Taking guns away from police brings some peace to Tijuana

TIJUANA, Mexico — Disarmed municipal police patrolled alongside armed state police Friday, a sight that brought some comfort to many in this border city where municipal police are often equated with corruption and a plague of drug-fueled violence.

Municipal officers, their holsters empty, directed traffic and made the rounds a day after stopping work in response to being stripped of their weapons by the Mexican military.

The army operation in Tijuana and a similar incursion in the southern state of Michoacán, some analysts say, have been a political boon to President Felipe Calderón, who recently took office, allowing him to project an image of strength and decisiveness.

Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City analyst who has written extensively on the country's drug wars, said that although Calderón's crackdown in Tijuana "has zero chance of stopping the buying and selling of drugs," limiting the number of drug killings to the relatively lower numbers of the recent past is an achievable goal.

"What he's saying is that there are some things that won't be permitted," Chabat said. "You can't be cutting people's heads off. It's a question of image. You can't allow Tijuana to look like a civil war in Africa."

Mexican and U.S. federal authorities say some police are active members of drug-trafficking organizations, and several officers have been arrested over the years. Several kidnap victims say police officers took part in their abductions. The city has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world.

Tijuana, a sprawling metropolis of about 1.5 million people, was bustling as usual Friday, and there were no signs of social unrest or public disorder two days after more than 3,500 soldiers and federal agents started arriving as part of Operation Tijuana.

Members of the 2,300-strong municipal police force were ordered by the military to turn in their weapons to see whether any are linked with homicides and other crimes. More than 2,000 weapons, most of them 9 mm handguns, but also some automatic weapons and shotguns, are being inspected.

Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon said he had feared putting unarmed police at risk and had ordered them off the streets Thursday after receiving assurances from the general in charge of Operation Tijuana, Hector Sanchez Gutierrez, that his troops would maintain order.

The 18 hours without municipal police passed without any major incidents, though there were some complaints of no law-enforcement response to a few minor traffic accidents. And at the jail holding facility in the red-light district, Municipal Judge Oscar Gonzalez Valdez said he had freed some detainees — mostly drinking-

related offenders — because there were no transit police to take them to the main jail across the city.

Municipal police may get their weapons back within two weeks, say Tijuana officials, but many residents aren't demanding urgent action.

"This is stupendous," said Alfredo Arias, the manager of a restaurant in the tough neighborhood of La Libertad that was riddled by hundreds of bullets in a shootout last year between masked gunmen and federal agents.

Arias, like other residents and experts, say police weapons are not properly accounted for and are often loaned out to criminal rings. "This will obligate them to take care of their weapons," said Arias.

Alberto Capella, president of Tijuana's citizens' advisory council on public safety, said disarming the police had met with widespread support. "In some ways it's a necessary evil ... part of the cleansing we need to improve the department," he said.

Federal and state authorities said the operation had yielded significant results with the arrest of seven people allegedly linked to the attempted assassination last year of the former head of public safety in Baja California.

Tijuana residents have certainly felt the military presence as traffic backed up at several checkpoints on major streets leading into and out of the city.

Gregorio Martinez, 55, who has lived in Tijuana for 35 years, said the military operation was a bold first strike.

"I bet the number of assaults goes down until the police get their guns back. I feel pretty safe right now," he said.

But Martinez, like others, wonders whether the operation will have a long-term effect.