Frontera NorteSur September 2000

I. Local Police

Ciudad Juárez has only 980 city police officers spread out over three shifts--that's only a little over 300 police agents on duty at any one time--to look after its 1.4 million inhabitants. By comparison, Cd. Juárez's cross-river neighbor El Paso has approximately 1,100 better-trained, better-equiped, better-paid officers for a population of 650,000. Cd. Juárez is authorized to carry a police force of 1,400 but the department never reaches that number although currently recruitment is being enhanced with the hope of getting 500 or more people into the police training academy.

Countering hopes of staff increases through recruitment is the department's loss of on average one agent every two days. So far this year the force has lost 113 officers, about half of them leaving to accept better paying or easier, less-dangerous security-guard jobs. Some go to the US to live and work and 8 retired. The other agents were fired for missing work or because of problems with job performance.

According to El Diario, police earn about 5,500 pesos per month, approximately US$600, and receive life insurance, health care, a vehicle, college scholarships for their children and access to loans. Police may also go to the university and complete degrees at the department's expense. Of those that earn their degree nine of ten stay on at the department which indicates job satisfaction at least at higher levels.

Mexican law enforcement is divided into three fueros or jurisdictions which may not overlap: local/city, state and federal. City police have no investigative powers. They may only respond to threats to public safety like assault, robbery, etc. They do not investigate murders or other crimes. While local government has advocated in the past for expanded powers for local police, this has yet to happen. There are and have been some combined local, state and federal law-enforcement groups called mixtas but these have had a mixed record of success. They are constantly being created and disbanded such that it is difficult to keep up with the name and acronym changes. Indeed, it is often claimed that the combined groups only serve to expose local police to federal-level law-enforcement corruption.

II. State Police

Murder is investigated by the state attorney general's office. The attorney general's law-enforcement arm is the PJE, Policía Judicial del Estado. It is this group that looks into the murder of women in Cd. Juárez. Over the last two months this force has had a mixed record of success under the command of Suly Ponce Prieto, the special investigator into the disappearance of women. In one investigation the PJE did capture a man after he murdered his female neighbor and then burned down her house with her body still inside.

However, tarnishing the PJE's record was the story of PJE officers accused of torturing a bus driver during the investigation of the rape and murder of Liliana Holguín de Santiago. The bus driver, who had allegedly been dating the victim at the time of her disappearance, was pointed to by a female friend of Holguín's (although the Holguín family had indicated that the female friend could not be trusted). The agents allegedly arrested the driver without a warrant and then took him to the municipal police academy facility where he could be questioned without other people around. When the suspect was taken to Ponce's office she asked him why he was so battered and he replied that the interrogating PJE officers had tried to torture him into a confession. Ponce immediately sent the young man for medical treatment, suspended the three PJE agents and sent the case to Internal Affairs for investigation.

III. Federal Police

The Policía Judicial Federal (PJF), better known as the federales, are under the federal attorney general's office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR). They investigate all drug crimes and crimes linked to drugs, including murder. The PJF's power is such that if they see a drug-link to a murder they take the case from the state's PJE without the PJE being able to do much about the loss of jurisdiction. In the past, the PJF has allegedly taken cases from the PJE only to sit on them or bury them and this has been interpreted as PJF collusion with drug dealers.

In July and August the federales have been accused by Cd. Juárez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo of being ineffective and a danger to the safety and health of the city and the state of Chihuahua. Indeed, Elizondo periodically threatens to ask the PGR to leave the state as it does not solve crimes and only seems to be involved in them. Elizondo is currently upset with the PGR because they have not reported back to him on the status of investigations into the deaths of 28 people this year from drug-related crimes in Ciudad Juárez.

Also upsetting is the fact that in July two PJF informant/deputies were arrested in a stolen vehicle along with illegal weapons. The PJF was supposed to have stopped using the "madrina" informant/deputies years ago but now there are said to be 60 or so in the state. Indeed, in Chihuahua the PJF has only 60 agents which point to another problem of federal law-enforcement: understaffing.

In this case, on Wednesday, July 19 two alleged PJF madrinas were arrested by city police. The two men, Daniel Duarte Domínguez, age 28, and Fernando Duarte, age 17, were detained by Cd. Juárez police in a stolen vehicle containing bullets and bullet cartridges of a caliber that are illegal except for military use. The truck was reported stolen from Texas although the men said that the automobile belonged to a PJF officer.

Later, while the men were in a local-police holding station awaiting judicial and police proceedings two PJF officers, Agustín Vilchis and Juan Manuel Alfaro, entered the station and demanded their immediate release in what was called a threatening tone. The men were not immediately released as the PJF officers had wished although Daniel Duarte is now out on bond as he had no prior arrest history in Sonora or Chihuahua according to the PJF. Fernando Duarte's case is going to a juvenile court because of his age.

As it had long been thought that the PJF had stopped using informants in Cd. Juárez without the knowledge of local law enforcement, Elizondo demanded from Federal Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar that he be notified by Madrazo as to how many PJF informants are currently working in Cd. Juárez. Elizondo also demanded in his letter that the informants, Vilchis and Alfaro all resign from their positions in the federal law enforcement agency. Later, both officers were arrested although they just posted bail during the last week of August.

In a Chihuahua (City) press conference a few days after the event, Elizondo also stated that he had no doubt that the two detained madrinas were working in the service of drug lords. While no one has been arrested in any of the 28 Cd. Juárez drug-related killings this year, Elizondo said that it was men with characteristics like these that were responsible for the drug killings. The men were found to have communication equipment with them in addition to the stolen vehicle and large caliber bullets and cartridges. Also, over the past year, Elizondo has been frustrated by joint operations with the PJF and has stated that he believes that some of its members have links to organized crime.

IV. FEADS (Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos contra la Salud, a federal anti-drug force, similar to the DEA in the US)

In a separate case at the end of July, three FEADS agents were arrested along with a suspected madrina. They too were arrested by local police when they were seen to be in the process of kidnapping someone along the Río Grande. The victim later recanted his story but the agents were held for a few days after that as they were carrying guns of a size that is limited to military use. Later, a high FEADS officer brought the agents' gun permits to Cd. Juárez to free the men. However it was never explained or asked why the agents did not have these documents with them at the time of their arrest or why the documents were not at least kept somewhere in the city.

The FEADS was established a few years ago after the general in charge of its precursor the INCD was found to have been receiving money from the Carrillo Fuente Juárez cartel. Entry into FEADS was supposed to have been through a careful screening process but it appears that there are obviously severe problems with some of the agents. FEADS staffing levels also seem to be a bit low to substantiate the Mexican government's claims that it is serious about fighting a war against drugs. In October, 1999 there were reportedly only three or four FEADS agents stationed in a hotel in Cd. Juárez. To keep them from being corrupted the agents were then switched out every few months. Now, there are reportedly 16 FEADS agents in the city. However, this would still seem to be insufficient to take on the multi-billion dollar Juárez cartel, perhaps one of the biggest cartels left in the world.

V. FNS Security Predictions

Because of low pay in relation to job danger Cd. Juárez police will not reach its desired staff levels within the next two years. Most new recruits do not make it through training to become full officers and already trained and integrated police seem to leave the department at the rate of 180 per year. In regard to the state's investigations into the killings of women not much has been resolved in the past two years since the arrival of Suly Ponce Prieto and probably little will be accomplished any time soon. Ecos sin voces, a Cd. Juárez missing-women's group, constantly has problems getting the city and state to more quickly investigate reports of missing women. A Cd. Juárez newspaper even reported that local police showed up drunk to help the group look for women's bodies on the outskirts of the city. FEADS and the PJF both seem to be completely understaffed and unable to fulfill their mandates and as the news from the last two months shows both groups would appear to be involved in illegal activity.

Under Fox the situation should not change too much. Perhaps the next US president will throw Fox an easy bone by ending unilateral certification of cooperation in the war on drugs as Fox has requested. If not, a few months before drug-certification votes Mexico will occasionally arrest some big, but-not-too-big drug dealer and will root out what it pretends to be some previously unknown government, drug-related corruption just to make sure that it receives US approval. Fox may of course split the PGR and the PJF so that their relationship more closely resembles that of the Attorney General's Office and the FBI but many people doubt this will help weed out corruption.

Considering that the US will not significantly cut back drug use at any time in the foreseeable future there will always be people in Mexico ready to make a huge profit providing drugs to the US market. Thus Mexico must realize that to destroy the big cartels (Tijuana, Juárez, the Gulf, etc) would only result in more violence and chaos as new people struggle to consolidate and dominate different regions. As one long-time, drug-war Mexican journalist told FNS, killing is a sign of a drug cartel's weakness. If this is true then weakened cartels would imply more violence as new people attempt to move into the business. Unfortunately, it looks like more of the same in Chihuahua and Cd. Juárez in terms of law enforcement for the next few years. These predictions could also be extended to the rest of the border as well.