Baja State Police Accused of Abuses : Human rights: Report cites widespread corruption and torture. Officials say reforms are proceeding and that claims are exaggerated.

Despite efforts at reform, Baja California state police continue to torture suspects and engage in corruption such as selling police credentials to criminals who function as unofficial enforcers, human rights advocates charged Friday.

Victor Clark Alfaro, an internationally known human rights activist, said his 15-month inquiry shows that corruption and abuse are tolerated at the highest levels of the border state’s government.

“It would be naive to suggest that the top administration is unaware of details of the corrupt structure that permeates the administration and enforcement of justice,” said Clark, director of the independently funded Bi-National Center for Human Rights.

The report describes 57 cases of alleged torture by state police officers last year and in 1991, providing dates, places and the names of victims and suspected abusive officers.

In response, state officials said the Administration of Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel, whose reform platform won him Mexico’s first opposition governorship in 1989, has fired officers, raised officers’ pay and taken other steps to reduce entrenched problems in the state judicial police. The force investigates major crimes such as homicide and robbery.

Ruffo has acknowledged that illicit conduct persists--such as the use of madrinas, auxiliary officers who often have criminal records, acting as street enforcers and extortionists for official investigators. But officials described Clark’s allegations of torture and top-level misconduct as exaggerations.

“These practices have been greatly diminished,” said Enrique Gallaga Esparza, deputy state attorney general. “There must still be cases, but they are isolated. . . . If this report documents specific cases, they will be investigated.”

Clark’s previous work has earned the support of Amnesty International and other groups, while angering officialdom. Last year, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission publicly questioned the veracity of his report alleging systematic police torture of juveniles.

The newest report is based on interviews with unidentified law enforcement officials and victims, some of whom are still incarcerated. The alleged torture cases include victims who said they were immersed in water, shocked with electrical cables, beaten and stifled with plastic bags over their heads.

Abuse persists partly because the police force suffers from cronyism and high-level corruption, Clark said. He accused the chief bodyguard of Atty. Gen. Juan Francisco Franco Rios of selling police credentials for $8,000 apiece.

As evidence, Clark alleged that after Mexicali police arrested a known drug trafficker for firing a gun in public in November, the man displayed a credential that he said he had purchased from the bodyguard. The man was released after a phone call from Franco, Clark said.

Gallaga said he could not comment because he was unaware of the case.

Earlier this week, Ruffo said an ongoing reorganization of the state police will include the assignment of prosecutors to oversee individual police units and crack down on wayward officers.