After federal agents confiscate the force's weapons, officers decide
going back on patrol would be too risky.
By Richard Marosi, Times Staff Writer
January 5, 2007
TIJUANA — The municipal police force in this troubled border city
walked off the job Thursday after soldiers and federal agents ordered
its members to turn over their weapons in connection with homicide
investigations.
The surprising turn of events came two days after Mexican President
Felipe Calderon dispatched 3,300 federal troops and police to the
city in an effort to combat violence linked to drug cartels.
Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon acknowledged in a radio interview
Thursday that local and state police were being compromised by narco-
traffickers, and he said government salaries could not compete with
the financial rewards offered by drug dealers.
Members of the 2,300-strong police force turned over more than 2,100
guns and semiautomatic assault rifles at police headquarters. But
police officials decided it would be too dangerous to patrol unarmed,
especially because more than a dozen officers have been killed
recently in drug-related attacks.
"The police are not patrolling the city. They won't work without
their weapons," said Fernando Bojorquez, a spokesman for the city's
top police official, Secretary of Public Safety Luis Javier Algorri
Franco.
Among those whose weapons were taken were the bodyguards for the
mayor and for Algorri, a civilian who does not carry a weapon.
A spokesman for the federal attorney general said the military had
ordered the confiscation of the police weapons to investigate whether
any had been used in suspicious killings. He gave no details.
It was not immediately known how many homicides the federal officials
were investigating. More than 300 people were killed in the city in
2006.
Police walked out late in the afternoon, and no major disturbances
had been reported by late evening.
The soldiers and federal agents set up checkpoints Thursday across
the city and began patrolling downtown, the Zona Rio commercial
district and some tough neighborhoods.
Dozens of disarmed officers remained outside City Hall after 9 p.m.,
eating chicken tacos and wondering what would happen next.
The next shift, due in at 7 a.m., was ordered to report to the plaza,
and police will remain there until their weapons are returned,
Bojorquez said.
"We're defenseless against organized crime. Without our weapons, we
can't do anything," said one officer, who declined to be identified.
It appeared that municipal police were still on duty at jails.
Tijuana and the surrounding communities are a key battleground for
control of drug smuggling routes into the United States. The city and
the state of Baja California have suffered increased kidnappings and
killings of drug traffickers, police officers, business owners and
bystanders.
The federal enforcement effort, dubbed Operation Tijuana, comes three
weeks after Calderon sent troops to his Pacific Coast home state of
Michoacan, where more than 80 people were arrested, more than 1,300
acres of marijuana crops were destroyed and over 6 tons of harvested
plants were seized.
Calderon has said that federal forces are needed to combat Mexico's
drug violence because of corruption and incompetence among local and
state police.
In a television interview Thursday, federal Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina
Mora said: "The object of this type of operation is not the surgical
capture of big leaders. Sure, we're going after the big capos, but
that's not the purpose of this kind of operation, which in this case
is the recovery of geography and tranquillity."
Medina Mora said Calderon's campaign against drug violence would move
to other states in coming weeks.
Times staff writer Sam Enriquez in Mexico City contributed to this
report.
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