Violent Nature of Border Crime Unit Draws Critics’ Fire

Five years ago, the San Diego Police Department and the U.S. Border Patrol launched a joint initiative unique in the United States: the Border Crime Prevention Unit, a nighttime foot patrol designed to deter robberies and assaults against the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who enter the United States from Tijuana each year.

The new anti-crime squad, authorities vowed, would be safer than its swaggering predecessor--an undercover outfit of San Diego policemen whose exploits in and out of the hazardous border canyons during 1976-78 were chronicled by cop-turned-author Joseph Wambaugh in “Lines and Shadows.”

There was a key difference in concept: This patrol would be a high-profile, uniformed force that would eschew the provocative tactics of the former plainclothes unit, whose members attempted to lure robbers by dressing and behaving like undocumented border-crossers.

“We were looking for a shoot-out every night,” said San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen, who was a deputy chief when the decision was made to disband the former squad.

But an examination of the current squad’s five-year record by The Times indicates that the unit has become exactly what it was never supposed to be: an operation in which the police themselves are the primary targets of crime.

More Violent Than Predecessor

In every fatal-shooting incident involving the unit, authorities say, the suspects attempted to assault the officers, apparently mistaking them in the darkness for undocumented border-crossers whom they intended to rob. In most cases, according to authorities, officers opened fire before they had an opportunity to identify themselves as lawmen.

The existing squad has amassed a much more violent record than its predecessor. In five years, the dozen or so lawmen assigned to the unit at a given time have shot 44 suspects, 18 of whom have died--a fatal-shooting total greater than that of the entire, 1,700-member San Diego Police Department during the same period. (The previous squad killed two

suspects during its 18-month life.)

Most suspects arrested by the squad are caught after attempting to assault the officers--not for attacking other aliens. Of the 48 people arrested last year, “almost all of them were arrested for trying to rob the border unit,” Burgreen said.

Now, in the wake of a particularly bloody period--during a recent two-week stretch, members of the unit shot and killed four robbery suspects--some critics have called for dissolving the unit.

“I think it’s an open question as to who’s commiting the most crime--law enforcement or the bandits,” said Roberto Martinez, a longtime activist who works for the American Friends Service Committee, the social action arm of the Quaker church.

Burgreen and other top law enforcement officials remain solidly in favor of the unit’s work and say it will continue its dangerous mission in the border canyons.

“Morally,” Burgreen said, “there’s no question that we’re doing the right thing.”

Robert Gilson, assistant chief Border Patrol agent, added, “From the humanitarian point of view, we have to do it.”

Police and Border Patrol officials insist that the uniformed outfit operates in a significantly different way than the earlier squad.

“The question is, were we (previously) asking to get into shoot-outs rather than prevent them?” Burgreen asked during a recent interview. “What we’re trying to do now is to prevent them and send those casual bandits packing back to Mexico. . . . And the only ones that remain are those extremely brazen bandits who don’t even check to see that they’re robbing a cop. . . . I can honestly say we’re not putting decoys out there.”

More Thieves in Bushes

Authorities say the existing squad shoots more suspects than its predecessor for a logical reason: With Mexico’s economy in a shambles, more people are crossing the border now than were a decade ago. Consequently, more robbers lurk in the canyons.

Manny Lopez, the ex-San Diego police sergeant who supervised the former, plainclothes unit, contends that the current squad’s uniformed status may have unwittingly triggered more violence. Robbers and officers may open fire more quickly, he maintains, as the stakes are clearly much higher.

“When you’re undercover, you have that extra second of hesitation; the bandit doesn’t know who you are or that you’re armed. It gives you an advantage,” said Lopez, now a private investigator in San Diego. “I know this: I wouldn’t go out there in uniform. No way.”

In any case, the unit’s propensity to be attacked by thieves seeking to rob uniformed officers is not shared by the dozens of regular, uniformed Border Patrol agents who also man the canyons each evening--on foot, in vehicles and on horseback. The reason, said Border Patrol assistant chief Gilson, is that regular uniformed Border Patrol agents stay close to their vehicles, even when on foot, and are therefore more easily identifiable as law enforcement officers.

The border anti-crime squad’s current configuration may have reduced the danger to officers: Not a single lawman serving in the unit has been shot since May, 1985, when Border Patrol Agent Fred Stevens took five bullets. Three lawmen, all Border Patrol agents, have been hit during the unit’s five-year history; all three recovered. During the 18-month life of the previous outfit, three officers were also shot, but never by robbers: Two were shot by other unit members, the third by a Tijuana policeman.

The current controversy surrounding the squad relates not to the danger faced by officers, but rather to the threat to others traversing the canyons.

In the most recent shooting, on Jan. 4, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun a preliminary inquiry into allegations that two suspects were shot and killed while handcuffed and fleeing back to Mexico. Police say the men were shot when they attempted to assault the lawmen.

The allegations prompted the Mexican Embassy in Washington to send a note to the State Department questioning the “disproportionate” use of force--the dead men were armed with screwdrivers and knives, the officers with semi-automatic pistols and a shotgun. A survivor of the Jan. 4 shooting, like a number of others who have recovered from such confrontations, has maintained that he was a smuggler shot without provocation by patrol officers, who he first assumed were Central American migrants.

The San Diego County district attorney’s office, which reviews all law enforcement shootings, has ruled that the officers were justified in using deadly force in each of the fatal shootings involving the unit that it has investigated. The most recent two cases, involving four deaths, are pending.

The squad has been largely inactive since Jan. 4--officials say they have been reviewing procedures since the latest shooting--but the officers are expected to be redeployed within a few weeks.

Critics object to the unit’s return, maintaining that the many uniformed Border Patrol officers deployed at the border should be sufficient deterrent to crime. “If these were white Americans getting shot, there wouldn’t be any question of pulling the unit out,” said Martinez, the rights advocate. “There would have been an outcry a long time ago.”

The eight or so miles of border separating San Diego and Tijuana is a unique strip along the 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Nowhere else do so many people attempt to enter the United States through such rugged terrain. It is the single largest gateway for the job markets of California and elsewhere in the United States. Each evening, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of border-crossers mass just inside U. S. territory, awaiting the cover of darkness to attempt entry beyond the narrow border strip.

With so much traffic, a very specialized economy has evolved in the rugged belt of U. S. territory. At principal staging areas, vendors hawk food and clothing. Marijuana, booze and other vices are widely available. Smugglers flaunt their services.

In the midst of it all, enterprising thieves seek easy pickings from the border-crossers, many of whom carry their life savings. The migrants are universally referred to as pollos (chickens), a characterization rooted in their large numbers, their defenseless state and their generally docile behavior.

Degree of Danger Debatable

That the canyons are dangerous places at night is undisputed. The extent of that hazard, however, is a source of considerable debate: San Diego Police Cmdr. Cal Krosch says it is the most dangerous police beat in the United States, like “a combat zone in Vietnam or Korea or anyplace else.”

Others downplay the combat analogy. “I don’t think it’s any more dangerous than any other kind of police work,” said Sgt. Joseph T. Wood, who headed a border team last year and is in line to command the next group that goes into the canyons. “I don’t want my men to have it in their minds that it is a war zone, like Vietnam, because I don’t think it is,” said Wood, who stressed that he was expressing his personal opinion.

Statistics regarding border violence are inconclusive. Everyone agrees that the majority of crimes--robberies, rapes, assaults--go unreported, as undocumented people are hesitant to run to authorities. Only 40 robberies were reported in the border strip during 1988, police said.

The number of reported robberies has, in fact, declined sharply since 1986, when 170 were recorded. Authorities cite the decline as an indication of the unit’s effectiveness. But that decrease corresponds with what U. S. officials say is a decline in the number of illegal border-crossers since the passage of revised immigration laws.

Murder Figure Reliable

The only reliable crime figure from the canyons, Burgreen suggests, is for murder. However, homicide figures from the canyons have fluctuated without any discernible pattern since 1984, when the current unit was first deployed. There was one homicide in 1984, but a total of nine--believed to be a record--in 1985. There were six in 1986, two in 1987, and five in 1988. (Unit officers killed six suspects in 1988, the highest number ever.) A number of geographically smaller San Diego police beats recorded more than five homicides in 1988. Citywide, there were a record 144 homicides in 1988.

Authorities say the unit’s presence has reduced the threat.

“I’m convinced, no question, that we are deterring violence in the canyons, and we’re keeping innocent people from being victimized and murdered,” Burgreen said. “If we weren’t in the canyons patroling, I shudder to think how many (victims) we would have found.”

On Monday, The Times takes a look at Luis Fernandez Bonilla, who was shot by the unit and won a jury’s sympathy.