IN MEXICO'S DRUG WARS, LOCAL POLICE STEPPING UP

Efforts To Boost Forces Challenges Traditions

URUAPAN, Mexico -- One of the main doors of the police station here is
riddled with bullet holes. Shrapnel from grenades scars nearby walls.
Inside, a makeshift shrine to the Virgin Mary honors three local
officers who died in the past year fighting Mexico's drug
traffickers.

So far, it's been a one-sided battle. The police force in Uruapan, a
city of 280,000 that sits astride a major smuggling route in the
Sierra Madre mountains, doesn't have a single detective. Mexican law
prevents local police from questioning witnesses, doing undercover
work or searching homes. The department is so poor that officers must
buy their own bullets, at about 75 cents a pop, for target practice.

"We're the ones out there every day, the easy targets for the drug
traffickers," says Police Chief Adolfo Medina, whose house was hit by
gunfire in March. "But we're handicapped."

That may be changing. As Mexico's U.S.-funded drug war reaches new
levels of violence, President Felipe Calderon's government has
launched a $1 billion drive to train and equip beleaguered local
police forces that, historically, focused on rounding up town drunks
or dishing out traffic violations.

The goal, Calderon says, is to produce competent and non-corrupt local
police forces that can fight alongside Mexico's federal police and
army -- which, until now, have done most of the heavy lifting in the
anti-drug fight.

More than 11,500 people have died in drug-related violence nationwide,
including hundreds of police, since Calderon took office in 2006.
Despite his vow to destroy the cartels, they still control 90% of the
cocaine that flows into the USA, and some violence from their turf
wars has spilled into Georgia, Arizona and other states.

Improving Mexico's police will require not just more money, but a
change of culture, commanders say. Police forces in several cities
including Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, have been
purged of hundreds of officers who were found to be on the cartels'
payroll. Many officers in Uruapan admit they still routinely accept
bribes to supplement their salaries, which run as low as $460 a month.

"For so many years, being a police officer was seen as a part-time
job, something you did when you couldn't get anything better," says
Daniel Anaya, the assistant police chief in Uruapan. "We have to
convince people that this is a profession and a career -- something
you don't want to throw away by doing something stupid or corrupt."

One welcome change: The officers in Uruapan finally have uniforms.
Previously, "you got a pair of black jeans, a black T-shirt, and you
were a policeman," Officer Guillermo Cortes says.

The city's 500 officers also now carry assault rifles, bulletproof
vests and even handheld computers linked to the Internet. They must
pass regular drug tests. Medina has started requiring officers to earn
their high-school equivalency degrees or lose their jobs.

A USA TODAY reporter recently spent several days riding along with
Uruapan's police. As they chased down suspicious vehicles and hunted
for local drug labs, officers said they had seen some progress but
still voiced frustrations at their low salaries and bad public reputation.

Rafael Trujillo, a patrolman, says he made twice as much money working
illegally as a busboy in California than he does as a police officer.
"I might go back to the other side," he says glumly, referring to the
United States. "It's too little pay, and it's very dangerous work."

Octavio Rodriguez, an expert on Mexican crime at the University of
California-San Diego, says local police forces are critical because,
at least in theory, they should know their own cities better than
federal forces do. Of the $400 million in anti-drug aid that the U.S.
government is sending Mexico this year, about $4.5 million is
earmarked for improving local police.

More is needed, Rodriguez says. "You have to fight the cartels from
the ground up," he says. "They cannot win this war without the local
police. It's impossible."

The radio in the police patrol truck crackles: "Caller reports a blue
Chevrolet Suburban, '30-meters' with long weapons," says the
dispatcher, using the code word for armed men. Driver Gabriel Raya
hits the gas. The siren screams.

This is how the bloodshed often begins, team commander Gabriel
Espinosa says. Typically, a convoy of traffickers rolls into Uruapan
to protect a drug shipment or kill a rival, he says. Transit police
try to stop them, and a firefight breaks out.

In the back seat, patrolwoman Gabriela Aguilar chambers a round in her
AR-15 assault rifle and pokes the muzzle out the window. There are
three Gabriels (counting Gabriela) and a Rafael in Espinosa's team.
Espinosa calls them "The Archangels."

Espinosa's truck careens at high speed through a city that, at times,
resembles one big crime scene.

There's a gazebo where dismembered bodies were dumped in March and
June. A house where rival drug gangs fought in May still has blown-out
windows. Signs featuring the face of Maribel Martinez, a city official
kidnapped by suspected traffickers last year, flap from telephone poles.

The violence in Uruapan has gotten worse as cartels lash out at the
government crackdown, which has succeeded in reducing cocaine supply
to some U.S. cities, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration. The drug gangs terrorize police, soldiers and
civilians with AK-47 rifles -- known in Mexico as cuernos de chivo, or
goat's horns, for their curved magazines.

"Before, (gangs) killed one person at a time," says Eliezer Renteria,
another of the six officers on Espinosa's team. "Now it's four, five.
People getting 100 bullets from a cuerno de chivo. Massacres. It's
crazy."

The truck abruptly slams to a stop. A black Chevrolet Suburban with
tinted windows sits at the end of the street. More police trucks roar
up, and the officers rush the vehicle with their AR-15s at the ready.
It's empty.

"Keep looking," Espinosa says. The trucks search for two hours but
cannot find the blue Suburban.

Federal police monitor the municipal radio frequency, Espinosa says
with exasperation. None showed up to help.

Relying too much on the federal police has long been a problem for
local forces.

Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico's Public Safety secretary, says city and
state police represent 93% of Mexico's 338,000 law enforcement
officers. Yet, in his 2006 book Why Aren't 1,661 Police Forces
Enough?, he wrote that local forces often are poorly trained, corrupt,
underequipped and made lazy by "a social expectation that federal
authorities should be the ones to solve every type of crime."

"It's a vicious cycle of, 'These police aren't good for anything, so
why should we put any money into them?' " says Allison Rowland, a
former professor at Mexico's Center for Economic Research and Education.

Part of President Calderon's new strategy is dispatching federal
police commanders to take over municipal forces in smuggling hot
spots. Chief Medina and his assistant chief, Anaya, are on loan from
the federal highway patrol.

One of Medina's first acts was to fortify the police station, which
last came under attack in March. The building is still commonly known
among locals as la borracha -- "the drunk tank," in Spanish slang --
because, until recently, that was its primary use.

To try to attract recruits, Medina also is using federal funds to pay
cadets a $300-a-month stipend during their six-month training course.
Previously, cadets had to support themselves.

Medina also eliminated the typical Mexican police shift of 24 hours
on, 24 hours off. Uruapan's police now work 12 hours on, 24 hours off.

"It was ridiculous," Medina said. "You had officers working 24 hours
straight, then staying late to do paperwork. Those people were so
exhausted they were worthless."

Meanwhile, Calderon's government is pushing through changes to give
police greater legal powers. A constitutional amendment passed in
March 2008 could allow local forces to finally set up their own
detective branches. Another law passed in January requires municipal
police to undergo background checks against a national database of
criminal records and provides more federal funds for new equipment.

Responding to another call, Espinosa's crew takes up positions behind
an army platoon clustered around a warehouse. Federal detectives are
breaking open the lock.

Inside, the soldiers discover magazines full of AK-47 bullets
scattered across a patio. In the rooms beyond are hundreds of sacks
and 55-gallon drums containing chemicals used for making
methamphetamines.

It's a major find -- but the Mexican military claims credit. Lt. Col.
Oswaldo Bejar boasts that his unit has made five busts in eight days
in Uruapan, many of them using a chemical-sniffing device known as a
GT-200.

Asked whether Mexican municipal police could use their local knowledge
to take over this kind of work, Bejar laughs and shakes his head.
Another soldier turns to Espinosa and asks him if he knows where a
single drug trafficker lives in Uruapan.

"No," Espinosa says coolly. The soldier smiles and walks
away.

Minutes later, Espinosa and his crew are back in their truck -- but
they're still fuming over the insult. "It's not like they know,
either," Espinosa mutters.

A recent report by the RAND Corp., a U.S. think tank, said Mexico's
drug fight has been crippled by turf wars between the country's
various security forces. Often city police will find a murder victim,
but state homicide detectives won't tell them the victim's identity,
says Cortes, one of the Uruapan officers.

"Because of that, we don't know who's killing whom," he says. "They
search a house in our jurisdiction, and we hear about it on the news."

State police say recent events give them good reason to distrust local
forces. In April, troops arrested all of the police officers in four
towns in the border state of Chihuahua. Troops confiscated 828 assault
rifles from the police in Monterrey and surrounding suburbs in June.

Local police "have a bad image here," says Luis Leon Navarrete, a
spokesman for the Michoacan state prosecutor's office. "It's not like
in the United States."

Chief Medina says he has used federal funds to double the wages of
patrol officers to about $615 a month. But many officers interviewed
earn much less -- which, in their minds, makes it OK to occasionally
accept small bribes.

The practice of taking mordidas, or bites, from citizens -- usually to
allow them to get out of traffic tickets -- continues unabated among
the force's division of traffic policemen, officer Antonio Martinez
says.

"All of us take mordidas -- 100% of us," he says. "Maybe not all the
time. Maybe one time in 10. It buys lunch for one day."

Medina insists he sees evidence of improvement, though. A few days
after the bust at the meth warehouse, he listens to an account of
Espinosa's contentious exchange with the army soldiers.

It was, in fact, city police who first learned about the warehouse
after a June 16 shootout with traffickers, Medina says. They notified
the federales.

"Now they finally came to take a look," Medina says. "They don't see
us as full partners yet. But eventually they'll have to.