NEZAHUALCOYOTL, Mexico — Mayor Luis Sanchez got his cops a raise, a sleek helicopter called Coyote One and 100 new squad cars. Now the hard part: He's forcing culture down their throats.

Starting this month, the mayor of this Mexico City bedroom community is requiring all 1,100 members of his police force to read at least one book a month, or forfeit career advancement. The cops will get reading lessons if they need them and can select the literature from a list of recommended books at a new library, ranging from "Don Quixote" to the latest crime novels by Paco Ignacio Taibo II.

Why the emphasis on literature for police officers, 70 percent of whom have no more than eighth-grade educations? Sanchez believes that too many cops are rude to citizens and that by reading, they will become better mannered, more communicative and thus more welcome in the neighborhoods they patrol.

"Reading makes us better people, more sensitive, more able to express ourselves," said Sanchez, a bibliophile who belongs to the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. "Better persons give better service."

Police will be tested and graded on their reading each month — as they will be on six traditional proficiency standards, such as physical fitness, ethics and arrests, the mayor said.

But there are skeptics among the ranks.

Some in uniform feel that they and their comrades are too set in their ways to be transformed at this stage in their lives.

Local patrolman Jose Luis Avila likes the idea of trying to "eliminate ignorance," but worries that the reading program will be dropped after the initial flush of enthusiasm.

"The majority of us are confused because other mayors have come and made promises that haven't been fulfilled," Avila said.

Still, in his two years as mayor, Sanchez has improved working conditions and imposed new policing methods. The crime rate has fallen by 20 percent in this suburb of 1.2 million people, he said.

Until recently, few Mexican towns had a more notorious police force than Nezahualcoyotl's. Its last police chief, Carlos Ernesto Garcia, is sitting in Mexico's highest-security prison, facing charges of being a major drug-trafficking capo in the so-called Neza Cartel.

But the new methods introduced by Sanchez and his new police chief, Jorge Amador, apparently are turning things around, said Javier Valencia, the state of Mexico's deputy attorney general. The city's decrease in crime last year was the largest in the state, Valencia said.

"There is no doubt that if you open people's minds to the world of literature, that you also open up a world of sensitivity and of civilization, as any of us who read already know," Taibo said.