On Hold Since Jan. 4 : Fate of Border Crime Squad Is Still Up in Air

Top San Diego police and U.S. Border Patrol officials met Wednesday and discussed the future of an embattled border anti-crime squad, but authorities said no decision had been made on the future of the unit.

Police Chief Bob Burgreen and Dale W. Cozart, chief Border Patrol agent in San Diego, both accompanied by top aides, discussed the issue and agreed to meet again next week to ponder the squad’s fate anew, said Police Capt. Dick Toneck, department spokesman.

“They’re looking at a whole series of new ways of doing business, or maybe going back to the old way,” said Toneck, who supervised the unit during the year he served as captain of the police southern division.

The unique law enforcement squad--known as the Border Crime Prevention Unit--has been largely on hold since Jan. 4, when Border Patrol officers assigned to the outfit shot and killed two Mexican men who, according to U.S. authorities, attacked the officers with screwdrivers and a knife. After the shootings, the Mexican government, citing what it considered an excessive use of force, requested a thorough investigation.

Claims Rejected

An attorney representing the families of the dead men then filed two $15-million claims against the patrol, contending that the pair were shot as they were running back to Mexico. U.S. officials, acknowledging that the men were shot in the back, said the shootings nonetheless appeared to be justified by the threat. Federal authorities have rejected the claim by the dead men’s families. The families’ attorney, Marco Lopez of San Diego, plans a civil suit.

In the midst of the controversy, U.S. authorities took the unit out of action, saying its methods were being re-evaluated. The squad, whose members have been assigned to other duties, has now been inactive for more than three months, the longest such break since the outfit was formed five years ago.

The unit, whose members patrol in uniform, is a successor to the undercover squad of San Diego police officers whose exploits during 1976-78 were chronicled by author Joseph Wambaugh in the book “Lines and Shadows.” That outfit was disbanded in 1978, after several highly publicized shooting incidents, when then-Chief of Police William Kolender determined that the duty was too risky. After it was taken out of action in 1978, there was no border anti-crime squad until the current unit began patrolling the border in early 1984.

The furor surrounding the January shootings also prompted an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was probing possible civil rights violations. The inquiry has been completed and its results will soon be forwarded to the Justice Department in Washington to determine if any further legal action is warranted, said Gary Laturno, an FBI spokesman in San Diego. He declined further comment.

Unit in a Unique Position

The border unit is composed of about a dozen police officers and Border Patrol agents, all of whom volunteer for the assignments, working four-month shifts and patrolling the border area in the evenings. The squad is designed to cut down on crime against the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who enter San Diego from Mexico each year, often hiking through rough canyons or traversing the hazardous Tijuana River area, where many are victimized by thieves. The unit is in the unique position of defending people who are, by definition, lawbreakers.

However, the unit has amassed a record of violence that critics say is excessive. In its five years of existence, officers assigned to the squad have shot 44 suspects, 18 of whom have died, at least half shot from behind, many shot numerous times. The dozen or so lawmen assigned to the unit at a given time have killed more people during its five-year history than the entire San Diego police force, which is composed of more than 1,500 officers, during the same period.

In each fatal-shooting case, the uniformed officers said they were attacked in the border darkness, provoking their response. U.S. authorities have denied that the officers deliberately act as decoys--the provocative operating method of the previous border unit that was eventually disbanded.

Roberto Martinez, representing the American Friends Service Committee, social action arm of the Quaker Church, has called for the disbanding of the squad, which he maintains is too violent and has shot too many innocent victims. But authorities in San Diego, maintaining that each person killed was indeed a violent thief, have said they plan to redeploy the unit, although how it will eventually be constituted remains unknown.

“We’re trying to make it more safe and more efficient for the agents out there,” said Norbert Gomez, a Border Patrol spokesman.