200 Retrained Mexican Police Officers Riot Over Transfers

The Mexican government’s struggle to retrain and reform the capital’s notoriously corrupt police force suffered a major setback Thursday when hundreds of the first graduates of an ambitious police re-education program battled riot squads in a melee that left dozens injured and at least 17 under arrest.

More than 200 rioting police officers, who had just completed a two-month military training course to instill discipline, honesty and professionalism, were protesting transfers from their home district--another measure aimed at reducing corruption.

The “dissident” police, as they were dubbed in news reports that called the confrontation “a police war,” showered rocks and bottles on about 1,000 riot troops who opened fire with tear gas after the protesters tried to seize a police station.

There were unconfirmed reports of shots fired by both sides.

“In the eyes of the people, this is unfortunately a manifestation of the great deficiencies that still exist inside the institution,” said army Gen. Enrique Salgado, the military officer who was appointed Mexico City’s police chief last year to clean up graft, abuse and poor discipline in the force.

“That is what I have tried to remedy with this [re-education] course. But this, precisely, shows the state in which the police find themselves. Sadly enough, we haven’t been able to solve this problem.”

The protesting police were among the first officers to graduate from the military course. They were part of a vanguard of 1,600 officers from the city’s crime-infested district of Ixtapalapa, where they were replaced temporarily by soldiers in police uniforms until graduation nine days ago.

The group launched its protest Wednesday after learning of the reassignment, but Wednesday’s protest was largely peaceful.

“We can’t say that the course has been a complete failure because we’re talking about 200 elements out of a total of 1,600,” Salgado said.

He added that the re-education program will continue, moving district by district until all of the city’s police officers take the course.

“We have to continue with this program, no matter what the cost,” Salgado said. “The general interest of society is what counts, not the personal capriciousness of some policemen.”

Salgado said the detained officers will be prosecuted for insurrection, resisting authority, rioting and blocking public byways.

Questioned by an emotional press corps after the display of lawlessness by law enforcers--in which news photographers said their equipment had been damaged or stolen--Salgado sought to allay public fears.

“No,” he said, “we cannot consider this a crisis.”

But there were other signs Thursday that the government’s crusade to root out deep-seated corruption at all levels of law enforcement is facing obstacles.

Several dozen federal agents who were dismissed for failing a battery of tests required by a newly restructured anti-drug force took to the streets in another demonstration outside the agency’s headquarters.

They complained that they were given no specific reasons for their dismissal and that they were not allowed to see the results of the psychological, polygraph and drug-detection tests now required of all federal drug agents.

That vetting procedure and the new drug force were singled out for praise this week by President Clinton, who ended his three-day state visit here 12 hours before Thursday’s riot began.