Police caught in cross hairs of Tijuana violence
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20061204-9...
Cartels are blamed in 12 officers' deaths
By Anna Cearley
December 4, 2006
TIJUANA – Flower vendor Baltazar Brito was conversing with two nuns near a park just south of the city's tourist strip when a pair of trucks trapped
two police cars.
He had a bad feeling, so he grabbed the nuns and pulled them to the ground behind his wooden stand. Seconds later, men with assault-style weapons
started shooting at the police.
The gunmen were so close that their spent bullet casings bounced off Brito's stand as the nuns prayed fervently.
The Nov. 9 shooting spared the trio, but an officer who tried to help his colleagues was wounded and died a day later. A fourth officer escaped the
shooters, but was abducted and killed the next day.
Despite his close call, the 52-year-old Brito said he wasn't too worried.
“The problems aren't with me,” he said a week after the attack. “It's between them.”
Since September, Tijuana has seen a spate of abductions, gunbattles and dumped corpses.
Even so, the city would have to record more than 65 killings in December to top last year's toll of 396 homicides. Through November, the dead numbered
about 328, according to the Baja California Attorney General's Office.
What makes the recent carnage stand out – creating a perception that lawlessness is rising – is who is being targeted, how they are being killed, and
the threat to ordinary residents caught up in the violence.
Twelve law enforcement officers have been killed since September, prompting speculation that some of these homicides are the result of drug gangs
competing over police loyalties. City officials attribute the deaths to vengeful neighborhood drug traffickers responding to crime-fighting efforts.
Two officers were ambushed and killed Tuesday. A secretary who was with them also died.
In September, at Mi Chante restaurant, a waitress and a U.S. citizen were gunned down when assailants opened fire on police. During the attack near
Brito's stand, a woman and a taxi driver were slightly wounded.
Observers note that the most recent violence began after U.S. authorities arrested Francisco Arellano Félix in August. His family's cartel has
dominated drug trafficking in the region for more than a decade.
Several top Arellano Félix leaders have been arrested since 2000, and it's not unusual to see violence increase immediately afterward, but this latest
rash of killings has been particularly notable.
“There's a war going on,” said Victor Clark, director of the Tijuana-based Binational Center for Human Rights.
September's homicide toll came to 44, the highest monthly total this year. It's impossible to say how many of the killings are directly linked to drug
trafficking.
Authorities estimate that 20 percent to 30 percent of the killings are the work of organized crime. One victim, a former state investigator, was found
with his severed index finger dangling from a crude wire necklace. A note labeled him a “dedo,” or “finger,” slang for a snitch.
Acknowledging the instability, Baja California's state congress voted last month to request that a military general take charge of the array of law
enforcement agencies in the region. The idea hasn't been embraced by state law enforcement authorities.
Meanwhile, a state advisory committee on public security tapped into public concern by leading an unprecedented 16-day march against violence in
October and November.
Drug-trafficking experts note that in the world of organized crime, a certain amount of violence is inevitable, and that has kept the city's monthly
homicide rate ranging from 20 to 57 in recent years.
The most notable wave of violence was in the mid-1990s when the Arellanos were consolidating their power, linking up with some police groups and
creating a culture of silence by gunning down reform-minded officers.
The violence spiked again in late 1999 and early 2000. That's when a rival cartel, believed to be headed by Ismael Zambada García, attempted to
supplant the Arellanos by recruiting city police officers to its side and going on a killing spree until some members of Zambada's group were
arrested.
At that time, the official explanation for why the city's police chief, Alfredo de la Torre Márquez, was gunned down was that he had refused a bribe
from Zambada's group. De la Torre's possible connection to the Arellanos was never acknowledged by Mexican authorities, although U.S. officials
privately told the Union-Tribune that was the case.
Clark said his sources tell him some of the current problems stem from shifts among the approximately 20 Arellano cells in Tijuana. They are operating
more independently, he said.
In the past, according to Clark, the cartel was more vertically structured. Arrangements with police recruited to aid the cartel were done through a
designated Arellano liaison. Now there is confusion about who to deal with.
Complicating matters, Zambada's group and other rival cartels are said to be offering money to police, further splintering loyalties within police
agencies.
The situation has had an effect on local drug traffickers.
A person involved in moving drugs into the United States, who asked not to be named because of the potential repercussions, said it's common to get a
visit – and demand for payment – from an Arellano representative for being allowed to operate in Tijuana. The gang has an extensive spy network.
Arellano confederates typically don't identify themselves, but it's generally assumed who they are. Now, the trafficker said, there's uncertainty.
“You don't know if you are doing business with someone who is an enemy” of the Arellanos, he said.
Though insiders say the Arellanos are still the dominant group in Tijuana, an eventual shift in the power base isn't unimaginable. In 2004, Mexican
federal authorities announced that a longtime suspected Arellano gang member, Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, now in custody, had apparently switched sides
to work with Zambada's drug group in Mexicali.
Meanwhile, the power of drug groups has created a parallel universe in which citizens, inured to the impact of shootouts and dumped bodies, have
formed a curious set of references.
When Tijuana's mayor, Jorge Hank Rhon, was asked by a Mexican television reporter about the crime problem shortly after the attack near Brito's stand,
Hank replied: “We have had four or five days of peace.”
People want things to change, Brito said, but they are scared, and that fear hampers authorities in their quest to go after criminals.
“The federal attorney general said that if he had a magic wand then things would change,” Brito said. “And then they ask the community to help by
saying 'here's a phone number, and if you see anything bad, you call and we will go' . . . even though it's a known fact that if someone calls, there
will be repercussions.”
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Tijuana police killings
Nov. 28: City police Officers Gerardo Santiago Prado, a district chief, and Héctor Javier Inzunsa Amaya were gunned down in their patrol car.
Nov. 10: City police Officer Sergio Adalberto Acosta Molleda died a day after coming to the aid of officers attacked by gunmen on Fundadores
Boulevard.
Nov. 10: The corpse of city police Officer Héctor Gaxiola, a district chief, was found with numerous bullet wounds a day after he survived the Nov. 9
gunbattle on Fundadores Boulevard.
Nov. 2: City police Officer Antonio Cavada Cuevas, 38, was found seriously injured inside a car around midnight and died at a hospital.
Oct. 26: City police Officer Fernando Morales JuÁrez, 28, was found dead inside a car after being shot numerous times.
Oct. 24: Gunmen grabbed city police Officer Alvaro Abraham Alvarez Alvarado, 24, from his home, took him outside and killed him.
Sept. 21: Arturo Rivas Vaca, an assistant city police director, was gunned down in his patrol car.
Sept. 16: The body of Noe Gaxiola Gastélum, an investigator with the Federal Investigations Agency, was found inside a car trunk, with his police
credential in his mouth. He was one of three corpses in the car.
Sept. 14: Federal Preventive Police Officer Francisco Vallejo FernÁndez, 40, was shot to death when gunmen ambushed a group of law enforcement
officers eating at a diner.
Sept. 3: The bodies of State Preventive Police Officers Edgar Casillas Escoto, 29, and Carlo SÁnchez Arenas, 31, were found dumped.
SOURCES: Baja California Attorney General's Office and Tijuana City Police
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