DID JUDGES AID DRUG DEALERS?

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The island's police-corruption scandal widened
dramatically Thursday with 23 more officers indicted on charges of
protecting drug dealers and traffickers, and news that the web of bribes
may have spilled over into the court system.

So far, more than 60 police officers have been charged in drug-related
investigations since August.

The officers caught in Operation Blue Shame in the southern city of Ponce
are charged with protecting drug buys, returning seized cocaine and heroin
to dealers, lying to prosecutors to thwart cases, selling stolen guns and
drugs, and helping to hide dealers during drug stings.

But acting Assistant U.S. Attorney Guillermo Gil said what worried him even
more were the lies, delay tactics and administrative maneuvering that
apparently put some prosecutors and judges in collusion with the street thugs.

Gil said he had no jurisdiction to charge the judges and prosecutors. But
he did write letters to local justice and court officials asking them to
investigate three judges, a marshal and two prosecutors for acts that
surfaced during the police probe.

In a news conference Thursday, he said he had informed the Puerto Rico
Supreme Court about an incriminating tape of one judge "in which he admits
he has accepted payments from lawyers and bail bondsmen, and he asks for
more right then and there."

Puerto Rico Justice Secretary Anabelle Rodriguez said she will immediately
investigate the two prosecutors who are under suspicion.

The federal police probe began in August 2000, five months before Rodriguez
came on board. But authorities have been monitoring the suspected
prosecutors and judges to make sure no significant damage was done to any
important cases.

The latest bombshell involving the police comes during a week in which
citizen anger over public corruption scandals hit a fever pitch.

As a former House speaker charged with extortion and money laundering
walked out of the Capitol for good Monday, Puerto Ricans learned about
another investigation into kickback allegations against a mayor and a
former education secretary.

The fallout from former Education Secretary Victor Fajardo's alleged
extortion schemes, now being investigated by a federal grand jury, not only
touches more people in the previous administration of Gov. Pedro Rossello
but also is tainting the New Progressive Party itself.

"This situation here is very serious," political analyst Marco Antonio
Rigau told irate listeners on the radio Thursday. "The information about
more corruption just keeps on coming so much, I don't know where to start."

Thursday's arrests added to the growing number of police officers charged
with protecting drug shipments or helping cocaine distribution in some manner.

Twenty-nine officers were put behind bars in Operation Lost Honor on Aug.
14. In terms of the numbers of officers involved, it was the largest police
anti-corruption sting in FBI history.

Those officers were caught on tape, sometimes in uniform and in their
patrol cars, protecting drug shipments from intervention by rival drug
gangs or other police.

One police technician was seen and heard advising an informant, who was
posing as a drug dealer, about the best way to dispose of a body and avoid
detection.

Not as many officers are involved in Operation Blue Shame. But Gil
considers the case much more serious because, he said, drug dealers paid
officers to lie to prosecutors, give false testimony and to release people
they should have arrested.

They also were paid to skip trials, therefore forcing cases to expire, he said.

In exchange for cash, investigators said, officers also returned drugs that
had been seized in raids, lied to help suspects get released from jail and
let suspects hide during a drug sting.

Some also stole guns from third parties and sold them while others stole
drugs from a drug-trafficking organization and sold it back to the dealers.
Individual payments ranged from $500 to $12,000.

Although not charged in this case, prosecutors and judges are suspected of
delaying trials, misplacing motions, giving "preferential treatment" to
cases handled by certain criminal lawyers and other actions, short of
overtly throwing cases, to make it more difficult to secure convictions.

Associate Supreme Court Judge Francisco Rebollo Lopez announced late
Thursday afternoon that he had temporarily relieved two of the judges
pending an investigation.

Federal agents arrested all but one of the 23 police officers and suspect
the missing officer may be somewhere in New Jersey. The leader of one of
the drug-trafficking rings also is at large.

Operation Blue Shame is the latest embarrassment to hit the 19,000- member
Puerto Rico Police Department, where a combination of low pay, poor working
conditions and lax recruitment are blamed, in part, for enticing police to
succumb to the growing drug trade.

More than 40 percent of the cocaine entering the United States comes
through Puerto Rico. A quarter of it stays on the island, feeding
increasingly competitive and violent drug-distribution networks.

The department's new police superintendent, Miguel Pereira, called
Thursday's arrests part of the effort to purge and reform the huge agency.

Just this week, he revamped the mostly dormant internal-affairs division
and brought in top-ranking civilians on staff to direct the investigation
of complaints. For the first time in the department's history, he also is
establishing a Civilian Review Board.

"Although this sting brings us shame, it also brings a sense of being
reborn," Pereira said. "Governor Sila Calderon's message is clear -- that
there is no tolerance and there will be no tolerance for anyone who has
committed these corrupt acts."

Pereira immediately suspended the indicted officers. For Pereira, the
arrests drove home the need for better screening of police candidates.

The news this week turned up the temperature:

Rodriguez recommended that a special prosecutor investigate a $750,000
payment that former education secretary Fajardo is accused of demanding
from a supplier in October 2000 to be used in the New Progressive Party's
failed election campaign. The check, investigators say, was deposited into
a shell company run by his sister-in-law and his daughter.

Witnesses paraded before a federal grand jury this week to look at this and
other transactions. Fajardo, also a former deputy chief of staff in
Rossello's administration, is said to be cooperating with federal authorities.

Former House Speaker Edison Misla Aldarondo left the Capitol after a
25-year legislative career to face federal extortion, money-laundering and
witness-tampering charges in connection with the sale of a public hospital
in Manati.

Misla, a New Progressive Party veteran and national Republican committeeman
until his indictment, is accused of being paid for his influence in
securing the hospital sale for a group of doctors and businessmen, which
included a high-school friend.

A panel of judges appointed a special prosecutor Wednesday to investigate
allegations that Hormigueros Mayor Francisco Rivera Toro accepted a
$100,000 bribe from a company hired to clean up debris after Hurricane
Georges in 1998. Rivera Toro, who belongs to the governing Popular
Democratic Party, also is accused of instructing staff to erase all mention
of the contract from computers.