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 News from Around the Americas | February 2007 
Crime Wears on Tijuana, San Diego
 William M. Welch - USA Today
| | U.S. Border Patrol agents on ATV's watch a section of the border near "Smugglers Gulch" at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. (Associated Press) |
Tijuana, Mexico Americans have been crossing into this border city from San Diego since it was founded more than a century ago, sampling food, culture, easy liquor and fast nightlife.
These days, the reasons are greater and the traffic is heavier. The border crossing here is the busiest in the world as tens of thousands of people move legally in both directions every day, pursuing jobs and commerce, housing, the arts, even health care.
Crime has always been a worry for Americans venturing south of the border but never so much as now. Violence, killings and kidnappings have reached frightening new levels in Tijuana over the last 24 months, exposing the weaknesses of police and threatening the tourism and trade that underpin the economy on both sides of the border.
"What affects one side affects the other. We're literally one region with a fence down the middle," says San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a former chief of police of his city.
Tijuana, population 1.2 million, saw one slaying a day in 2006 and roughly two kidnappings a week. The murder rate for a city of Tijuana's size is not huge. Some U.S. cities have a larger murder rate, including Washington, D.C.
It is the way crimes are committed that makes the difference.
Thirty victims were police officers, including three found decapitated. Such a slaughter of officers would be shocking for a U.S. city, Sanders says.
And the kidnapping is a surreal development. Kidnapping for ransom is nearly non-existent in the whole of the USA. In Tijuana, there were close to 100 reported incidents of it last year.
"We've never had the problem we have right now, never," says Alberto Capella, a lawyer and president of the Citizens Council for Public Safety in the Mexican state of Baja California. "It's historic what happened last year here in Tijuana, and the last 24 months."
So far, crime hasn't spiked on the San Diego side of the border. But Sanders and his top police official say that doesn't mean the U.S. side isn't affected.
San Diego police have set up an office in a trailer at the border to take crime reports from U.S. citizens crossing back, including shakedowns for bribes by Mexican police, says Bill Maheu, executive assistant chief of police.
Though exact numbers are hard to come by, experts on both sides of the border say they believe the number of people crossing to work or spend money has declined because of the fear of crime.
"When people fear for their safety, it starts putting problems on the economy on both sides," Sanders says.
Much of the killing is the product of turf wars among drug cartels, says Guillermo Gonzalez, Tijuana deputy police commander. Kidnappings have become rampant as criminal organizations, frustrated by U.S. and Mexican success in thwarting the flow of drugs to the north, expand into new lines of illicit business, he says.
Capella says Tijuana police are also part of the problem.
In Operation Tijuana, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderσn, ordered 3,300 federal military police in to take control of the city on Jan. 3, set up roving checkpoints, and in a move that would be unimaginable on the U.S. side, took the service guns away from each of the more than 2,300 municipal officers.
Since then, Tijuana police have sometimes resorted to ".45-caliber rocks" to subdue suspects. "Fortunately, there's a lot of rocks in the streets," says Ricardo Forastieri, commander of the force's canine unit.
Gunless patrol officers have become emblems of long-held suspicious that some local police have been corrupted by the drug organizations and could even have been involved in the killings. Capella says he is "100% sure" that many officers, mostly lower- or mid-level, are involved with organized crime.
The Mexico City-based Federal Attorney General's Office took the guns so the weapons could be put through ballistic tests seeking links to the killings. Police and Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon welcomed the intervention.
"We understand there are certain steps that must be taken in order for us to have a cleaner image," Gonzalez says.
Some officers complain they are insulted and at risk without guns.
"I feel like half a cop. It feels very unjust," motorcycle officer Antonio Garcia said through an interpreter.
Some Mexicans like having federal troops and gunless local officers. "It's more safe," says Guillermo Nunez, a cab driver. "The federal police come and change the system."
"I feel more secure, for sure," says Lalo Gonzalez, a shop owner along Revolucion Avenue, the tourist strip.
Border violence has not been directed at Americans, police and border experts say, although some have been caught in the crossfire.
"All of these things are worrying to North Americans," says David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. "Looking South, Mexico looks chaotic."
Few Americans were in the main tourist area on one recent weekday, but those who were visiting voiced only mild concerns, if any.
"I'm not scared to come down here. I love it," said Steve Summers, who was assisting a group of young people from the Menominee Indian Tribe of Keshena, Wis., on a day trip while attending a conference in San Diego.
Lester Troyer, an Amish construction worker from near Mansfield, Ohio, said he was in Tijuana for low-cost medical care with friends, all without health insurance. Their van was stopped and searched for drugs by federal police; they were released without incident. "They were nice," he said.
Mike Mann of Portland, Ore., visits regularly with his wife Terri. "Stick to the main areas, and you're fine," he said. "You may get fleeced for some money but you won't get killed."
The economic stakes are huge. More than $28 billion in goods moves across the San Diego-Tijuana border annually in both directions, according to the San Diego Association of Governments. Mexicans spend $6 billion a year in San Diego County, or more than $1 of every $8 in retail sales.
"The border is a massive economic engine, and it operates that way for both sides," says David Eisenberg, sergeant with Chula Vista, Calif., police and specialist in transnational crime.
Tijuana has begun a vigorous effort to let criminals and police know that criminals in the tourist zone will be caught. Since March, 97 officers have been fired and prosecuted for bribes and corruption, says Gonzalez, the deputy commander. Low pay, as little as $600 a month for a Tijuana officer, feeds corruption, he said. Officers now get a raise every month as the mayor carries out a pledge to double salaries in three years and add hundreds more officers.
Tijuana police are also unrestrained by civil liberty and privacy concerns that U.S. counterparts face. And they are being watched, too. "This is Big Brother," Gonzalez says. |
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