GIRLS' KIDNAPPING A SIGN OF POLICE CORRUPTION IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY - Last week, three teenage girls in this crime-ridden capital
accepted a ride in a police van carrying several uniformed officers,
purportedly after asking them for directions. But instead of providing them
with a friendly lift, the officers allegedly kidnapped the girls - ages 13,
15 and 18 - and took them to a stable used for police horses, where they
held them for four days, repeatedly raping the two youngest.

The girls escaped Thursday; so far, 16 police officers have been arrested
in the case.

The incident has prompted outraged denunciations by citizens, human-rights
activists, politicians and women's groups, who see it as gruesome proof of
an accepted article of faith: In Mexico, the biggest, most dangerous and
feared gangs of criminals often are police officers themselves.

Police corruption not new

After such an "inconceivable" crime, "asking the citizens to have
confidence (in the police) would seem a distasteful joke or a macabre
prank," said Luis de la Barreda, chairman of the city's human-rights
commission.

The incident also emphasizes the role of police corruption in driving an
unprecedented three-year crime wave sweeping Mexico. In fact, most Mexicans
avoid contact with police, considering them uniformed outlaws. "If you look
at the recent crime history, there is no significant case in which on-duty
or former cops were not involved," said Rafael Ruiz Harrell, a leading
criminologist here. "They have been doing it forever; it is all they know
as a way of life."

A citizens' advisory committee on public security created by Mexico City
Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas recently recommended 89 separate investigations
into police corruption - including complicity with organized-crime groups,
extortion rackets and stolen-car, kidnapping and prostitution rings;
bribery; drug trafficking; and credit card and check fraud.

City officials could not say yesterday if they are pursuing any of the
recommendations, but a spokeswoman for Mexico City police said the agency
fires an average of 70 officers a month for corruption.

"We are witnessing the result of a lack of attention to the public security
problem for the last 40 years," said Lucio Mendoza Rios, a member of the
independent Mexican Institute of Organized Crime Studies and one of the
authors of the report. "The borderline between cops and criminals is now
unclear."

Many veteran police officials began their careers in the 1970s in special
units formed to combat leftist guerrilla groups, Mendoza said. "They were
trained in all kinds of `dirty-war' techniques, including torture,
disappearances, kidnapping," he said. "Many continued to use the same
illegal techniques in (civilian) police departments," particularly in
anti-drug squads, he said. "That's why some federal cops later became some
of the most prominent drug lords."

The abduction of the girls

Mexico City officials said that the three kidnapped girls were hospitalized
and given counseling before being returned to their families. Nine police
officers were arrested within a day of the girls' escape, and seven more
were arrested Sunday.

There were conflicting details yesterday about the circumstances of the
alleged July 18 abductions. Authorities said initially that the girls were
kidnapped after they flagged down the police van to ask for directions. But
La Jornada newspaper, citing sealed court records, reported that it was the
policemen who had asked the girls for directions. When the girls refused to
accompany the officers to show them the way, the newspaper reported, the
girls were forced into the van.

It was unclear how many men may have participated in the alleged rapes, but
some of those arrested apparently were cited for knowing what was going on
and doing nothing to stop it. One of those in custody is a police radio
operator; the rest are members of a horseback patrol unit, officials said.
They are being held pending completion of an investigation by the city
attorney.

Police structure built on bribes

In recent months, there have been numerous other sensational cases of
police corruption here. The head of the anti-kidnapping squad in the state
of Morelos, just south of Mexico City, was charged with kidnapping and
murder; the former head of Mexico's federal police was jailed on charges of
protecting the country's biggest drug dealers in exchange for millions of
dollars in bribes; 34 members and officials of Mexico City's most elite
police unit are under investigation in the execution-style slayings of
seven young men late last year; and two weeks ago, one of the city's top
police officials was fired after it was discovered he had previously been
imprisoned for kidnapping.

The prestigious weekly magazine Nexos recently published a blistering
attack on Mexico's criminal justice system that painted police forces as
little more than criminal enterprises. The article, written by a sociology
student who posed as a police cadet and patrolman for a year to write his
thesis about police corruption, depicted an entire police infrastructure
and hierarchy built on bribes.

Police corruption is so ingrained and systemic here that most analysts are
stumped about how to fix it. Some criminologists say that firing corrupt
police officers does not work because judges usually reinstate them. That
happened earlier this year when Mexican courts ordered the attorney general
to reinstate more than half of the 826 federal agents he fired last
December, most for failing drug tests.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski