SPREADING DRUG WAR BLOODIES PUERTO RICO

Homicide Rate Is More Than Three Times U.S. Average

SAN JUAN - Edwin Meléndez Primos died from a gunshot wound in his right ear.
Thirty-one-year-old Alcidez Bauzá Rivera was found with five bullets lodged
in his body. And José Almazar Correa, 20, was killed following a shootout in
a small town near here.

Their deaths were notable because they were among 16 people who were killed
last month in the same week and for pretty much the same reason: They and
others have become statistics in an expanding drug war that has given Puerto
Rico the dubious distinction of being one of the bloodiest places in the
United States.

According to federal crime statistics, Puerto Rico's homicide rate of 18 per
100,000 people in 2000 was more than three times the national average and
higher than any U.S. state. But as the national average has decreased about
30 percent since 1995, Puerto Rico's rate has remained about the same those
years. About 400 people have already died this year, and authorities blame
the violence on turf battles fueled by a scarcity of drugs on the island
since last fall.

Puerto Rico has always served as a transshipment point for drugs --
primarily from Colombia -- to the U.S. mainland. But with increased
surveillance since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, less drugs are flowing
through.

GANGS COMPETING

As a result, authorities say, more gangs are competing to supply an
increasing demand and killing each other to protect their respective turfs.

''There is a problem,'' Miguel Pereira, superintendent of the Puerto Rico
police, says of the escalating violence, and it's a problem whose root is in
poverty and addictions.

He and other officials say the key to breaking the cycle of violence is
getting rid of the addictions that make the trade so lucrative.

''We have a lot of gangs who protect their territories,'' said Dr. Pío
Rechani, executive director of the Institute of Forensic Sciences, which
investigates violent crimes. These are not organized groups, Rechani said,
but loosely allied bands of low-level drug dealers in one neighborhood or
another.

Most of the homicides are occurring in San Juan and the greater metropolitan
areas of Bayamón, Carolina and Caguas. But the southern city of Ponce also
has a high homicide rate. Of 372 homicides reported as of mid-July, 297
occurred in the five cities, which also are among the most populated.

About four million people live on the island, with at least half
concentrated in areas in and around the San Juan capital.

Authorities said cocaine is the drug of choice among users but also say
there has been a shift to heroin over the last three years, expanding the
war.

''We have seen a disturbing increase of heroin use,'' Pereira said. `We need
to remove customers from the client base.''

HOUSING PROJECTS

In Puerto Rico, many of the shootouts that end in death happen at low-income
housing projects such as one in San Juan, said to be the largest in the
United States with more than 100 apartment buildings.

''You can't go in there without a gun. Forget it,'' Agent Orlando Morales, a
16-year veteran of the police department, said during a recent patrol. ``At
night, all you hear is gunfire.''

The newspapers report the shootings, but since most of them take place in
poorer towns, public outrage hasn't reached a crescendo. Nearly all of the
victims are young males from poor neighborhoods, as are most of the suspects
in the cases that have resulted in arrests.

Many of the shooters are using pistols and automatic weapons brought to the
island from various states, including Florida, New York, Illinois and Texas,
according to ballistic tests that can trace the origin of weapons.

Rechani said the shooters' weapons of choice tend to be automatic with a lot
of firepower -- AK-47s, AR-15s and 9 mm pistols.

''Instead of six bullets, you have double or more,'' he said.

The government is trying to address the problem by incorporating the various
government agencies into an ''anti-crime plan'' devised earlier this year.

''The only way to fight a complex problem is to come up with a complex
solution,'' said Pereira, who was appointed to head the police force in
December.

One of the department's biggest challenges is overcoming a reputation for
corruption. About 60 police officers have been arrested during the last year
on a variety of corruption charges, many of them with ties to the drug
trade.

''There is a lack of trust the Puerto Rican people have for police,''
Pereira said. ``Are we being misjudged? The answer is no. The arrests [of
police officers] represent less than 1 percent of the department. Still,
even one officer is one officer too many.''

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

Among the police department's proposed solutions is more cooperation in task
force operations involving the FBI and DEA; pay raises for police officers
who earn an average of $22,000 a year; and increased training for the 19,000
member force.

Plans also are under way to increase the number of forensic investigators by
10 for a total of 40. The investigators, assigned to the Institute of
Forensic Sciences in San Juan, cover homicides in about 65 percent of the
island. The institute is considering assigning a unit to Ponce.

''Murder is the principal concern, obviously, in Puerto Rico. And we are
solving more murders than we did a year ago,'' said Pereira, adding that
about 40 percent of the pending cases have been cleared.

''That represents a very good police effort,'' he said. ``It means citizens
are misbehaving, not that cops are indifferent.

''I think we would be very successful if in the end of two years, we'd have
a 30 to 35 percent drop in the murder rate and if we solved 45 percent of
the murder cases by end of this year,'' Pereira said. ``That's the goal
we're working toward.'