IN TIJUANA, UNLIKELY LAWMAN ANSWERS HIGH-STAKES CALL

Capella Accepts Job Few Others Want Amid Drug Violence

TIJUANA, Mexico -- If this country's war on drugs is going to work,
the new police commissioner here, Alberto Capella, needs to stay
alive. The trouble is, men like Mr. Capella are a dying breed. In the
past year and a half, about 450 Mexican lawmen have been killed by
the country's drug gangs, including a growing list of police chiefs.
Weeks ago, hit men killed the head of Mexico's elite Federal Police.

The killings have instilled such fear that some Mexican cities now
resemble the brutal cliche of Western movies, where no one wants to
wear the sheriff's badge. The police chiefs of Chihuahua, a state
capital, and Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas,
both walked off the job recently, afraid for their lives. No one
wanted the Ciudad Juarez job, so the new chief is an army officer on
loan from the military.

Mr. Capella, a lawyer with no previous law-enforcement experience, is
one of the few willing to take on such jobs.

In so doing, he has stepped into the middle of a tug-of-war for the
soul of Mexican law enforcement. On one side of the fight are
powerful narcotics barons who have corrupted police agencies with
cash, violence and the macho allure of the drug trade. President
Felipe Calderon and recruits such as Mr. Capella are battling to
bring these agencies back into the service of civil society.
President Bush wants to help Mexico win that fight with $500 million
in U.S. drug aid. But Congress is set to cut the package by at least
20% and wants Mexico to meet higher human-rights and corruption
benchmarks as part of any aid agreement.

In Mexico's drug war, it isn't clear which side has the upper hand.
Mr. Calderon has deployed 25,000 troops to cities, including here in
Tijuana, where drug lords hold sway, and has scored a string of
seizures, arrests and extraditions. Drug gangs have retaliated by
slaughtering policemen. Mr. Capella almost didn't make it to the job.
A few nights before he officially began working, armed men stormed
his Tijuana home. Awakened by dogs, Mr. Capella grabbed an assault
rifle left by his daytime guards. He fired from different windows to
confuse the intruders, he said. The men fled after raking his home
with return fire.

"I said to myself: God gave us a second chance, we have some extra
hours, let's take advantage of it and do something worthwhile," says
Mr. Capella, who now has a large, 24-hour security contingent.

Despite the aptitude for gunplay, Mr. Capella is an unlikely lawman.
A chubby father of three, Mr. Capella was for a long time Tijuana's
chief law-enforcement critic: As the head of a citizens' watchdog
group, he led protests to pressure officials to stop a wave of
kidnappings of businessmen and their families by drug gangs. He and
others accused police of complicity with crime organizations.

The victims he met during his activist days deepened his commitment,
he said. One that sticks with him: A father whose kidnapped son was
murdered even though the father had paid the ransom as asked. When
Mr. Capella started receiving credible death threats, he dug in,
sending his wife and children to live in another city. Mr. Capella
said he could hardly refuse last year when Tijuana's newly elected
mayor -- from Mr. Calderon's law-and-order political party -- asked
him to be part of the solution and take over the police force. It
hasn't been an easy move. Mr. Capella is surrounded by bodyguards
with automatic weapons when he arrives each day at the cramped police
headquarters. The guards, some with flack jackets over their street
clothes, take up positions outside his office.

It soon becomes obvious they are protecting Mr. Capella not only from
the bad guys on the streets, but from some of the policemen who work
for him. When a municipal police officer wanders into the hall
outside Mr. Capella's office, a guard wearing aviator sunglasses and
toting an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle blocks him. "You know you aren't
supposed to be here," he intones, prompting the uniformed cop to
sheepishly turn around and leave. Mr. Capella chose an outsider to
run day-to-day operations: A lean military officer who walks the
halls of police headquarters with an AR-15 in one hand and a
semi-automatic pistol jammed into his waistband. They aren't just
being paranoid. In December, the new police chief in the nearby
coastal resort of Rosarito barely escaped an assassination attempt
from his own men.

In the climate of mistrust that has taken hold in Mexico, Mr.
Capella's survival of the armed attack on his home has spurred rumors
about his possible allegiances to drug barons. Mr. Capella calls
these notions ridiculous.

What is clear is that no matter how clean someone appears in Mexico,
officials such as Mr. Capella can come under enormous pressure to
defect. In Mexican lore, cops are given a choice of plata o plomo --
silver or lead. Accept cash to look the other way, or get shot.

It is hard to fathom why Mr. Capella would accept such stakes. Mr.
Capella says he is defending his home. Unseen by the Americans who
jam Tijuana's seedy bars, the city has a vast middle class that
thrives on economic ties to San Diego. For generations, families such
as the Capellas carved out quiet lives in sun-drenched communities
perfumed by ocean breezes. The wave of middle-class kidnappings by
drug gangs seeking to diversify their income is destroying this
suburban dream. Families are moving away. Others isolate themselves
behind bodyguards and bullet-resistant glass. Indeed, Mr. Capella's
crusade is more about pushing drug-related crime back out of sight
than stopping the drugs trade, he says. "How are we going to stop the
shipments if there is always someone who wants to buy it over there?"
he asks, nodding in the direction of the U.S. border. "At the same
time, the narcos have to understand that if they mess with society,
then their party will be over."

Reforming the police will take time, Mr. Capella admits. Under a
national plan, members of the force are undergoing psychological
exams and lie-detector tests to determine if they are on the take.
Mexican law prevents Mr. Capella from summarily firing those who fail
the tests. But the tests have prompted some to quit, and give him an
idea of who is who in the force. Mr. Capella is also trying to make
police work a respected job. He is recruiting local businessmen to
set up scholarships to pay for private education for the children of
decorated cops.

Violence is still a part of life. In January, a gun battle erupted
when police stopped a carload of drug traffickers who had taken rival
gang members prisoner. Army backup was called in, and the ensuing gun
battle near a kindergarten left more than a thousand shell casings on
the streets. Despite the carnage, analysts considered it a victory:
In the past, the drug traffickers might have simply bribed their way
out and driven off. This time, the authorities tried to take them down.

"We are doing a chemotherapy," Mr. Capella says. "These ugly images
of soldiers rescuing the children from the kindergarten, this is part
of the therapy. This is the hair falling out. But we, as a society,
are attacking the problem. We want to take this therapy, for all the
pain that it generates."