LATINO POLICE CHIEF'S DRUG WAR TACTICS STIR MELTING POT

Immigration: Campaign Confounds Utah's Growing Minority Community.

Some Say It Plays To Stereotypes.

SALT LAKE CITY - No one can accuse Ruben Ortega, the dean of bigcity
Latino police chiefs, of being a slave to political
correctness.

Ortega, the 59yearold son of an immigrant who himself grew up toiling
in the fields of central Arizona next to mexicano laborers, has strong
ideas about who is to blame for the worst crime problems in Salt Lake City:
illegal immigrants.

"The drug dealers that come in here are 75% undocumented aliens,
almost all of them from Mexico," Ortega says from an office with a
panoramic view of the snowcovered Wasatch Range. "I have the
independence to do what I think is the right thing, even if some
folks don't like it." Ortega's campaign has befuddled more than a few
members of Utah's fastgrowing Latino community. Most have trouble
understanding why the son of immigrants could turn against his own
people, using what they say are statistics of dubious accuracy that
play to the worst stereotypes about immigrants.

Last year, the chief sponsored a plan to "deputize" local police to
enforce some federal immigration laws, which would have made Salt
Lake City the first municipality to enter into such an agreement with
federal authorities. The plan, which briefly put the town at the
center of a national debate about how best to combat crime committed
by illegal immigrants, was eventually defeated because of strong
opposition from Latino leaders.

"That was the nail in the coffin for a lot of us," says Lee Martinez,
a fourthgeneration Utahan and the only Latino ever to serve on the
Salt Lake City Council. "When Chief Ortega first came here, a lot of
Chicanos said, 'He's one of us.' Now I'm not so sure he is." When
the City Council voted in September not to adopt Ortega's plan, they
may have ensured that no other major U.S. city would embrace a
similar proposal. Utah's small band of Latino activists had won a
famous victory. In the process, they also made an enemy of Salt Lake
City's first Latino chief, who, in the aftermath of the defeat, has
shown few signs of backing down.

"The Hispanic crime figures are indisputable," Ortega says. Latinos
account for just 12% of Salt Lake City's 160,000 residents, he
argues, yet make up 56% of the homicide victims. "We had to help the
Mexican Consulate ship those bodies back to Mexico because a lot of
those people were undocumented." That some of the most important
battles in this country's ongoing immigration wars are being fought
far from the polyglot urban centers of Los Angeles, Miami and New York
is due in large measure to the personality of Ortega himself, a man
who rarely has shied from a fight.

"I know that I can talk about Hispanic crime figures and the bricks
and rocks won't be thrown at me," says Ortega, who was one of seven
semifinalists for the Los Angeles Police Department's top job in
1997. "An Anglo chief wouldn't be able to say the same thing." Even
today, there are only a handful of Latino police chiefs in major U.S.
cities. Ortega joined the Phoenix Police Department in 1960 as one of
only five Latinos on the force. An articulate speaker with a
disarming manner, he quickly moved up the ranks, becoming an early
master of "community relations." Assignment Brings Mixed Emotions
When Cesar Chavez arrived in town in the late 1960s, campaigning to
organize lettuce workers, Ortega was assigned to keep tabs on him.

It was a moment of conflicting emotions for Ortega, who, as a young
man, had worked in the fields in the early mornings alongside his
father, Epifanio.

One night, Ortega listened in as Chavez led a large gathering in a
prayer for the safety of all those who would attend a demonstration,
including police. In the days that followed, Ortega says, "we never
arrested any Hispanic protesters." In 1980, he became chief, making
Phoenix the largest city to appoint a Latino to such a position. His
11year tenure was marked by several controversies, including a 1987
drug bust targeting several members of the Phoenix Suns basketball
team. Most of the charges were later reduced or dismissed. In 1986, he
took heat for telling the Chamber of Commerce that his own force
contained "thieves, dopers and lazy officers." The final chapter
came with "AZscam," a sting targeting members of the Arizona State
Legislature. The undercover operation netted a halfdozen corrupt
lawmakers, who were later convicted, but won Ortega a slew of new
enemies. Civil libertarians questioned the methods of the chief and
the district attorney.

Shortly after City Councilwoman Linda Nadolski questioned his
power"Who will protect us from Chief Ortega?"he stepped down.

Ortega says he left Phoenix to cash in on his retirement. Not long
afterward, he took the Salt Lake City job.

His mandate, Ortega says, was to modernize the 410strong police
force. Computers were installed in squad cars. A civilian police
review board was established. He has drawn strong praise from Mayor
Deedee Corandini.

Most Latino leaders here greeted his arrival warmly, hoping Ortega
would put an end to decades of mistrust between police and the
community. But they soon clashed over the chief's crimefighting
tactics on the city's west side, a workingclass community of modest
brick houses now home to a diverse population that includes Latinos
drawn to the region's booming economy.

Pioneer Park, where 19thcentury Mormon settlers camped their first
winter in Utah, had been taken over by drug dealers. Gangs had
appeared with strange names that, it turned out, were taken from Los
Angeles neighborhoods.

One of Ortega's first moves was to create a program of citizen
patrols called Mobile Watch. Equipped with cellular phones and free
gasoline, residents were sent off to reconnoiter their neighborhoods
in private vehicles, calling in "suspicious activity" to police
dispatchers.

Mobile Watch caught on, especially among Mormon families, drawing on
their strong traditions of volunteerism. Soon, hundreds of residents
had joined.

"The people actually volunteering for this were all white," says
Robert "Archie" Archuleta, a Latino activist. "The people being
targeted were people of color. Our people." Jolynn Gibson, a
volunteer from the community of Rosepark, doesn't see it that way. "I
don't care what race they are. If something is happening, we're going
to call it in." Seemingly Always Under Surveillance Just a few blocks
down from Gibson's home lives Timoteo Mancera, a Mexican immigrant in
his 20s and the owner of a catering truck. He says the local Mobile
Watch made his life hell for a year after he moved to the
neighborhood.

"For very little things they would bother me," he says. They called
police because he had no license plate on the front of his truck.

They called city authorities when he built a wooden fence in front of
his property. They called police because the registration tags on his
truck were going to expire in two days. "They were always watching
us." Councilman Martinez says many Latino residents felt under siege.

"If we're drinking beer in the park, if there are several single men
sitting in front of a house, they get reported as something
suspicious," Martinez says. At the root of the problems, he believes,
are radically different ideas of what constitutes "appropriate" behavior.

"There's a lot of moralists out there," he says. "And if you don't
live by their commandments, you're wrong." For some, the gap between
the two culturesone white and predominantly Mormon, the other Latino
and largely Roman Catholichas only been exacerbated by Ortega's stand
on illegal immigration.

Tide Turned Against Plan During a yearlong campaign for his
"crossdeputization" plan with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, Ortega argued that illegal immigration helped fuel the drug
trade and, by extension, other crimes. Drug barons in Mexico, he
said, used immigrants as "mules" to carry cocaine and heroin to the
north.

With city jails overcrowded, the mules were often being released
hours after arrest. "We can't hold them," he said. "We lack the
resources." The arguments struck a chord with many residents. A
Deseret News editorial said the deputization plan would send a
message to illegal immigrants to "stay away from Utah." The plan
appeared certain to pass, but Latino leaders fought back by charging
that Ortega had grossly exaggerated the extent of immigrantrelated
crime. Attorney Mike Martinez said the chief had his numbers wrong,
citing a news report that the number of Latinos arrested on suspicion
of drug crimes citywide was just 15%. (Ortega countered that his 75%
figure referred only to drug dealers, not all drug crimes.) If
immigrants believed local police might be working for la migra, the
Latino activists said, they would no longer report crimes.

Routine traffic stops would become checks for "papers" that would
target all Latinos, including U.S. citizens. The tide quickly turned,
and the City Council voted down the plan, 4 to 3.

Months later, the chief's relations with the Latino community are
still strained.

"Our feeling is that Ruben is a good person. But he's also a
policeman," says Jesse Soriano, former head of the Utah Coalition de
La Raza. "That's what he's been all his life. That's the way he sees
the world." The chief, for his part, has stuck to his guns. He
continues to bemoan crimes committed by immigrant drug dealers.

"They're giving a terrible reputation to the Hispanic community as a
whole. This is our community. If one part of it is ill, let's all get in
and see what we can do."