MEXICAN COPS LINKED TO KILLINGS?

Probe of graves leaves out local and state police

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- A high-ranking Mexican official said
Thursday that state and federal security forces could be involved in
what some fear are the killings of as many as 100 people near this
desert border town.

Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, attorney general for the state of Chihuahua,
is the first Mexican official to suggest publicly that Mexican police
may have played a role in the disappearance of people, including
several Americans, who are feared buried in mass graves being
uncovered by U.S. and Mexican investigators.

Officials have unearthed six bodies so far from grave sites in a horse
ranch and shooting range near the Juarez airport, and the digging
continues. The bodies were buried in clumps, and the ranch is rumored
to have been run by people with ties to the violent Juarez drug
cartel. An informant led officials to the grave sites.

Before the attorney general's statements, official speculation had
centered on the Juarez cartel. But so many Juarez police, along with
some federal officers and Mexican army personnel, are believed to be
tied to drug traffickers that police across the border in El Paso,
Texas, don't trust them. State and local police aren't being included
in the investigation, which is being conducted by officials from
Mexico City and the United States.

Juarez police also have been linked to the violent deaths of some of
the 200 young women who have been murdered here in recent years, and
residents in the area say they have lived in fear not only of drug
lords but also of the police.

``(Juarez police) just can't be trusted,'' said a U.S. law enforcement
agent in Texas who is familiar with Mexican drug cartels and spoke
only on the condition of anonymity. ``It is really frustrating because
we all know it, but our government refuses to act accordingly.

``For political reasons, we still certify Mexico as doing well in the
fight against drugs,'' he said. ``Is it worth a suitcase of cash to a
big country like the U.S. to tolerate this kind of
corruption?''

Not all Juarez police are corrupt, say Mexican criminologists. But
over the past year, 70 of the force's 1,300 officers have been fired
or arrested because of corruption or links to drug dealers.

``That's out of a force of hundreds, but that small minority who are
corrupt and do work with drug traffickers have the majority of the
honest cops scared and acting like ostriches,'' said Jose Antonio
Parra, a criminologist who has helped investigate the murders of women
and drug dealers in Juarez. ``The silence of the honest cops makes it
seem like the whole city is bad.''

``I am very distrustful of police,'' said Guille Prieto, 33, pulling a
pink waistcoat tight against a fall breeze. ``In Juarez, if you get
stopped you can give the police $5 and they'll let you go. Everyone
knows that. What does that tell you?''

Juarez Police Chief Javier Benavidez says his force's exclusion from
the investigation is a jurisdictional issue, and he complains that
drug dealers impersonating police have given his people a bad name.

To that, Alfredo Quijano, a longtime Juarez resident and editor of its
biggest daily newspaper, El Norte, responds: ``He'll say that because
he knows it's true that his people are going bad. We've seen new
officers arrive here and within a week they've flipped.''

``So many of them drive expensive vehicles and strut around town with
fancy jewelry,'' Quijano said, ``that it makes you wonder how they can
afford it on a cop's salary of about $300 a week.''

Some residents of Juarez, a commercially dynamic town with 500 new
residents a day, an unemployment rate of zero and 300 profitable
assembly plants selling consumer goods and car parts to Americans,
bristle at the suggestion that their city is unsafe. But they, too,
have altered their lives to avoid both the police and the drug gangs.

``Juarez has crime like any other big city, but it's the poor and
unprepared -- the many people coming here every day to look for work
- -- who are the most victimized,'' said Esther Chavez, a women's rights
activist who has worked with families of Juarez's murdered women.
``The new people don't know the risks and others are desperate to make
fast money in drugs.''

Still, Juarez is not Mexico's crime capital. The western desert city
of Culiacan has had at least 513 homicide so far this year -- most of
them tied to the drug trade. Many believe that the Juarez police force
is less corrupt than Mexico City's.

But the violent nature of the Juarez cartel -- which is suspected of
dumping the bodies in the grave sites -- and Juarez's proximity to the
United States have brought unwanted worldwide attention to the city's
police.

Will Buller, a 23-year-old physical-therapy student at the University
of Texas at El Paso, visits sprawling Juarez regularly but uneasily.

``I don't trust the cops in Juarez, never have,'' Buller said as he
walked near the Santa Fe bridge in El Paso, to cross the border to
Juarez.

Buller and college friend Carson Schniers, 24, both said they knew of
people shaken down by Juarez police and they've heard too many stories
of random deaths to trust police.

``If you go off the main roads, you put yourself at risk,'' Schniers
said. ``It's not worth it.''