Edition: U.S. / Global

Mexico Begins to Wade Through Morass of Police Corruption

Published: June 17, 2002

The final misfortune of Josue Ulises Banda Cruz, a 17-year-old ne'er-do-well, was that he was standing on a corner drinking beer with his buddies when the police came cruising by at 2 a.m last Tuesday.

Officer José Luis de la Cruz Gamas's crude crowd-dispersal technique -- firing his service revolver in the general direction of the young men -- proved fatal. One bullet struck Josue in the back of the neck. The officer took the dying boy, threw him in his patrol car, and dumped his body on a deserted street, the police and witnesses said.

The next day, the patrolman was arrested and booked for murder. Then his fellow officers let him flee.

Many of Mexico City's citizens think their biggest law enforcement problem is the police. Thousands of uniformed officers do double duty as criminals: petty thieves, armed robbers, extortionists and, on occasion, killers.

''They were not made to serve society,'' Alejandro Gertz Manero, the federal public security chief, said in an interview. ''The police are a force that the people fear.''

The problem is hardly a Mexican phenomenon. The biggest cities in the United States have witnessed police corruption and violence over the decades, suggesting that there is still life in the dictum of Alexander Williams, a 19th-century New York policeman: ''There is more law in the end of a policeman's nightstick than in a Supreme Court decision.''

But now the fight to weed out bad officers is becoming an epic struggle in Mexico.

President Vicente Fox has declared the fight for public security one of his highest goals. In his year and a half in office, he has made some significant advances by cleaning up his federal counternarcotics forces and making a dent in petty corruption among customs officers.

But the states and the cities have seen little measurable improvement in either police corruption or public confidence.

The new Mexico City police chief, Marcelo Ebrard, who commands 82,000 officers, a department twice the size of New York City's, said in an interview that his forces ''need very deep reform.''

''There is no code of conduct that says this is what a career in the police means, these are the rules of the game, this is the basis of discipline, rewards and punishment,'' he said.

Chief Ebrard, in office for four months, has created a new Department of Internal Affairs, modeled on New York City's, to police the police. He says he knows the inherent risks of trying to uproot corruption.

''But the worst risk of all,'' he said, ''is to have criminals dressed up as cops.''

The police, he said, ''have to build a bridge to the people.

''Can that be done?'' he continued. ''I think so, but it won't be easy because you are going against all tradition.''

For many people in the city, state or federal police, the job became an opportunity to make money by any means necessary. A prior criminal conviction has not been a barrier to holding a badge and a gun.

In the last decade police officers have been arrested in the fields of drug smuggling, kidnapping and extortion. Mexico's drug cartels have been a particularly powerful corrupting force. But the deepest problem may be the perception among citizens that a badge constitutes a license to break the law.

''Corrupt police officers recruit their friends and relatives to join the force, allowing corruption to multiply,'' said Nelson Arteaga Botello, a political science professor who has studied the state police for years. ''Corruption doesn't start when police go out in the street, but from the moment they come into the ranks.''

Professor Arteaga sent one of his graduate students, Adrián López Rivera, out on an unusual assignment: to join the police for a year and to listen, watch and learn. Mr. López met one veteran officer who told him, ''We are here to get all the money we can.''

In the end, Mr. López said he learned that ''by wearing a uniform, anyone can enjoy as much impunity as his imagination and avarice will allow.''

Greed is one problem in a city where the average police officer makes $200 a week. Official violence is another. Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights reports that it receives, on average, about 400 complaints a month from people who say they have been abused or tortured by the police. That far outstrips the commission's ability to investigate such charges.

But Mr. Gertz Manero, the federal public security chief, says the government has the ability to change the way the police work -- and the perception that officers are public enemies, not public servants.

''The police can be an instrument of society, not of public power,'' he said ''They can connect with the public, serve them -- not simply serve the powers that be, but serve the people.

''But today, nobody in Mexico is satisfied with the police, or with the rule of law, or with the administration of justice. That is a fact. Nobody.''