Al G - 2-6-2008 at 09:07 AM
Tue Feb 5, 2008 9:36 am (PST)
Chris Hawley and Sergio Solache
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Feb. 5, 2008
MEXICO CITY - Poorly trained, badly paid and vulnerable to corruption, Mexico's legions of
local police are increasingly caught in the crossfire as the Mexican government embarks
on a crackdown on drug smugglers.
Dozens of municipal police have been killed in recent months in apparent drug hits, and
several others, including the intelligence chief of Mexico City's Police Department, are
under investigation, suspected of links to smugglers.
Last month, the Mexican government announced it was scrutinizing police commanders
nationwide, and the Mexican army said it was disarming 300 police along the Texas
border while prosecutors investigated them.
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"We are evaluating police chiefs of all three levels of government (federal, state and local) .
. . to purge our police forces of bad elements and criminals who have infiltrated them,"
Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro García Luna said during a federal law-enforcement
meeting last month.
The arrests and attacks have highlighted both the danger and temptation faced by
Mexico's 317,000 local and state police officers, said Rep. Juan Francisco Rivera Bedoya,
chairman of the public-safety committee in Mexico's lower house of Congress.
"The ones who are in the eye of the hurricane are the municipal police," Rivera said. "The
gangs threaten to kill their children and wives if they don't cooperate. Many decide to just
quit."
In January alone, at least nine city and state police officers were gunned down in apparent
drug hits. An additional 11 were arrested on charges of working with drug smugglers,
including one charged with battling fellow police officers during a fierce gunfight in
Tijuana on Jan. 17.
The surge in cases involving local police is part of a flurry of developments in a 1-year-
old government offensive against Mexico's drug cartels.
'They're all corrupt'
As Mexican troops and federal police rack up victories, the cartels are lashing out at local
police who are easier targets, said Luis de la Barreda, director of the Citizens' Institute for
Studies on Insecurity, a Mexico City think tank.
"The local police are very unprotected. Sometimes, they don't have adequate weapons or
vehicles to confront these drug traffickers," Barreda said. "They're much more vulnerable
than the federal police."
Local police in Mexico are also more susceptible to corruption because of low pay and
poor morale, said Luis Villalobos García, a researcher with the Institute for Security and
Democracy in Mexico City.
"The expectations that police have about their professional development are so limited,
that if their family has money problems, drug-trafficking can become a very attractive way
out," Villalobos said.
Among Mexicans, the recent arrests of local police have reinforced a general distrust of
law enforcement.
"It doesn't surprise me at all. They're all corrupt," Hugo López Piña said as he sipped a beer
outside his home in the Barrio del Niño Jesús, a working-class neighborhood about one
mile from the site of the Jan. 22 raids.
A few streets over, Mexico City police Officer Aurelio Méndez watched over the
neighborhood from an elevated police box.
"The sad thing is, if I were killed tonight, people would say I was involved in something
(criminal) and it was a settling of accounts," Méndez said. "There's a lack of confidence
that dates from long ago."
Low pay doesn't help
Police officers' low pay makes them susceptible to bribes ranging from mordidas, or
"bites," paid by motorists to get out of traffic tickets to kickbacks from drug smugglers
moving their cargo through town, said Adalberto Santana, a historian at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico and author of a book about drug-smuggling in Latin
America.
A police officer in the northern city of Chihuahua earns an average salary of $650 a
month, according to the state government.
In Mexico City, a beat cop is paid $700 a month, the city government says.
Many officers are "auxiliary" or "bank and industrial police" whose main job is to guard
high-risk private businesses. Many work exhausting 24-hour shifts, one day on, one day
off.
College degrees are rarely required, and most auxiliary police get only a few weeks of
academy training, Villalobos said.
Updating the system
To professionalize the police, García Luna, the federal public-safety secretary, has
proposed creating a national standard for recruiting and training officers.
The United States has also pledged millions of dollars for police training as part of a
proposed $1.4 billion anti-drug aid package.
Mexican lawmakers are also working on a bill to reform the court system, a bureaucracy
that is so slow and secretive that many Mexicans prefer to pay bribes to avoid it. The same
bill would set up a certification system to make sure police are trained in investigative
measures.
The Mexico City government also has launched a new transit law allowing police to issue
more traffic tickets instead of impounding cars. Avoiding the impound yard is one of the
top reasons Mexicans pay bribes, according to Transparency International.
Still, Barreda said it could take years to weed out bad police officers, prepare the
remaining ones to fight smugglers and improve the police's reputation among the public.
"We need a good process of selection, adequate salaries and a way to give them
incentives, not just material but also spiritual: recognizing them when they are good police
officers," he said.