| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Prayers for Fallen Officers
 Sandra Dibble - San Diego Union-Tribune
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January 03, 2010
| | A photograph of slain Deputy Chief Sergio Antonio Barajas Torres was placed on a pew at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Sanctuary in Tijuana during a special Mass yesterday for International Police Day. (John Gibbins/Union-Tribune) | |
Tijuana — With high-caliber assault weapons slung over their shoulders, dozens of uniformed Tijuana police officers honored fallen comrades yesterday, raising their voices in song and prayer.
Sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windows of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Sanctuary in downtown Tijuana, where Archbishop Rafael Romo Muñoz offered a Mass honoring the city’s police officers.
“Your profession is filled with challenges, very dangerous challenges,” Romo said from the altar where lights still flickered on a Christmas tree and water trickled from a small fountain. On the street outside, sirens blared, momentarily eclipsing the hearty voices of the department’s own musical group, Los Tenientes de Tijuana.
The occasion was International Police Day, celebrated in Baja California every Jan. 2. This time, the mood was somber, with fresh memories of 31 officers killed in 2009, many of them targeted by criminal gangs seeking to intimidate members of the 2,100-officer force.
Sergio Antonio Barajas Torres, a deputy chief in the city’s Los Pinos district, was ambushed on his way to work June 17, shortly after making a sensitive detention. Barajas understood the dangers, but he loved police work, said his widow, Concepcion Antuna. They had three children.
“He said it was his life,” Antuna said as she prepared to carry his photograph into the chapel.
Participants included members of the group Brazos Abiertos de Tijuana, which offers assistance to the families of fallen officers. Also offering support were the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour, a Catholic congregation for older women founded by the American nun Antonia Brenner, widely known in Tijuana as La Madre Antonia.
“I don’t know how they can stand to be police in this city, it’s so hard, but they do it and I admire them so,” Brenner said.
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