Tijuana Police Follow Own Rules : Mexico: With shortages of bullets, guns and patrol cars, officers don’t always play by the book. New chief is trying to improve conditions for his force.

Oscar cuts a dashing figure, muscles stretching his police blues and Ray Bans shading his eyes. The six-year police veteran also shows the problems Tijuana leaders face in cleaning up the force’s image.

Crossing the line into illicit behavior is a matter of self-preservation for the border city’s cops, Oscar says.

Money worries from low pay have led Oscar to extort bribes from drivers who want to avoid traffic tickets. Fears about safety sometimes cause him to break into homes illegally to gain the upper hand on criminal suspects.

Some of his colleagues fall in deeper, forming alliances with the criminals they are supposed to arrest.

“In the U.S., police often play by the book,” said Oscar, who worked briefly for the Los Angeles Police Department and spoke on condition he not be fully identified. “Here, sometimes you have to break the rules.”

Facing shortages of bullets, guns and patrol cars, officers in many Mexican cities are part modern-day cop, part Wild West deputy.

In Tijuana, police confront pressures that can easily explode into violence: ruthless drug traffickers, migrants determined to reach the United States, thieves out to capitalize on the city’s rapid industrialization--even fellow officers.

In the last two years, 19 police officers have been slain during bank holdups, factory robberies and even traffic stops. Some were killed by other officers running interference for drug cartels.

By comparison, three Los Angeles officers were killed during the same period. The last murder of an officer in San Diego, just across the border, was in 1991. Both the California cities are larger than Tijuana, which has a population of around 1 million.

Police Chief Victor Manuel Vazquez Fernandez, who assumed the post last year after his reform-minded predecessor was assassinated, insists Tijuana is no more lawless or dangerous than any other big city in Mexico or the United States.

But clearly Tijuana’s men and women in blue play by different rules than their colleagues in the United States.

For example:

* Two federal officers accosted a carload of American tourists at the border May 21 and drew their guns in a confrontation with U.S. Customs inspectors. One of the Mexican officers had been drinking and cocaine was found in their vehicles. Neither officer has been charged; Mexican officials say the matter is under investigation.

* A shootout in March, 1994, between state and federal police officers killed five, including a federal police commander. The state officers were allegedly protecting members of one of Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug operations, the Tijuana-based Arellano brothers.

Vazquez said he is trying to improve conditions for his 1,300 officers, thereby removing some of the incentives for officers to side with criminals. He has augmented training, raised pay and stressed the importance of the “spirit of service.”

Officers now are given two uniforms instead of having to supply their own. Many patrol teams drive used cruisers recently bought from the Portland, Ore., Police Department. Even used, the American cars are better than the alternative--either no car or one that is old and unreliable.

Vazquez said he wants to teach his officers to behave responsibly and to drop hard-nosed attitudes that alienate the public and fuel tension on the streets.

For years, detectives swaggered around town decked out in Rolex watches, diamonds, cowboy hats and boots, and drove cars stolen by thieves in cahoots with the officers, he said. Patrol officers would leave their cars in the middle of the street, run red lights and sound sirens for no reason.

“You have to respect the people for them to respect you,” Vazquez said.

But Oscar, who has to buy his own bullets, and his partner, who owes $200 for a police radio, said bribes are the only way to stay even.

“If they want no more corruption, they have to pay the police officers [more],” said Oscar’s partner, who declined to give his name.

*

The officers said they are paid 1,000 pesos (about $170) a month. Vazquez says his officers make at least $250 a month.

Either figure is far lower than in San Diego, where rookie officers make $3,100 a month.

One of Vazquez’s challenges is to bolster morale in his battle-shaken force, which has had three officers killed just since April.

The most high-profile of the 19 slaying victims in the last two years was Police Chief Jose Federico Benitez Lopez, who reportedly made the fatal mistake of rejecting a $100,000 bribe from a drug cartel.

A few weeks after rebuffing the cartel, Benitez, 42, was showered with AK-47 gunfire from a passing Ford Bronco. Investigators said every bullet hit the chief, and several passed through him and killed his bodyguard.

No arrests have been made, but investigators strongly believe that federal and state police may have worked in compliance with the cartel.

Vazquez acknowledges that rooting out corrupt officers in the department is a mammoth task, but he plans to chip away at it: “I want them to be the few, not the majority.”