But What Do Advocates Say About Mexican Police?

Street cops insist that under similar circumstances, the Los Angeles Police Department officers who beat Rodney G. King would have delivered the same baton blows to someone like, say, Robert Shapiro of Beverly Hills. (After listening to Shapiro’s sanctimonious book-tour attempts at rehabilitating his reputation, a lot of folks would like to deliver baton blows to the turncoat Dream Teamer. But that’s another story.) The point they are making is that when police officers lose self-control after a long and dangerous pursuit, the ethnicity of their quarry matters not at all. And the Riverside County sheriff’s deputies clearly lost control during the South El Monte incident.

Of course, nobody can ever justify a police beating of an unresisting arrestee, but guess what? Nobody’s trying to justify it--at least nobody who matters. The sheriff of Riverside County immediately denounced the beating of the undocumented immigrants. The cops were immediately relieved from duty and sent home. Certain media types, under the guise of the public’s right to know, immediately released home addresses of the cops involved, resulting in their families being terrified. So, other than stripping the cops of pay without an administrative hearing, or throwing them in jail without a trial, it’s hard to know what all the noisy protesters want.

As far as we can tell, the American Civil Liberties Union seems to want the Feds to take over the case, on the theory that only federal courts can be just. As far as we can tell, the Mexican American Political Assn. wants Proposition 187 wiped out, on the theory that it somehow led to the baton blows. In fact, the Mexican American Bar Assn. has declared it’s “open season on Latinos,” challenging U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to “come and see what it’s like to walk around Los Angeles like a Latina.” (A lot of folks would like to see Reno come to Los Angeles for good, just to get her out of Washington. But that, too, is another story.)

The award for hypocrisy has to go to all the Baja politicians, who have decried police brutality, comparing U.S. cops to Nazis. Yet, just two days before the South El Monte incident, a pair of U.S. carjacking suspects led our police on a pursuit south on I-5, where their Chevy Blazer crashed through the border in an attempt to enter Mexico, causing injury to a Mexican cop. Our fleeing U.S. citizens were not subjected to baton blows, they were fired on--resulting in the passenger being shot in the back. She’s 16 years old.

However, unlike the scene at INS headquarters, where swarms of ambulance-chasing lawyers threw business cards like Frisbees at the Mexican undocumented immigrants, the scene at Tijuana Municipal Police Headquarters was quiet on the night of that shooting. None of the usual human rights advocates has yet issued a statement condemning the Mexican police for excessive force. The mayor of Tijuana, the Baja human rights ombudsman, even the Baja state government in Mexicali--who all had plenty to say about U.S. cops--have been as still as the great stone statue of Abraham Lincoln in Tijuana about the shooting of an American girl who tried to forcibly enter their country.

But, then again, maybe the teen-ager was lucky to have been shot, for it probably diffused the arrest. Americans arrested in Mexico for attempting to elude cops often wish they’d been shot instead of undergoing “interrogations” at the hands of the State Judicial Police--sessions that can make Turkish prison movies look like scenes from Father Flanagan’s “Boys’ Town.” But that, too, is another story.

If everybody on both sides of the border would just quiet down, they’d see there’s no argument. The Riverside County sheriff’s deputies will probably lose their careers and be criminally prosecuted; they, along with their families, will suffer more than enough to satisfy almost anyone. Those deputies succumbed to what the ACLU now calls “high-speed pursuit syndrome.” Street cops have always called it fright and rage, resulting in an adrenaline rush that can be overpowering.

It goes without saying that cops must never allow fright and rage to prevail, but if they do, they must pay. The Riverside County deputies will pay dearly, and that’s the way it has to be. If cops can’t control that adrenaline turbocharge, they should join the fire department--where fright is rarely accompanied by overwhelming rage. People seldom try to murder firemen, or gratuitously subject them to great peril as happens to cops in high-speed chases.

So, what of beating victims, Enrique Funes Flores and Alicia Sotero Vasquez? Once they pry off the trial lawyers--make that “consumer advocates”--now clinging like barnacles, they will learn that criminal charges against them will be dropped or, at worst, they’ll be allowed to plead nolo contendere and receive probation. They will eventually accept a hefty cash settlement and retire to Mexico with more money than they could have made in their lifetimes.

A sad result of all this is that relations between U.S. and Mexican citizens will worsen. Chicano advocacy groups will see to that--all whose members are U.S.-born and referred to by Mexican citizens as . . . gringos, just like the rest of us. And on the other side of the raucous and spurious debate, political gadfly Patrick J. Buchanan may have an opportunity to stir the pot by firing salvos at the North American Free Trade Agreement, and at immigration in general. This at a time when the United States has no choice but to help Mexico build a strong economy, because our southern neighbor is a buffer against millions of poor who live in countries farther south.

There is a powerful argument to be made against barriers and barbed wire that mark an imaginary line dividing our two countries--no, our two economies, because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? A Third World economy living cheek by jowl with the richest economy on Earth. And the saddest part is that the people who live south of that imaginary line are as decent as you’ll find anywhere--religious, courteous, hospitable, with a strong sense of family and patriarchal respect that translates into regard for authority. In fact, they’re like Buchanan’s Irish forbearers, and mine--except they don’t drink as much.

So, rather than exploiting volatile incidents like this, why doesn’t everyone just butt out and let the California state court do its thing? In fact, this would be a great time for gringos and ersatz Mexicans to join real Mexicans in this year’s celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Just like good neighbors ought to do.*