LAW ENFORCEMENT : Cop’s Alleged Role in Heist May Be Last Straw in Salvador : National Police have so far escaped mandated dissolution.

It became clear that last month’s daring midmorning bank robbery would become an unusually dicey case when police officers watching a videotape of the assault recognized the ringleader as one of their own.

In fact, authorities now say the robbery, in which five people were killed, was directed by a National Police lieutenant who was also a commander of that agency’s division of investigations.

The participation of a senior police officer in such a brazen crime has exploded into a major challenge for the 5-week-old government of President Armando Calderon Sol. Far from an isolated act, the crime laid bare the corruption within a police force that Calderon Sol had taken great pains to defend. And it exposed an unsavory phenomenon that the government never wanted to admit: the existence of organized crime in state institutions.

“It is very surprising to see the frankness with which (officials) are now talking about organized crime and the need to dismantle it regardless of who might fall,” said Roman Catholic Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez.

“The attitude of the new president before such corruption and impunity at the highest levels of government will be crucial for the nation’s future.”

The National Police is a militarized security force associated with right-wing death squads and human rights abuses during the civil war decade of the 1980s. It was to be disbanded under terms of U.N.-brokered peace accords that ended the war in 1992, and replaced by a professional, nonpolitical Civilian National Police whose members were to include former combatants from both sides of the war.

Calderon Sol and his predecessor, ex-President Alfredo Cristiani, resisted dismantling the National Police, arguing that it was needed until the civilian police were fully functional. The government repeatedly pushed back the deadline for phasing out the National Police and allowed its police academy to continue turning out cadets.

The bank heist, however, has forced Calderon Sol to admit his solution may be part of the problem. He announced last week that he will shut down the National Police by year’s end.

“We must purge the interior of our public security institutions, apply the law to whoever commits a crime and put an end to the impunity that has prevailed for so long,” Calderon Sol said.

The June 22 bank holdup began when 15 men, dressed in police uniforms and armed with grenades and assault rifles, attacked an armored car making a delivery at a downtown branch of the Banco de Comercio. The episode escalated into a free-for-all as outnumbered bank guards shot it out with the assailants, who eventually made off with more than a quarter of a million dollars.

Three guards and two civilian passersby were killed.

The alleged role of Lt. Jose Rafael Coreas Orellana in organizing the raid might never have been revealed if a television news crew had not stumbled upon the bank as the assault unfolded.

Before the television station could broadcast the footage, however, a National Police platoon appeared at the station’s offices and demanded the tape. The station’s manager refused, aired the tape on a midday newscast--and Coreas Orellana was identified by other cops who had tuned in to watch a World Cup soccer game.

He was arrested along with two former policemen and a taxi driver. He has declared his innocence.

The bank heist, combined with a recent surge in kidnapings of rich farmers and others, has alarmed the business class that is Calderon Sol’s most important base of support and is fearful of lost foreign investment.

In a full-page newspaper advertisement this week, the National Assn. of Private Enterprise urged swift action by the government to stop the crime wave, “whoever turns out to be guilty.”