Police corruption undermines Mexico's war on drugs

By Robin Emmott

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - When Mexico sent hundreds of federal officers to clean up the corrupt local police in the rowdy border city of Tijuana this year, they were supposed to set an example of how to police responsibly.

But within days of the January operation, federal cops were filmed by police cameras extorting money from U.S. and Mexican tourists at road blocks in an embarrassment for President Felipe Calderon's new government.

Endemic police corruption -- ranging from traffic violation bribes to openly aiding drug gangs -- is undermining Calderon's attempt to crush powerful cartels with thousands of troops and federal police.

"There is barely a Mexican police officer along the U.S. border who isn't involved in the drug trade. Even if you try to resist, your superiors pressure you into it or sideline you," said a former mid-level Tijuana policeman who recently resigned from the force after he witnessed his boss receive a $5,000 bribe to turn a blind eye to drug smuggling.

Informal alliances between corrupt police and narco gangs are frustrating soldiers who set up road blocks, scour towns and search houses across Mexico for drugs and guns under Calderon's military drive, which began last December.

"There are rats and moles within the police that alert the cartels to our operations. It's hard to make progress with so many tip offs," said an army sergeant on patrol in Tijuana.

In one high-profile case, federal police arrested a top detective in the western state of Michoacan in early May for possible links to drug cartels.

NO HEROES

Badly paid and ill-equipped, patrol cops in Mexico have long supplemented their pay with small bribes from motorists and petty criminals. But the rise in the drug cartels' power and their ability to take on the army in daylight battles has taken police corruption to a new level.

In a series of raids in Mexico's richest city, Monterrey, in April, the state government arrested an unprecedented 141 police officers, accusing them of working for the powerful Gulf Cartel, which controls smuggling routes into Texas.

"There's been a very intense campaign to buy the police (in Monterrey)," said Natividad Gonzalez, the governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.

Some 1,000 people have been killed in Mexico so far in 2007 as a drive by the Sinaloa alliance of cartels headed by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman -- Mexico's most wanted man -- tries to dominate the Mexican drug trade and control smuggling routes.

Many of those killed are police who are deeply involved in Mexico's $40 billion-a-year narcotics trade, drug experts say.

"In Tijuana, for instance, Guzman's men are trying to take control of the Arellano-Felix cartel's territory and that also means taking out the cartel's police allies," said Victor Clark at San Diego State University.

Monterrey has witnessed a record 60 drug-related executions this year, many of those police killings, as the Sinaloans fight the Gulf Cartel for control of local smuggling routes.