BOY'S SLAYING BLAMED ON POLICE RAISES UPROAR IN MEXICO

President Calderon And Others Renew Calls For An End To Justice
System Corruption

MEXICO CITY - Official accusations that Mexico City policemen were
behind the kidnap-slaying of a 14-year-old boy fed renewed calls
Tuesday for reforming the country's corruption-plagued justice system.

The decomposed body of Fernando Marti, who was kidnapped two months
ago, was discovered in a car trunk on Friday.

Three men, including a local police commander and one of his agents,
have been arrested in connection with the killing of Fernando Marti,
who was kidnapped two months ago at a phony police checkpoint.

Mexico City authorities said that as many as 14 other policemen - all
from a detectives unit operating at the Mexico City airport - were
under investigation.

News of the arrests dominated the capital's airwaves Tuesday and
filled the news and opinion pages of newspapers.

"The crime wave unpardonably advances because of corruption, the
fragility of what we call the rule of law, the inefficiency of
police," El Universal, one of the Mexican capital's leading
newspapers, said in an editorial.

President Felipe Calderon called Tuesday for greater cooperation
between federal, state and local police - something his
administration has been pushing since coming into office in December 2006.

"If we were more united," Calderon said, "surely by now we would have
advanced much more along the road to improving the police."

"This situation has to mobilize the entire society," he said.

Calderon, who has made fighting organized crime an anchor of his
administration, has proposed greater cooperation, equipment and
training for Mexico's more than 400,000 local, state and federal
police. He'll partly pay for that program with some of the $400
million in U.S. aid provided under the Merida Initiative approved by
Congress earlier this year.

MartA- was kidnapped as he was being driven to school in southern
Mexico City in early June. His chauffeur and bodyguard were found the
next day, stuffed into a car trunk. The chauffeur was dead and the
bodyguard, who had been strangled, died a few days later.

The Marti family - who in January sold controlling interest of its
chains of sporting-good stores and gyms - reportedly paid a ransom of
$5 million. But Fernando Marti was never seen alive again.

The boy was taken by the so-called Flower Gang, which left a single
flower as a calling card at the site of Marti's kidnapping and at
least three others in the past two years, police said.

"It's a well-organized group," Miguel Angel Mancera, Mexico City's
attorney general, said. "They operate with checkpoints, capturing the
victims. In all the other cases, the victims have been returned."

Cell Phone Tied Officer to Crime

Prosecutors said Jose Luis Romero, commander of a large detective
unit operating at the capital's airport, was arrested. The commander
was linked to the crime by calls made from his cell phone, Romero
said, but he declined to discuss other details of the case.

The second officer under arrest is a member of Romero's group, which
was tasked with stopping hijackings of cargo trucks near the airport.

"An investigation and review of the police is expected," Mancera said.

The Mexican capital's security forces are being shaken up, yet again.
But that process started before MartA-'s body was found, when Mexico
City's police chief and a number of commanders were fired after a
botched crackdown on a bar serving teens. Nine young people and three
policemen were killed in a stampede.

But Mexico City is hardly alone in dealing with problem officers.

Officials in Jalisco state, whose capital is Guadalajara, accuse an
agent with the state police's anti-kidnapping unit of masterminding
the killing of six members of a family last week.

Prosecutors said the officer decided to organize the break-in of the
family's home after helping negotiate a $100,000 ransom for a family
member kidnapped last spring. The gang that invaded the home demanded
another $100,000. When things went awry, the prosecutors said, the
police killed all the family members, including two girls ages 7 and 8.

Some experts argue that the extent of police corruption and the
eroding public security situation have passed the point for a simple
reorganization to fix.

"We need a complete purge," said Arturo Arango, a public security
specialist at a Mexico City think tank.

"We have heard so many times that they are going to straighten out
and clean up the police. It's never happened."