REWARD FOR A JOB WELL DONE

From the Borderland Beat:
　
TIJUANA TOP COP WHO FOUGHT CARTELS IS OUT OF A JOB
By Elliot Spagat
　
Associated Press
November 28, 2010
　
Mexican Army Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola, Public Safety Secretary in Tijuana, was dismissed Friday after showing unprecedented zeal trying to end the grip of drug cartels on one of Mexico's most notoriously corrupt police forces.

Julian Leyzaola tried with unprecedented zeal to end the grip of drug cartels on one of Mexico's most notoriously corrupt police forces: In two years as top cop, he blanketed key parts of Tijuana with vetted officers, new patrol cars and military commanders, while purging hundreds of allegedly corrupt cops.

The retired army officer survived a drug-gang assassination campaign that killed dozens of his officers. He says he rejected an $80,000-a-week offer from an emissary of Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Now he's out of a job.

Mayor-Elect Carlos Bustamante said he will appoint Leyzaola's closest aide, Gustavo Huerta, as public safety secretary when his term begins Tuesday. Huerta, 42, knows Tijuana and is positioned to build on recent successes, Bustamante's spokeswoman said.

Leyzaola has been praised by President Felipe Calderon, U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual, U.S. law enforcement and Tijuana's business elite for standing up to the cartels and bringing order in the face of the city's worst drug violence.

Yet the state's human rights ombudsman accuses Leyzaola of beating some people suspected of killing cops. Some officers he arrested for corruption have been let go for lack of evidence and say they were tortured in custody. Huerta was also named in one complaint filed by several officers.

Leyzaola says the allegations come from critics who don't like his get-tough approach.

"The reality is that we needed extreme measures to restore order," he told officers last September after the human rights report came out. "That's what we did. It was necessary."

Mexico's local police forces are often bribed to be the eyes and ears of drug cartels, yet most police chiefs won't attack the gangs, noting that organized crime is a federal responsibility. They tend instead to focus on traffic violations, car thefts, assaults and home invasions.

That hands-off approach favors the cartels, says Daniel Sabet, a visiting professor at Georgetown University who studies Mexico's local police forces.

"You can't just shrug your shoulders and say it's not our jurisdiction," he said. "If there's an organized crime guy with an AK-47, you have to make that arrest."

Leyzaola, a chess aficionado who stays fit by playing handball, relished his pursuit of Tijuana's drug lords, calling his targets cockroaches, scum and dirty fat pigs. He captured and interrogated them himself.

He began his march to recapture Tijuana in early 2009 by reforming police in a different district of the city every three months. First, a strike force made a slew of arrests. Then beat cops were replaced by officers who passed intensive background checks. Former military officers with no police experience took over as district commanders.

When he suspected cops were dirty, he tried to humiliate them into quitting. First he assigned them to patrol palm trees outside his office, and later had them bake in the sun on the new headquarters' heliport.
"I have two up there right now," he said with a smile behind his large desk. "Until they get vertigo."

In early January, federal authorities arrested Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental—one of Leyzaola's "dirty fat pigs"—who allegedly was behind the cop-killing campaign and hung bodies from freeways and beheaded victims.

From the confessions of El Teo's top lieutenants in custody, Leyzaola learned that corruption was hitting close to home: a district police commander was taking $6,000 a month to tip El Teo to law enforcement presence. He was Leyzaola's close friend from military school.

They also said El Teo employed another district commander whom Leyzaolo tapped for special projects.