Tijuana replaces police chief in dramatic change

New leader led the department in 2008

TIJUANA – Mayor Carlos Bustamante fired on Tuesday the city's police chief and named his replacement, attorney Alberto Capella, who once held that post in the previous administration but was removed for poor performance.

The mayor explained the change during a press conference as "a transition," stressing that it did not signal a departure from the coordination the city maintains with military authorities to fight crime.

He rejected the idea that the ousted chief, army Capt. Gustavo Huerta, was dismissed because of a scandal that's known as "Videogate." It involves a young female detainee who was pressured by a group of police officers in a substation to dance while stripping to gain her release – all caught on videotape and turned over to a newspaper in May.

The affair led to the firing of 15 officers, among them the zone commander.

Bustamante said that the military had reformed Tijuana's public safety department, doing all they could, and that it was time for a civilian to take over.

"We, as civil authorities, have to assume this responsibility ….which requires the participation and coordination of the three levels of government, as well as our heroic military institutions," he said.

In 2008, the violence was raging in Tijuana's streets. Authorities logged 842 murders that year, more than 100 kidnappings and dozens of disappearances.

An undetermined number of residents left the city.

The war between two criminal groups and their clashes with law enforcement agencies, infiltrated by organized crime, produced grisly murders that horrified the population. Bodies were hung from bridges while decapitated and mutilated bodies appeared in public places.

The state created a security model to fight this unprecedented level of violence, where the commander of the Second Military Zone, Gen. Alfonso Duarte, took the lead to coordinate the various police substations, which themselves were taken over by retired military officers. These officers, in turn, began weeding out corruption in their ranks. In Tijuana alone, around 600 officers were fired.

That model was considered a success by the business sector and the federal government and credited with lowering high-profile murders in three years.

Just as the model was being implemented in December of 2009, Capella was fired by then Mayor Jorge Ramos as head of the city's public safety department after a year on the job. The mayor replaced Capella with Col. Julián Leyzaola, now police chief in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Capella, an attorney who had been a social activist, was attacked in his house in Playas de Tijuana a month before taking over the public safety department. An armed group attempted to assassinate him at dawn of Nov. 27, 2007. He was armed and repulsed the attack uninjured.

Mayor Bustamante said he had consulted with his cabinet and chambers of commerce about his choice of Capella and they had supported his decision.

The president of the Business Council, Mario Escobedo, said Capella was an honorable person and a veteran of the post and that his association supported him.

However, the director of the school of public administration at the respected College of the Northern Border, José María Ramos, said military authorities would not necessarily trust Capella.

"He is getting a new opportunity to produce good results," Ramos said. "Without a doubt he's going to have to win the military's confidence because it's been proven that experienced military leaders with vision and above all with the capacity to coordinate the other military commanders" have been effective in fighting crime.

The advantage that the ousted chief had was his good communication with the area's military commanders, he added, who would routinely support him in the most troubled neighborhoods.

The mayor said he will nominate Capella to the City Council, which has to ratify his appointment before he can take over.

Paradoxically, Capella is named secretary of public safety just when state authorities are reporting a surge in the number of murders in Tijuana linked to drug trafficking, one of the reasons the former mayor fired him.

There have been 384 murders in Tijuana this year through Oct. 3, state authorities said, with an estimated 80 per cent linked to street-level drug dealing. However, 2011 has been thus far the least violent of the last four years.

Omar.millan@sandiegored.com

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