PRESIDENT FOX WILL CHALLENGE MEXICAN POLICE, PROSECUTORS

TIJUANA, Mexico -- A week after announcing a crusade against drug
smuggling, President Vicente Fox took on the nation's law enforcement
system Wednesday, pleading with all Mexicans to help keep police and
prosecutors honest.

Traveling to one of the nation's most violent cities, Fox urged Mexicans to
report common crimes and announced a citizens' program to scrutinize the
law enforcement system in an effort to restore faith in the nation's
crime-busters.

Many crimes go unreported in Mexico because citizens have little faith that
they will be investigated fairly. Those that are reported are largely
ignored -- even when there is a wealth of evidence -- and even traffic
police are known for holding people on false charges and demanding bribes.

Cases that do go to trial can spend years working their way through a
corrupt judicial system, and even prosecutors with the best intentions are
held up by a lack of resources.A promise of change

On Wednesday, Fox promised to change all that.

After pledging to fight organized crime and drug smuggling a week ago, Fox
announced another phase of his crime-fighting program. It includes opening
up the files of law enforcement offices to the public, giving people a look
at what police and prosecutors are doing to fight crime.

"Let's build a new relationship between the authorities and society: a
government that fulfills its responsibility, and a society that evaluates
and participates," Fox said.

Fox also pledged to release future crime statistics on a timely basis --
something many previous governments didn't do -- and give police and
prosecutors better tools to do their jobs.A change of attitudes

Most of all, though, he asked Mexicans to change past apathetic attitudes
and denounce crime and corruption.

"Denouncing crime eliminates the possibility that it can take place in the
dark," he said.

Past attempts to fight corruption in the nation's law enforcement have
largely failed in the face of an entrenched culture of bribery and
disrespect for the law.

Fox chose to announce the program in Tijuana because it has the country's
highest record of violent crime, aides said. It is also the home of the
notorious Arellano Felix drug gang.

On Jan. 24, Fox traveled to Culiacan, another city near the Pacific coast
plagued by drugs and violence, to declare a nationwide war on narcotics
trafficking and organized crime.

He promised a complete overhaul of the nation's corrupt prison system and
strict adherence to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling that removed the last
barriers for extraditing Mexicans for trial in the United States.

However, past attempts at fighting the country's growing drug trade have
largely failed due to widespread corruption. A few weeks after being
appointed Mexico's drug czar in 1996, former Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo
was jailed for taking bribes from a drug cartel.