Mexico Fires 700 From Elite Police

Mexico’s attorney general fired more than 700 members of the judicial police Friday in a lightning attempt to reform this nation’s biggest drug-fighting force.

Many here say the force is so corrupt that it is all but useless in choking off the flood of cocaine and other narcotics passing through Mexico to the United States.

Having fired 513 other judicial police agents in the nearly two years that he has been in office, Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia has now dismissed more than a quarter of the 4,400-member police force, officials said. And more are likely to lose their jobs.

“We have taken the decision to separate from their functions 737 agents, sub-commanders, commanders and delegates of the Federal Judicial Police, because . . . they do not have the ethical profile that society and the institution require,” Lozano told a news conference Friday. “They will not be the last by any means.”

Friday’s sweeping dismissals came two days after Lozano replaced Americo Javier Flores, the director of the judicial police who had served only seven months. Details were not given for his ouster. He was replaced by Emilio Islas Rangel, a longtime law enforcement professional who worked for Interpol, the international police force.

Corruption in Mexico’s police has been a critical and increasing concern of U.S. anti-narcotics agents. They say they have watched, virtually helpless, as Colombian gangs have turned to shipping their drugs through Mexico in recent years. U.S. officials estimate that 70% of the cocaine reaching the United States moves through Mexico.

Mexico’s judicial police, who answer to the attorney general, are responsible for dealing with serious federal crimes, such as drug trafficking, arms running and piracy. The officers are, in many ways, the equivalent of FBI agents.

But unlike their U.S. counterparts, the Mexican law enforcement officials--who have often been political appointees linked to the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party--have a history of unsavory conduct.

They have been frequently accused and convicted of crimes, from torturing suspects to working as bodyguards for drug lords.

They were, for example, subjected to considerable criticism--during trials in Los Angeles and elsewhere--from U.S. authorities for their alleged role in the kidnapping and murder of Enrique Camarena, an American drug agent who disappeared in Guadalajara in 1985.

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Questioned Friday by reporters about the misdeeds of the dismissed officers, Lozano cited the case of a former judicial police director in the northern state of Sinaloa. When the official was moved to Mexico City recently, “more than 40 kilos [about 90 pounds] of cocaine were found in his household goods--among other things,” Lozano said without identifying the individual. “These are the realities we are faced with.”

A senior official of the attorney general’s office said that most of the officers sacked Friday were suspected of having ties to drug trafficking. He declined to give details. But underlining the import of Lozano’s housecleaning, he noted that 22 of 33 judicial police “sub-delegates”--the individuals in charge of the force’s operations in each state--were being removed.

Lozano acknowledged that he still has much to do to restore the integrity of the force. In an interview published Monday in the daily Reforma newspaper, he said the majority of the judicial police were corrupt. “If it’s not 70% or 80%, it’s somewhere around there,” he said.

Things have gotten so bad, he added, that young people are seeking to enter the force principally because of its bad reputation. “They want to be police to gain power,” he said in the interview.

In one notorious incident last November, individuals in judicial police uniforms unloaded as much as 15 tons of cocaine from a jet that crashed in Baja California, then chopped up and buried the aircraft, witnesses and officials said.

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Lozano’s assault on the judicial police Friday came even as he himself is battling to hold on to his job amid accusations of corruption and inefficiency in his office.

Last month, Ricardo Cordero, a former member of his office, claimed that senior Mexican law enforcement officials let drug traffickers operate freely. Cordero also asserted that Lozano failed to listen when evidence was offered of police corruption. The attorney general “told me that people would pay $3 million to have my job,” Cordero said last month.

Senior officials with greater credibility have cast doubts on Cordero’s story. But the allegations caused worry among some in the U.S. government, which works closely with Lozano. Just days after his news conference, Cordero was arrested by Mexican authorities and accused of taking bribes.

Lozano, who is the lone member of President Ernesto Zedillo’s Cabinet from the opposition National Action Party, has also been subject to scathing criticism for his office’s failure to win convictions in a series of major assassinations.