flourish because we are located at the border."
Mexico's other border cities, including Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo, share similar characteristics, and that makes them more prone to violence than
other cities in Mexico's interior, based on a sampling of homicide statistics provided by Mexican law enforcement agencies.
Special challenges
The many Baja killings mean that some of Tijuana's 50 detectives find themselves bolting from family gatherings and working extra hours.
The Tijuana homicide detectives, who are typically reticent with reporters and are ordered not to share any inside information, are assigned to work
about 50 hours a week. In reality, they say privately, 72 hours a week is normal.
When a murder takes place at the end of their shift, they can end up working 24 hours straight. They don't usually get paid for the overtime, they
said.
Several said they didn't ask to be on the homicide unit. Homicide detectives typically serve five to seven years before being rotated to other groups.
As such, the homicide unit includes senior investigators as well as relatively new agents.
Depending on their rank, they typically earn between $850 and $1,300 a month. It's common for police to look for other ways to earn money, such as
running a side business or getting a taxi permit.
Some have resorted to illegal activities, which mars the agency's reputation and prevents some people from reporting crimes.
"But all of us want to resolve these cases, and once they see crimes are being solved then they have more faith," Guerrero said.
The detectives don't like to talk about it, but they are working in a tense environment.
Drug traffickers often use threats or bribes to create alliances with certain police.
Some former and current law enforcement officials, who declined to have their names used to prevent retribution from their colleagues or drug
traffickers, said these ties prevent some murder cases from moving forward.
When police get caught in the drug traffickers' webs, they can lose their lives. Some may be targeted because they stood up to criminals. Others who
receive payoffs are killed if they fail to live up to their part of the deal.
Earlier this year, two state police agents were killed in what is believed to have been the work of organized crime.
For the toughened homicide detectives, finding a colleague riddled with bullets is harder than seeing an anonymous corpse.
"I will try to avoid going there, so that I can remember him as he was," Guerrero said.
Just as the detectives have learned to separate themselves emotionally from the violence, so has the entire community, said Victor Clark, director of
the Tijuana-based Binational Center of Human Rights.
"Perhaps they will kill a public figure or a police commander and it creates a public scandal," Clark said. "But organized society hasn't been
sufficiently energized to stand up to this. There are many voices on the sidelines but no one single united force."
One exception was a march against violence last year with more than 1,000 protesters.
Many participants were motivated by the March 2004 killing of Angelica Aguilar Navarro, 27, who was Tijuana marketing director for the Mexican
television network Television Azteca. Aguilar, who was gunned down in front of her house, apparently had no ties to organized crime, but the killing
has been linked to the Arellanos.
In the case of the four bodies found in February, there was no outcry. The families quietly claimed the bodies and the tears flowed privately.
Homicide detective Reyna said that seeing so much of this "forces you to become colder."
After 15 years on the unit, he was ready for a change. The investigation of the dumped corpses was one of his last before being transferred to a
different section within the state police agency.Anonymous - 5-24-2005 at 09:15 AM
Quote:
..."Pozole" refers to human remains that have been put through a meat grinder or have been destroyed with acid...
Yup.
There was a SD Reader article a few years ago about the Logan gangsters that killed the Bishop by mistake in Guadalajara.
They said one gang in Tijuana used an industrial meat grinder, and lowered victims in feet-first. The lucky ones were shot first.
Traitors were lowered in alive; screaming to the taunts of their torturer-killers.
In other refreshing news, Telemundo Noticias reported yesterday afternoon that two security guards were shot to death, and one wounded; at Real Del
Mar, on the toll road to Rosarito.Anonymous - 5-26-2005 at 07:35 PM
I am totally sick of this s--t! If you think this is not a war look again. Compare to how many Americans have died in Iraq to what is happening in TJ
and other parts of Mexico this is just not acceptable! Fox has got to get off his fat ass and stop passing the buck saying it new legislation of the
opposing party causing this to happen regarding the recent major crime wave. I think the military has got to step in and do something
positive..................................................JESSE - 5-26-2005 at 09:31 PM
Anybody that thinks Tijuana homicide cops are having a hard time is dead wrong, the cops here know very well who is killing who, where they live, and
where they hang out, they are just too chicken chit to arrest them, or on the payroll.
If i was in charge, i would create a Mexican Police force with the help of the U.S., i would pick military men, married, with families, i would
arrange for them to have their families live in the U.S. side under the protection of the U.S. goverment, i would then pay them well, secure the
safety of their families, and promiss to arrange legal imigration after their years of service are over under the witness protection program.
Imagine a force of 100 specially trained, clean, honest, and professional cops with no fear of the cartels.Dave - 5-26-2005 at 10:03 PM
I'm not sure that even that could work. I believe that ther Mafia is in bed with even the highest officials in Mexico. Who isn't taking money?
