 | ROSE PALMISANO/JOURNAL Former Juarez police officer Natividad Perez Trejo says he arrested police officials conducting drug deals at this picadero or "shooting gallery." Trejo has filed formal complaints alleging widespread corruption of police in Juarez. |
Ineffective policing efforts and corruption in the ranks have caused a flare of drug-related violence in Mexico
By Rene Romo
Journal Southern Bureau
CIUDAD JUAREZ -- A thick plume of black smoke shot into the sky as Mexican federal officials set ablaze 12 tons of marijuana, part of the spoils of last year's battles against drug traffickers.
Federal police, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Drugs? No thanks. I prefer to live," spent the January morning breaking up dried-out marijuana bricks, some as large as bales of hay. They worked their destruction by hand, with box cutters and axes, before soaking the mound with gasoline.
But Mexico City federal police official Hernan Rivera, who ignited the bonfire in front of two dozen photographers and reporters, was tight-lipped about the relative success of Mexican policy. He declined to answer questions about how effective federal officials have been in apprehending illegal drugs shipped north to American consumers.
"This is not a media event," explained spokesman Danira Arrevallo. "This is an official burn."
But other federal, state and municipal officials acknowledged that interdiction efforts in Chihuahua are not very effective -- and that they are compromised by corruption within police.
"They are making a big show of it," said former Juarez city police officer Natividad Perez Trejo, who made local headlines earlier this year when he filed formal complaints alleging widespread corruption among high-ranking police officials.
Juarez officials say drug-related criminal and social problems have reached a serious state here in the last year.
Heroin use has ballooned, with sales from the doorways of as many as 600 shooting galleries, or picaderos, where people illegally sell and use drugs in the sprawling industrial city of 1.8 million people. In the last two years, there have been 140 fatal drug overdoses.
According to state and federal police, as many as 400 street gangs vie for control of parts of the city, with at least 40 of them tied to Amado Carrillo-Fuentes, head of the Juarez drug cartel which is considered the most powerful of the Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
In 1996, state police reported 253 homicides throughout the city, down from 295 in 1995. At least 26 were drug-related -- some victims were found with a telltale bullet through the head -- and many others were killed in gang fights over drug territory, police said.
Police claim they "cleared" one-third of the homicide cases, but critics say only a few cases resulted in arrests and convictions. State Judicial Police, who are responsible for investigating homicides, consider a case cleared when they believe they know the identity of the perpetrator -- not when an arrest is made.
One case believed to be drug-related involved the November 1994 slayings of Refugio Ruvalcava, former chief of the Chihuahua State Judicial Police, and his two sons, Alberto, 24, and Cesar, 21. Their bodies were found stuffed in the trunk of a Honda sedan, which had been abandoned in a southbound lane of El Paso's Bridge of the Americas. The victims' bodies all bore signs of attempted strangulation, and all three had been stabbed.
El Paso police conducted a partial investigation, saying the murders were committed in Juarez. The car's driver had been directed to pull over for a U.S. Customs inspection while heading into El Paso from Juarez, but instead made a U-turn and drove back toward the Mexican side, El Paso police said. The driver then jumped out of the car and fled back toward Mexico.
Mexican State Judicial Police, meanwhile, declined to investigate the slayings, saying they were committed on American soil. After all, said State Judicial Police spokesman Ernesto Garcia, the car was headed south from El Paso when it was abandoned and it had Texas plates.
A river of drugs
The burn on the southern outskirts of Juarez was billed as the destruction of most of the drugs seized by federal officials in the state of Chihuahua during 1996. Press liaisons originally said they planned to burn 23 pounds of heroin, along with a truckload of marijuana and 12 pounds of cocaine.
Other burns took place in the capital city of Chihuahua and the town of Hidalgo de Parral.
But in the end, a spokesman said the Juarez bonfire only contained 0.6 grams of heroin. Officials had not obtained authorization to burn more heroin -- said to be stored in police warehouses.
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 ROSE PALMISANO/JOURNAL |
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| Federal police in Juarez torch 12 tons of marijuana seized last year in the fight against drug traffickers. A federal official in Juarez said police are able to stop only about 10 percent of the stream of drugs heading to the United States. |
Last year, Mexican Federal Judicial Police seized a total of 39.6 pounds of heroin throughout the border state of Chihuahua. By comparison, during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, U.S. Customs agents in the West Texas/New Mexico sector seized 85 pounds, much of which is produced in poppy fields growing high in the Sierra Madre ranges in southern Chihuahua state.
In the tiny Columbus port-of-entry alone, 30 miles south of Deming, customs agents impounded 33 pounds of heroin in two seizures last March and April.
Juan Jose Tafoya, commander of the Juarez headquarters of the Federal Judicial Police, said Mexican authorities are only able to stop about 10 percent of the drugs crossing the border.
Police spokesman Arrevallo said up to 80 percent of their drug seizures occur at checkpoints on main north-south highways from the interior. And while Carrillo-Fuentes is known as the "Lord of the skies" because of his reported use of airplanes to haul cocaine, very little is captured at airports.
At one federal checkpoint 44 kilometers south of Juarez on the Pan-American Highway, agents rapped their knuckles against the walls of trucks, checked under the bodies of cars, let air escape from tires and thrust metal rods into gas tanks as they searched for contraband.
The agents also use drug-sniffing dogs. Mexican authorities do not have the expensive X-ray machines capable of scanning an entire truck.
And Mexican federal police lack the sophisticated fiber-optic cameras American customs agents use to scan the interiors of gas tanks and other hidden compartments.
"If we had them, it would be good," Tafoya said, "but we Mexicans are very resourceful."
American customs agents have their own problems.
They can fully inspect only a fraction of the 500,000 trucks crossing international bridges into El Paso and New Mexico each year.
Huge amounts of illegal drugs also are being transported by vehicles or human "mules," who cross the 2,000-mile border, which is marked mostly by a few strands of barb wire.
Border Patrol agents in West Texas and New Mexico are seizing almost as much cocaine -- 3,450 pounds last year -- as are customs agents at official checkpoints.
Fifteen-year Border Patrol veteran David Ward, assistant agent in charge of the Santa Teresa station, said drug interdiction has become the agency's "unannounced" priority.
Even so, the border is poorly manned, Ward said. For instance, only eight agents cover the 65-mile stretch from Sunland Park to the midpoint to Columbus during any eight-hour shift.
Rooting out corruption
Distrust of Mexican law enforcement is rampant in Juarez.
Judith Gallarza, a spokeswoman for the private Human Rights Committee, said her group received more than 300 complaints in 1996 from city residents alleging police demanded money after dubious arrests.
A former Juarez drug dealer, Santiago Duran, said municipal and state police regularly demand fees in exchange for permission to sell heroin on the streets. The dealer, who was receiving treatment for his own heroin addiction in a Juarez clinic when interviewed, said he paid up to 10 city police officers $10 a day to be allowed to work on a city corner.
Each month, he said, state police would arrive for a $1,000 payoff.
"If you give them la cuota (payoff), they'll let you sell," said the dealer, whose arms were covered with abscesses from repeated heroin use.
"Some police beat up or kill dealers if they don't pay."
Drug dealing is a lucrative business, the dealer said. An ounce of heroin purchased for $70 in a central Mexico city like Guerrero or Michoacan would, after being cut and divided, reap $1,000 in street sales.
And Mexican police, who are paid low wages by American standards, are susceptible to temptation. Juarez city police are paid about $230 per month to start, while state police are paid about $400.
Asked if there are officers who take payoffs from dealers, State Judicial Police spokesman Garcia shrugged and said: "There is corruption all over the world."
Garcia argued that institutional corruption was "very common" until 1992, when the conservative PAN won the governor's office.
"We are good and we are bad," said federal police commander Tafoya when asked about corruption. "Maybe there are some people who are corrupt. The people who are involved are going to be very careful."
Juarez Mayor Ramon Galindo said he has tried to root out corrupt officers from the ranks of city police.
In December 1995, four city police were wounded and a paramedic killed in a suspected assassination attempt by three officers. And in February 1996, a gunfight exploded in front of municipal police headquarters when federales tried to prevent the arrest of a fellow officer by city police.
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 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS |
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| Brian Martin, canine enforcement officer of the U.S. Customs Service, works with his dog Homeboy at the Chamizal Bridge on the El Paso side. El Paso borders the Mexican city of Juarez, which has become the turf of Amado Carrillo-Fuentes, one of the top five drug traffickers in Mexico. |
Following the scandals and simmering allegations, officials administered drug tests to about 300 of the city's 1,200 police officers. Thirty-five were fired for positive test results. At least 20 more officers were fired after a second round of tests.
"We could say about 10 percent (of police) are addicted to drugs. This is very dangerous," Galindo said.
"In the end, we are losing policemen faster than we can train them. If the police institution is so infested, just imagine the rest of society."
Juarez city councilman Jose Luis Rodriguez, a member of the two-year-old Ecologist Green Party (PVE), discounted the city's official efforts to stamp out corruption, saying selected officers are warned in advance of drug tests.
"It's a way of giving the public confidence, but not really to clean up the department," Rodriguez said. "They don't test all, just some."
Perez, the former Juarez city police officer, estimated that as many as half of all city police take bribes from drug dealers.
Perez, an 11-year veteran who headed a five-man unit aimed at shutting down "shooting" galleries, has filed formal complaints with the Federal Judicial Police alleging widespread misconduct within the city police force.
In one affidavit, Perez wrote that shooting gallery managers arrange bribes with patrol officers in certain city sectors to ensure street-level dealers can work with impunity.
"Said bribe can vary from 50 pesos up to $100 (U.S.), depending on the rank of the person receiving the money and also who is giving the bribe...," Perez wrote.
He said the payoffs are given daily.
While shutting down drug dens, Perez and his unit found suspected dealers in four cases carrying business cards from one high-ranking officer.
On the backs of the cards, signed by the officer, is a typed message: "Friend, I thank you in advance for the facilities you can offer (the card bearer)."
Perez, a lieutenant who received several commendations for his service, was fired in September after higher-ranking officers presented him with 39 complaints of abuse of office and robbery of suspects.
He filed his corruption complaint the next month.
Perez, who was never arrested, said the complaints were solicited from people he had arrested, including the head of a local gang.
He contends he was fired because he repeatedly forwarded reports of police misconduct to the police chief. He received death threats by phone after his accusations came to light.
The Federal Judicial Police are investigating Perez's complaint.
In a recent interview, police chief Jose Luis Reygadas questioned Perez's motives for making allegations public after being fired and suggested Perez was seeking revenge.
Mayor Galindo said reforming the police department would take time. "We are cleaning the ladder from the top to the bottom. I understand it's 50 years work. It's not going to take three years."