In Mexico Crime Wave, the Line Between Good Guys, Bad Guys Blurs

Carrying AK-47s, three men swaggered into the Barriles bar, a popular watering hole on the outskirts of Tijuana, and introduced themselves as federal agents whose car had just broken down.

Would someone spare a car for the federal police at 2 a.m.? The bar owner handed over the keys to his Ford Fairmont.

The events that followed seemed familiar to residents of this rough-and-tumble border city: The “federal agents” kidnapped a waiter and sped off into the night.

A recent crime wave--including assassinations of prosecutors--committed by men appearing to be federal agents could be the work of common street thugs.

But experts and Mexican officials say the activities bear the stamp of federally trained police officers. They say the armed men probably are corrupt current or former federal officers who are untouchable to local authorities.

Lawlessness of the kind occurring in Tijuana is felt across Mexico, but it is particularly acute along the border with the United States, where drug trafficking and illegal immigration also proliferate.

At a Sept. 18 meeting in San Diego, Leopoldo Gomez, political advisor to President Ernesto Zedillo, admitted that corruption in Mexico’s federal law enforcement agency makes it impossible to protect the public.

“Police forces are not in a very good position to combat crime,” he said.

Gomez also said a lack of communication between local, state and federal police makes it possible for expelled federal agents to be rehired as federal officers in states outside where they were fired.

“Typically, they are rehired in one state or another,” Gomez said.

Mexican law enforcement officials have long been known for operating under a corrupt system dependent on bribes. But former Baja California Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel said the boldness and aggressive style seen recently among those claiming to be Federal Judicial Police is startling.

The Federal Judicial Police force is often referred to as the PGR, the Spanish acronym for the federal attorney general’s office, which administers it.

“They walk around the street with AK-47s, dressed in PGR uniforms,” Ruffo said. “The state policemen ask them for identification, and the PGR guy sticks an AK-47 in his face. It’s chaos.”

A nationwide firing of 737 allegedly corrupt federal law enforcement officers Aug. 16 included 29 federal agents in Tijuana, said Ibanez Cornejo, director of the federal police department in Tijuana.

The next day, a federal prosecutor was gunned down at his home in Tijuana, several feet from his front door. There was no sign of struggle, and the man even turned off his burglar alarm to come outside and speak with his killers, police said.

Mexican Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia said newly laid-off federal police may have fired the shots, believing the prosecutor was responsible for the firings.

Some people also question whether the national police shake-up was linked to the Sept. 14 slaying of First Commander Ernesto Ibarra Santes, chief of the federal judicial police for the state of Baja California. Ibarra also was a target of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel.

Infiltration of the federal police by drug traffickers is a serious problem, said national security expert Sergio Aguayo, a professor of international relations at El Colegio de Mexico, an elite institution specializing in postgraduate social science.

“Now we find a force on the verge of breaking. There are no controls,” he said from his home in Mexico City. “This corrupt force created enormous problems. It was penetrated by narco-traffickers, and it was accustomed to engaging in illegal acts, not only drug trafficking.”

The head of Tijuana’s public security force, Ricardo Arenas, said municipal police officers will not ask men dressed in the federal police force’s traditional all-black garb for identification. It is unprofessional and rude, he said.

Besides, the renegade federal officers are armed with heavier weapons than the pistol-equipped city police. It would not be advisable to provoke “men in black with big guns,” Arenas said.

In other recent crimes tied to renegade officers:

* Baja California Atty. Gen. Jose Luis Anaya Bautista said a federal police officer from another state was among 10 suspects in the Aug. 10 kidnapping of Japanese business executive Mamoru Konno. Konno was held for nine days until his captors received $2 million ransom.

* On Aug. 24, 10 men in black uniforms with federal police insignias drove through a posh Tijuana neighborhood in a convoy of three Jeep Cherokees and a black Chevy Suburban, witnesses told police. The heavily armed men broke into a luxurious home and reportedly showed the family’s chauffeur and son a search warrant. They beat the driver and escaped with his wallet, some jewelry and the family’s safe, according to police reports.

* On Aug. 30, after the three “federal agents” kidnapped one of the waiters from the Barriles bar and drove off in the bar owner’s car, city police tracked them to a chemical recycling plant, where one of the kidnappers died in a shootout. Four others were arrested. Interrogations led police to a home where four AK-47s, a 12-gauge shotgun, military camouflage uniforms and fatigue pants worn by federal officers were stashed.

The federal officers fired in the corruption sweep are being replaced by graduates of the federal police academy.

“I think they arrive good people, but the new ones arrive to a black atmosphere of corruption,” said Ruffo, who was governor from 1989 to 1995. “They accept it, or they die at the hands of other agents or the narco-traffickers.”