Tijuana Police Chief Slain in Hail of Gunfire

In the latest example of the murderous violence that has gripped this border town, the municipal police chief was assassinated Sunday morning by gunmen who sprayed his vehicle with more than 100 bullets, authorities said.

Police Chief Alfredo de la Torre Marquez, 49, was driving alone to the office after attending Mass when three cars came alongside his GMC Suburban and gunmen opened fire with at least one AK-47 assault rifle and a 9-millimeter handgun.

Dozens of police officers, judges, prosecutors and others have been murdered in Tijuana and its suburbs in recent years, a spiral of violence linked to wars between competing drug cartels. A presidential candidate of the ruling PRI party was assassinated in Tijuana in March 1994.

Police said they have no suspects in Sunday’s shooting, although three suspicious cars were seized in two nearby neighborhoods. One of the cars had been reported stolen in Chula Vista, Calif.

In recent months, officers under De la Torre’s command have been conducting a crackdown on illegal-immigrant smugglers and small-time drug users and pushers, particularly in the Zona Norte, an area near the border known for prostitution, drugs and other criminal activities.

De la Torre was gunned down on the same expressway, Via Rapida, where one of his predecessors as municipal chief, Federico Benitez Lopez, was murdered in April 1994 in similar ambush fashion.

Benitez’s murder, thought to have been ordered by a drug cartel angered at his reformist ways, has never been solved.

A Catholic nun who was a close friend of De la Torre said he may have had a premonition that he was facing death.

Sister Antonia Brenner, who was considered a surrogate mother by De la Torre, said he told her Saturday, “Mother, if I live through this job, you and I are going to change things for police throughout the whole state of Baja.”

A tearful Brenner, who went to the Tijuana morgue to bless De la Torre’s body, told reporters: “There are three letters that describe him: cop. He was a cop in every way. He was fearless. He was never cruel. That’s what I loved about him.”

In a city with a long history of police corruption, De la Torre, a career law enforcement officer who took over as chief in December 1998, was known for professionalism and honesty.

“He was clean, that was his reputation,” said a spokesman for the Tijuana Municipal Police.

Tijuana Mayor Francisco Vega de la Madrid expressed his “shock and dismay” at the brazen murder and promised that city police would assist state police, who have jurisdiction in the case, in finding the killers. Vega also called for residents of Tijuana to remain calm despite a growing sense of anarchy in his city.

Even in a city where violence is common, the murder of a police chief was shocking. “I’m afraid of what is happening to my city,” said waitress Rosario Barrios.

Many in Tijuana said state authorities have been unable or unwilling to gain the upper hand over crime. Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the independent Tijuana news weekly Zeta, said Sunday that the state police are “powerless or incapable” in the battle against crime. Blancornelas survived an assassination attempt by drug traffickers in 1997.

Rising anxiety over the escalating violence in Baja California has caught the notice recently even of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, who had dispatched the nation’s attorney general and other top federal officials to Baja for meetings this week on the crisis.

“Organized crime has brought to Baja California an onslaught of violence and intimidation that has naturally and justifiably provoked a wave of indignation among the people,” Zedillo said in a speech in the state capital of Mexicali.

Baja California Gov. Alejandro Gonzalez Alcocer said the killing may be in retaliation for Friday’s speech by Zedillo, in which he warned that he plans to rout criminals from Baja California.

De la Torre normally was protected by bodyguards except on Sunday, which he reserved as a day for his family, officials said. In the back seat of De la Torre’s vehicle were the bodyguards’ two M-16 automatic rifles.

Police officers, who are part of a unit whose duties are akin to those of SWAT squads in U.S. departments, fanned out across the city interrogating individuals in search of information. One official said that nearly three dozen people were questioned but no arrests were made.

“Everyone in the department is crying, no one can believe it,” said Enrique Sanchez, a veteran officer. “We have lost a friend. It hurts all of us very much.”

The killers reportedly used a classic pincer maneuver, with one car moving in front of De la Torre’s vehicle to slow him down and then two other cars driving parallel to the Suburban, which had tinted windows for security.

The assailants’ bullets shot out all three windows on the driver’s side, a window on the passenger’s side and left the windshield riddled. The Suburban smashed into a tree, possibly as De la Torre made a futile attempt to flee.

“By the time we arrived, there was nothing we could do to save him,” said one paramedic.

The former warden of the infamous La Mesa prison outside Tijuana, De la Torre took over as chief after the resignation of Juan Manuel Nieves, who had crashed a police car while intoxicated, left the scene and tried to cover up the incident.

At La Mesa, De la Torre met Brenner, an American nun who has spent two decades tending to the needs of both prisoners and police. After the death of his own mother, De la Torre became even closer to Brenner, whom he addressed as “mommy.”

“I prayed for him Saturday night after he said those things,” Brenner said. “He never told me he feared anything. He was my son.”

The municipal chief, who commands a force of about 1,200 officers, is responsible for issuing traffic citations and patrolling the neighborhoods of this sprawling city, whose population may be upward of 2 million. Historically, Tijuana police have been underpaid, undertrained and highly susceptible to bribery.

Most felony investigations, including large-scale crimes, are dealt with by the state and federal police.

Within hours of the killing, De la Torre’s widow and teenage daughter visited the scene of the shooting. Police cars and police headquarters in downtown Tijuana were adorned with black bows.

In a city where violence is ever present, black bows are kept at the ready. “Crime in Tijuana Is Our Daily Bread,” read a recent headline on a Tijuana newspaper.

So far this year, officials report 72 homicides in Tijuana. Although comparisons are difficult because there is no officially agreed-upon figure for Tijuana’s population, the murder rate is thought to outpace that of most big cities in the United States, with the possible exception of Detroit.

De la Torre held numerous jobs during his career that stretched to 1973. He founded the mounted patrol for the Tijuana police and was a federal official at the international airport and a state police commander in a seaside neighborhood of Tijuana. He had also served a previous term as municipal chief in 1992.

De la Torre, and his boss, Vega, have attempted to adapt “community-oriented policing” methods used in cities such as San Diego and New York to reduce crime, including “neighborhood watch” groups and mobile mini-stations in neighborhoods. There have been random car checks for drugs and guns and a “zero tolerance” policy for traffic offenses.

To upgrade the professional skills of Tijuana officers, an increasing number of them are attending training sessions run by San Diego police. The officers are being drilled in the use of firearms and how to make arrests of armed suspects.

De la Torre, a lanky, gregarious man, said in an interview last year that reducing violence was his top priority as chief.

“I can’t say I’m going to stop it,” he said. “I’m not God and I’m not Superman.”

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Special correspondent Jody Hammond contributed to this story.