Latino Police Chief’s Drug War Tactics Stir Melting Pot

No one can accuse Ruben Ortega, the dean of big-city Latino police chiefs, of being a slave to political correctness.

Ortega, the 59-year-old son of an immigrant who himself grew up toiling in the fields of central Arizona next to mexicano laborers, has strong ideas about who is to blame for the worst crime problems in Salt Lake City: illegal immigrants.

“The drug dealers that come in here are 75% undocumented aliens, almost all of them from Mexico,” Ortega says from an office with a panoramic view of the snow-covered Wasatch Range. “I have the independence to do what I think is the right thing, even if some folks don’t like it.”

Ortega’s campaign has befuddled more than a few members of Utah’s fast-growing Latino community. Most have trouble understanding why the son of immigrants could turn against his own people, using what they say are statistics of dubious accuracy that play to the worst stereotypes about immigrants.

Last year, the chief sponsored a plan to “deputize” local police to enforce some federal immigration laws, which would have made Salt Lake City the first municipality to enter into such an agreement with federal authorities. The plan, which briefly put the town at the center of a national debate about how best to combat crime committed by illegal immigrants, was eventually defeated because of strong opposition from Latino leaders.

“That was the nail in the coffin for a lot of us,” says Lee Martinez, a fourth-generation Utahan and the only Latino ever to serve on the Salt Lake City Council. “When Chief Ortega first came here, a lot of Chicanos said, ‘He’s one of us.’ Now I’m not so sure he is.”

When the City Council voted in September not to adopt Ortega’s plan, they may have ensured that no other major U.S. city would embrace a similar proposal. Utah’s small band of Latino activists had won a famous victory. In the process, they also made an enemy of Salt Lake City’s first Latino chief, who, in the aftermath of the defeat, has shown few signs of backing down.

“The Hispanic crime figures are indisputable,” Ortega says. Latinos account for just 12% of Salt Lake City’s 160,000 residents, he argues, yet make up 56% of the homicide victims. “We had to help the Mexican Consulate ship those bodies back to Mexico because a lot of those people were undocumented.”

That some of the most important battles in this country’s ongoing immigration wars are being fought far from the polyglot urban centers of Los Angeles, Miami and New York is due in large measure to the personality of Ortega himself, a man who rarely has shied from a fight.

“I know that I can talk about Hispanic crime figures and the bricks and rocks won’t be thrown at me,” says Ortega, who was one of seven semifinalists for the Los Angeles Police Department’s top job in 1997. “An Anglo chief wouldn’t be able to say the same thing.”

Even today, there are only a handful of Latino police chiefs in major U.S. cities. Ortega joined the Phoenix Police Department in 1960 as one of only five Latinos on the force. An articulate speaker with a disarming manner, he quickly moved up the ranks, becoming an early master of “community relations.”

Assignment Brings Mixed Emotions

When Cesar Chavez arrived in town in the late 1960s, campaigning to organize lettuce workers, Ortega was assigned to keep tabs on him. It was a moment of conflicting emotions for Ortega, who, as a young man, had worked in the fields in the early mornings alongside his father, Epifanio.

One night, Ortega listened in as Chavez led a large gathering in a prayer for the safety of all those who would attend a demonstration, including police. In the days that followed, Ortega says, “we never arrested any Hispanic protesters.”

In 1980, he became chief, making Phoenix the largest city to appoint a Latino to such a position. His 11-year tenure was marked by several controversies, including a 1987 drug bust targeting several members of the Phoenix Suns basketball team. Most of the charges were later reduced or dismissed. In 1986, he took heat for telling the Chamber of Commerce that his own force contained “thieves, dopers and lazy officers.”

The final chapter came with “AZscam,” a sting targeting members of the Arizona State Legislature. The undercover operation netted a half-dozen corrupt lawmakers, who were later convicted, but won Ortega a slew of new enemies. Civil libertarians questioned the methods of the chief and the district attorney.

Shortly after City Councilwoman Linda Nadolski questioned his power--”Who will protect us from Chief Ortega?”--he stepped down.

Ortega says he left Phoenix to cash in on his retirement. Not long afterward, he took the Salt Lake City job.

His mandate, Ortega says, was to modernize the 410-strong police force. Computers were installed in squad cars. A civilian police review board was established. He has drawn strong praise from Mayor Deedee Corandini.

Most Latino leaders here greeted his arrival warmly, hoping Ortega would put an end to decades of mistrust between police and the community. But they soon clashed over the chief’s crime-fighting tactics on the city’s west side, a working-class community of modest brick houses now home to a diverse population that includes Latinos drawn to the region’s booming economy.

Pioneer Park, where 19th-century Mormon settlers camped their first winter in Utah, had been taken over by drug dealers. Gangs had appeared with strange names that, it turned out, were taken from Los Angeles neighborhoods.

One of Ortega’s first moves was to create a program of citizen patrols called Mobile Watch. Equipped with cellular phones and free gasoline, residents were sent off to reconnoiter their neighborhoods in private vehicles, calling in “suspicious activity” to police dispatchers.

Mobile Watch caught on, especially among Mormon families, drawing on their strong traditions of volunteerism. Soon, hundreds of residents had joined.

“The people actually volunteering for this were all white,” says Robert “Archie” Archuleta, a Latino activist. “The people being targeted were people of color. Our people.”

Jolynn Gibson, a volunteer from the community of Rosepark, doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t care what race they are. If something is happening, we’re going to call it in.”

Seemingly Always Under Surveillance

Just a few blocks down from Gibson’s home lives Timoteo Mancera, a Mexican immigrant in his 20s and the owner of a catering truck. He says the local Mobile Watch made his life hell for a year after he moved to the neighborhood.

“For very little things they would bother me,” he says. They called police because he had no license plate on the front of his truck. They called city authorities when he built a wooden fence in front of his property. They called police because the registration tags on his truck were going to expire in two days. “They were always watching us.”

Councilman Martinez says many Latino residents felt under siege.

“If we’re drinking beer in the park, if there are several single men sitting in front of a house, they get reported as something suspicious,” Martinez says. At the root of the problems, he believes, are radically different ideas of what constitutes “appropriate” behavior.

“There’s a lot of moralists out there,” he says. “And if you don’t live by their commandments, you’re wrong.”

For some, the gap between the two cultures--one white and predominantly Mormon, the other Latino and largely Roman Catholic--has only been exacerbated by Ortega’s stand on illegal immigration.

Tide Turned Against Plan

During a yearlong campaign for his “cross-deputization” plan with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Ortega argued that illegal immigration helped fuel the drug trade and, by extension, other crimes. Drug barons in Mexico, he said, used immigrants as “mules” to carry cocaine and heroin to the north.

With city jails overcrowded, the mules were often being released hours after arrest. “We can’t hold them,” he said. “We lack the resources.” The arguments struck a chord with many residents. A Deseret News editorial said the deputization plan would send a message to illegal immigrants to “stay away from Utah.”

The plan appeared certain to pass, but Latino leaders fought back by charging that Ortega had grossly exaggerated the extent of immigrant-related crime. Attorney Mike Martinez said the chief had his numbers wrong, citing a news report that the number of Latinos arrested on suspicion of drug crimes citywide was just 15%. (Ortega countered that his 75% figure referred only to drug dealers, not all drug crimes.)

If immigrants believed local police might be working for la migra, the Latino activists said, they would no longer report crimes. Routine traffic stops would become checks for “papers” that would target all Latinos, including U.S. citizens. The tide quickly turned, and the City Council voted down the plan, 4 to 3.

Months later, the chief’s relations with the Latino community are still strained.

“Our feeling is that Ruben is a good person. But he’s also a policeman,” says Jesse Soriano, former head of the Utah Coalition de La Raza. “That’s what he’s been all his life. That’s the way he sees the world.”

The chief, for his part, has stuck to his guns. He continues to bemoan crimes committed by immigrant drug dealers.

“They’re giving a terrible reputation to the Hispanic community as a whole. This is our community. If one part of it is ill, let’s all get in and see what we can do.”