Burgreen Vows Police Beef-Up Along Border : Crime: Violence against illegal crossers prompts promise of more patrols, but some activists worry that the move may aggravate the perils.

Alarmed by rising violence against undocumented immigrants, San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen said Wednesday that patrols will be stepped up in the dangerous border strip, and that officers may once again be posted to hazardous night duty in the rugged terrain favored by clandestine border crossers.

Burgreen, in comments made before a group of Tijuana journalists and during a telephone interview, also said that police hope to coordinate border operations with Mexican authorities. He said police are also contemplating the revival of a controversial anti-crime squad consisting of San Diego officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents.

“That area is increasingly becoming violent, and I feel that steps must be taken to make the area safe,” said Burgreen. He gave no timetable for the police beef-up, although he indicated it will be soon.

“That’s going to involve putting more officers in the canyons, having more activities at night and having more officers involved in dangerous shooting situations,” he said.

Crime against clandestine border crossers has long been a thorny issue for San Diego police, who say the problem, with its international ramifications, represents a law enforcement dilemma unique in the nation. The people being victimized--among the thousands who enter San Diego each day from Tijuana without visas--are themselves lawbreakers.

In recent months, Burgreen said, the lawlessness of the canyon-riddled border strip has reached a new high, as criminals emboldened by the lack of police presence have had almost free reign to terrorize migrants.

A six-person special police unit now patrols the area, but Burgreen said the squad is a high-profile outfit that mostly attempts to deter crime by being visible and to investigate wrongdoing in the aftermath of specific criminal activity. Police are contemplating a more “pro-active” squad that would actively seek out lawbreakers and conduct more night patrols.

“When our cops are in the canyons, the crooks go away,” Burgreen asserted.

He acknowledged that there is a “high likelihood” that more police officers deployed in the border zone will get into shoot-outs with suspected thieves, and that rights activists and others will criticize the department’s actions. But the chief said it is necessary to increase patrols.

“People are going to get get shot, maybe even killed,” Burgreen said, explaining that the only question is who the victims will be. “Should it be border bandits getting shot and killed, or innocent people getting shot and killed by border bandits?”

Burgreen did rule out as too dangerous the reintroduction of an undercover anti-crime squad, similar to the San Diego police outfit whose exploits from 1976 to 1978 were chronicled by Joseph Wambaugh in his book Lines and Shadows . Such undercover work, in which officers pose as border crossers, is too hazardous, Burgreen said.

In 1990, statistics show, seven undocumented people have been slain in the border zone, all killed in the heavily trafficked rugged area to the west of the giant port of entry at San Ysidro. There were only five such killings in all of 1989, police say.

In the most recent cases, the bodies of two men, both shooting victims, were found June 6 in an open area to the southwest of the intersection of Monument and Dairy Mart roads in San Diego.

Thieves are blamed for most of the crime.

In recent weeks, smugglers, vendors and undocumented border crossers who regularly work in the border strip have stated in interviews that they would favor a greater San Diego police presence in the zone. Fear of assaults by bajadores, as the thieves are widely known, is a prevalent emotion these days among undocumented border crossers.

However, immigrant rights activists have expressed wariness of a beefed-up police presence along the border. They fear that officers may shoot more innocent people than thieves will.

“There has to be more protection for the migrants, but having the police there shooting people may only exacerbate the situation,” said Roberto Martinez, a San Diego activist affiliated with a Quaker rights group. He said his group and others are seeking alternatives, though none have emerged.

The idea of a revived joint effort involving the police and Border Patrol is particularly troubling to Martinez and other critics. The former squad, known as the Border Crime Prevention Unit, shot 44 suspects during its five-year existence, killing 18. The outfit was disbanded in January, 1989, after shooting and killing four suspects during a two-week period. All of those killed were thieves who attempted to rob officers, mistaking them in the darkness for undocumented border crossers, according to police accounts.

Chief Burgreen said he will discuss the idea of a new joint squad with Gustavo de la Vina, the new chief Border Patrol agent in San Diego, who is scheduled to take office Monday.

Burgreen also said that he favors more joint efforts with Mexican police. Such operations have been employed before in the border zone, but the tactics have raised considerable opposition in Mexico, where cooperation was widely viewed as abetting the perceived anti-immigrant agenda of U.S. authorities.