Elite Police Unit Will Fight Crime Along Border

Members of an elite San Diego police unit whose officers carry submachine guns as standard weaponry will soon be posted along the U.S.-Mexico border zone in an effort to cut down on crime against immigrants, authorities say.

Deputy Police Chief Manuel Guaderrama declined to say what kinds of weapons would be carried by officers newly assigned to the border strip. But Guaderrama and the lieutenant in charge of the squad confirmed that members were routinely issued automatic arms, which allow repeated firing of bullets with a single pull of the trigger.

“We carry submachine guns in the normal course of our duties,” said Lt. Larry Moratto, chief of the police Special Response Team, some of whose 15 members are to be posted to patrol duties near the international line.

Pressed on the issue of the officers’ planned firepower along the border, Chief Guaderrama said he could not confirm or deny that the lawmen will be carrying automatic weapons. “If they were carrying BB guns, I couldn’t tell you,” said Guaderrama, who cited concerns about revealing police tactics.

Among the current duties of the Special Response Team is the coordination of training for the 100 or so city lawmen who are designated as Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, officers, who frequently are called in hostage and other high-risk situations.

The bolstered police vigilance along the rugged border terrain should be in place by early next week, Guaderrama said.

The strategy was immediately condemned by Roberto Martinez, a longtime Latino rights advocate in San Diego, who characterized the planned beefed-up police presence as part of a general “militarization” of the border strip.

“They’re basically bringing in a specialist team that’s trained to kill,” said Martinez, border representative for the American Friends Service Committee, social action arm of the Quaker Church. “These guys are going to be like commandos. . . . I don’t see that as a solution.”

But Guaderrama said the highly trained special response officers are ideal for the border duties.

“They know what to do when we have to contain a situation immediately,” said Guaderrama, who added that team officers had been spending time along the border in recent days, familiarizing themselves with the terrain.

For more than a decade, the border has posed an intractable challenge for San Diego authorities.

Robbers long have frequented the area, seeking easy prey among the hundreds of migrants who attempt to enter the United States clandestinely each day. A hilly 4-mile strip to the west of the port of entry at San Ysidro now is considered the most hazardous stretch of international boundary.

For years, rights activists have criticized law-enforcement shootings of suspected thieves along the border in San Diego, particularly during the existence of a unique joint squad composed of police officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents. That team shot 44 suspects during its five years, killing 18, before it was disbanded in January 1989 after allegations that lawmen wrongly killed two Mexican men.

Members of that unit did not carry automatic weapons on patrol. U.S. Border Patrol agents also are not issued automatic arms, although they have access to military-issue M-16 rifles for special situations.

In seeking to reduce area crime, police authorities say they are also considering a revival of the specialized anti-crime team involving police and Border Patrol officers. Border Patrol officials say they have yet to study the matter.

Deputy Chief Guaderrama declined to say how many new officers would be assigned to the border duty, although he acknowledged that the manpower of the existing, six-officer Border Crime Intervention Unit would probably be at least doubled. All of the reinforcements will work as part of that unit, which has been assigned to the the border since last year.

The new officers will be drawn from the 15 men now assigned to the Special Response Team, a 5-year-old squad that trains SWAT officers and specializes in a wide range of high-risk assignments, including sensitive hostage situations, forced entries and the protection of dignitaries.

The beefed-up border police unit will conduct patrols in vehicles and on foot in the border zone as needed, Guaderrama said.

“We plan to be very flexible,” he said. “We’ll do as the circumstances dictate. As far as we’re concerned, there’s not going to be a no-man’s-land down there.”

The planned posting of more offices along the border is the fulfillment of a pledge made last week by San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen, who vowed to boost enforcement in the wake of what he characterized as rising violence against migrants in the canyons, hillsides, flatlands and swampy expanses of the heavily trafficked strip. Thieves are suspected in the murders of six migrants in the border area thus far this year; there were five homicides in the zone during all of 1989.

In public comments, Burgreen starkly acknowledged that a bolstering of forces along the border probably would lead to more police shootings. That is the price to be paid, he suggested, to reduce violence against migrants--a theme that was echoed by his deputy.

“If the bandits out there get hurt, so be it,” Guaderrama said. “Our responsibility is to protect the innocent.”