Tijuana.- A video that shows a detained woman forced to strip and dance for a group of municipal police officers to gain her freedom has led to the suspension of 15 of them, the city's Public Safety Department announced on Monday.

The officers, among them a sector chief, were assigned to the Presa Rural district, one of the most troubled areas in the city's east side.

Authorities indicated that they had known about the video since April 15, although the incident occurred on March 2 at the police station in that district.

It came to light on Monday, when the daily newspaper El Mexicano published the video on its online site under the headline, "Fifteen officers suspended in Presa-Gate." The recording shows officers and a supervisor pressuring the woman to take off her clothes and dance on top of a table in their office.

The woman, who was not identified, reportedly had been detained along with a man who had 25 doses of crystal methamphetamine.

In exchange for letting them go, the officers proposed that she do a striptease, the video shows.

The city's public safety secretary, Gustavo Huerta, announced that the officers had been suspended while the case is being investigated. It was an officer who reported the incident, and he's among those being investigated, a department said.

If found guilty, the 15 officers could be fired and their case turned over to state authorities for prosecution for abuse of authority.

The suspended officers were identified as sector chief Víctor Manuel de la Cruz, and officers Manuel González Ramírez, Raquel Maldonado Valle, Carlos Francisco Reyes Cervantes, Jesús Moisés Díaz Mariscal, Germán Andalón López, César Velasco Ceballos, Bernardino Ibarra González, Alex Martín Zamora Román, Leobardo Lavenant Martínez, Neptalí Citalan Cruz, Noé Gaytán Monrey, Sergio Antonio Cervantes Llamas, Sergio Ortiz Elisea and Adán Ruiz Gómez.

Omar.millan@sandiegored.com