POLICE TENSIONS IN TIJUANA

With Crime Rampant, Political Rivalry Fuels Armed Feuds Between City
and State Forces.

TIJUANA -- The two police forces eyed each other across the narrow
downtown street.

On one side of 8th Street, city cops formed a line in front of their
headquarters.

On the other, 30 masked state police officers dressed in black faced
them, holding weapons.

City police had detained two state agents for allegedly threatening
the mayor's bodyguards.

The state police had come to free the two. They marched forward and
tried to shoulder their way inside the building.

The standoff last year, which ended when city police released the
agents, was one of several incidents that have pitted police force
against police force in a conflict that seems to have deepened with
each car chase and raid.

Armed confrontations between law enforcement agencies are nothing new
in Mexico, where police often take the sides of rival drug cartels.
But in Tijuana the friction is at least partly a political fight
between the National Action Party, also known as PAN, and the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

A period of relative harmony was broken when Jorge Hank Rhon, the PRI
candidate, took office as mayor in late 2004 and hired his own police
chief to run the 2,750-member municipal department, which the PAN had
controlled for more than a decade. Baja California Gov. Eugenio
Elorduy Walther of the PAN remained in charge of Tijuana's state
police force, which includes 450 investigators and a highly trained
rapid-response team.

The opposing parties have said they are a unified front against
criminal drug cartels, but the police rivalry has exposed a troubling
level of disarray.

Both police forces have been heavy-handed. In March 2005, city police
surrounded state police headquarters and at gunpoint freed two of
their officers who had been detained in a homicide investigation.

Last month, city cops again surrounded the state police building
after agents detained a city cop. And over the last year and a half,
there have been at least half a dozen confrontations between state
agents and city police assigned as bodyguards to Rhon.

The police infighting couldn't have come at a worse time. In the city
of about 1.5 million people, drug cartels are fighting for control of
lucrative trafficking routes. Many upper and middle-class residents
are moving out to avoid being targeted by kidnap-for-ransom rings.
Rampant drug addiction is fueling a surge of car thefts and robberies.

Because public safety remains the most important issue for residents,
perceptions of police can shape political destinies, causing agencies
to try to outdo or embarrass each other. "Each police force tries to
show progress and achievements while attempting to criticize and
embarrass the other force ... and the only groups benefiting from
this situation are the crime rings," said Jose Maria Ramos, the
director of the school of public administration at Tijuana's College
of the Northern Frontier.

After Rhon's municipal police chief took over, the agencies' areas of
responsibility began to blur. State authorities are in charge of
investigations, but municipal cops started expanding their turf and
pursuing their own investigations in an effort to win over public
opinion. They said they had to be more aggressive in a city overrun by crime.

The feuding flared on busy thoroughfares when state agents started
intercepting the mayor's motorcade of SUVs, which were filled with
heavily armed bodyguards. The mayor's supporters called it
harassment, but state police said the cars weren't registered. They
said they had to watch such convoys closely because they fit the
profile of organized-crime hit squads that carry out kidnappings and
assassinations throughout the city.

Each confrontation between the forces received ample coverage in
local newspapers, and some PRI politicians called the stops an
orchestrated campaign to embarrass the mayor.

Police relations worsened in January when Mexican President Felipe
Calderon dispatched thousands of soldiers and federal agents to the
city. The general in charge of "Operation Tijuana" ordered city
police to turn in their weapons while the officers were inspected for
links to organized crime.

City cops protested by patrolling with slingshots hanging from their
holsters, complaining that the anti-corruption inspections should be
extended to the state police.

Rhon stepped down as mayor in February, ending his tense cross-town
motorcades -- and things have calmed down since, said Victor Manuel
Zatarain, the city police chief. He and other law enforcement
officials say that cooperation and coordination between the agencies
have improved, especially in emergency situations.

But some experts say deep divisions still undermine efforts to thwart
organized crime. When several gunmen attacked Tijuana's General
Hospital in April to free a wounded ally, for example, most of them
escaped, despite a supposed joint operation by state and municipal police.

With the state gubernatorial campaign set to start this summer,
experts say police relations are likely to become more strained.
Minor incidents still flare into tense confrontations, as was evident
last month when state agents detained a city cop for allegedly
carrying an unlicensed weapon. When Zatarain showed up at the state
police building to clear things up, he brought seven bodyguards.
About two dozen other city police officers surrounded the building
and blocked off streets around the area, state police said.

Soon after city police took up their positions, about 50 state police
reinforcements arrived, and the two heavily armed forces ended up
staring each other down for about one hour outside the headquarters.