Lady Lake police officer, K-9 partner win championship in national trials
Tarek’s bright-hazel eyes track Officer Lazaro Cabrera for the slightest hand signal or voice command that is spoken in Flemish.
A key aspect of training the 5-year-old German shepherd is to always pay attention to his handler, Cabrera, who is also his law-enforcement partner. Tarek was born and raised in Europe and became a part of Cabrera’s family when he was 2 years old. The 65-pound K-9 was named when Cabrera got him; Tarek means “morning star.”
Cabrera has been a Lady Lake police officer for almost four years, and Tarek is his second K-9 partner.
“He’s an energetic partner with a tremendous will to please,” Cabrera said. “He has so many great characteristics you look for; he’s a social dog and has extraordinary drive.”
The pair’s working relationship showcased its success when Cabrera and Tarek brought home the national championship for the second year in a row from The United States Police Canine Association’s national trials that were held this month in West Des Moines, Iowa.
The K-9 team earned 690.83 points out of 700, which is a record-breaking high score. Tarek competed against about 100 other dogs. Tarek and Cabrera competed in obedience, agility, criminal apprehension and suspect search.
“When I came into the Lady Lake program, most of my colleagues did not have much confidence in the K-9 program; and now not only did I make it a famous K-9 program, but it’s known at a national level,” Cabrera said. “That achievement is not only because of dedication and hard work, but the overwhelming support from the chief and lieutenants.”
After work, Tarek goes home with Cabrera to relax. Tarek is like any other dog at home: He sleeps, eats and plays. Sometimes, both officer and canine can be found at home on the couch watching television. Tarek is a member of the Cabrera family; in fact, Cabrera describes Tarek as his child. But even off duty the K-9 team practices and trains for day-to-day police work and for competitions.
The wins provide the department with exposure of its strong K-9 team. Other law enforcement agencies are taking note of the Lady Lake Police Department’s accomplishments, Chief Ed Nathanson said.
Tarek is an extremely intelligent dog. He is a working dog, and his main job is to track suspects of crimes, Nathanson said. The K-9 team is very successful at this, he said. The K-9 team also makes its presence known in the community through demonstrations and presentations at schools.
“Laz’s heart and soul is in this program, this is what motivates him,” Nathanson said. “Laz might be a soft-spoken man, but he is a passionate law enforcement canine handler. I am proud and honored to say he’s a member of our agency, and we look forward to partnership with him for years to come.”
Lady Lake Town Commissioner Ruth Kussard said she is impressed with the K-9 team’s achievements. Lady Lake should feel proud to have such an award-winning K-9 team because it gives the community nationwide exposure, she said.
Kussard said she always looks forward to hearing about the department’s achievements because she knows its employees are dedicated workers who deserve the recognition.
Lady Lake’s K-9 team is used for several law enforcement needs such as traffic stops and searches. For example, officers request the K-9 team at a traffic stop if a search is to be performed, Cabrera said. If Tarek finds something, he is trained to immediately sit right next to the narcotics or other contraband.
The United States Police Canine Association’s regional finals will be held in Lady Lake March 15-19, which means the area’s best K-9 teams will be competing here, Cabrera said.
The revenue generated from the competition will help enhance the department’s one-acre training facility, Nathanson said. Some of the equipment is wood, and the money would help purchase aluminum equipment.
The police department encourages residents to make donations or offer volunteer time, Cabrera said. People interested in helping the department host the competition should call 751-1560.
“The public needs to be educated on how hard it is to accomplish winning first place at nationals two years in a row,” Cabrera said. “Some people think it’s just normal or just what happens, but it’s not. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to win the award.”
By Katie Backman
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Crime fighting dogs — and their handlers — to have their day
The 19th annual Las Vegas Police K-9 Trials were held last weekend weekend, with 36 police dog-officer teams from across the United States and one from Mexico competing. Metro Officer Mike Horn, president of the nonprofit group behind the event, joined the force in 1980 and the K-9 unit six years later. He is the department’s senior K-9 trainer and handles Bocho and Lovie, both German shepherds.
Officer Mike Horn, shown with Bocho, is Metro’s senior trainer. He says K-9 officers adopt their dogs when they’re too old to work — “no one ever gives up their partner.”
What are some of the dogs’ job requirements?
The work can be rigorous. They have to jump in and out of vehicles, run up and down stairs and search cars, houses and apartments. We put them through a battery of tests to see if they’re a good match for the tasks we’re going to need them to do.
How expensive is it?
Most of our dogs come from Europe, and can cost $7,500 to $10,000. We do all our training in-house, and currently have about 40 dogs in the K-9 unit assigned to patrol, narcotics and explosives detection.
What happens when a dog is no longer able to work?
The handlers adopt them for a small fee — no one ever gives up their partner. That’s one of the reasons we created Friends for Las Vegas Police K-9s almost 20 years ago, to help raise money for the retired dogs. Most of them are at a point in life when the vet bills start piling up and the expenses become the officers’ responsibility. The proceeds from our fundraisers help. We’ve also gotten tremendous support from Siegfried & Roy.
Have you had any particularly memorable “gets?”
My German shepherd patrol dog Eich found a burglary suspect in a warehouse. The guy tried to grab Eich’s collar and got bit. A while later we respond to a break-in at a pizza shop. Eich has to jump over stacked cases of soda to get to where there’s someone hiding. He’s biting through the cans to get to him, spraying soda everywhere. And it’s the same guy — two weeks after he got out of prison for the first burglary. I say to him, “Dude, have you not learned?” The guy tells me, “That dog is so good — it’s the second time he’s found me.”
How would you describe the bond between officers and their K-9 partners?
We spend more time with the dogs than we do with any human being. They are with us 24-7, on the job and at home. But they are not pets. When your truck starts up they are right there, ready to go to work.
What do you hope the public takes away from this weekend’s event?
This is an opportunity for our dogs to demonstrate what they do for the community. Usually nobody sees it but the bad guys.
By EMILY RICHMOND
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Guns beat Hoses in charity cops vs. firefighters flag football game
Shasta County’s cops beat its firefighters Saturday in a 32-13 win in the second-ever Guns ‘n’ Hoses flag football game at Big League Dreams.
Saturday was the second time the Hoses fell to the Guns, thanks largely to two key interceptions by the Guns defense and three touchdown receptions by Jeremy Kenyon, the game’s top scorer from the Shasta County Probation Department.
Though the whole point of the charity football game was to raise money for the Shasta Women’s Refuge, the competition between the two teams was very real, though good-natured.
“Ahhhh, I was hungry,” bellowed Josh Rodine, a husky Shasta County sheriff’s service officer, as he was marching off the field after being swapped out of the game in the first half.
The Guns sideline chuckled, but that intensity served the Guns well. After all, the officers’ 18 players were outnumbered by the firefighters’ 22-person squad.
“We’re taking this a little bit more seriously this year,” said Redding Fire Department spokesman Jeff Granberry when asked about the number of red shirts on the sideline.
Redding Police Chief Peter Hansen, who, like Granberry, watched the game from the sidelines, joked before kickoff that the cops were going to have to make some 911 fire calls to even the players out.
Such good-natured high-jinks spread to the players.
During the pre-game meeting at mid-field, a red-shirted Hose grinned and made the classic two-fingered “I’ve got my eyes on you” gesture to a rival Gun.
The cop grinned back.
As those two goofed off, Shasta County sheriff’s correctional officer Larry Tanner flipped a ball behind his back on the sly, hitting Hose Josh Peard of the Shasta County Fire Department, causing Peard to look around. Tanner’s grin gave him away, and he put a friendly arm around Peard’s shoulder.
But the mood during the game wasn’t always so jovial, but most of the teams’ ire was geared toward the referees.
“Come on ref!” shouted one cop from the sideline after a referee called a play in favor of the Hoses in the third quarter. “Why don’t you put a Hoses jersey on!”
When a firefighter in the fourth quarter all but tackled a cop (a big no-no in flag football) much to-do was made by the Hoses that the call was bunk.
“Hey, come on, he was just going for the ball,” one Hose yelled.
The fans ate it up.
“I love them all,” said Pat Nelsen, 64, of Anderson. “They’re all just darlings.”
Both teams may have wanted the bragging rights, but the real winner today was the Women’s Refuge, Granberry said.
“Ultimately as much rivalry there is there’s camaraderie too,” he said before the game. “As much grief as we flick each other’s way, it’s really just an honor to be here today.”
He paused.
“It’ll be more of an honor when we win,” he said, grinning.
Well, for Granberry, there’s always next year.
By Ryan Sabalow
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Charity hockey event to benefit fallen Tampa policeman
In remembrance of a fellow man of service, a charity inline hockey event will be hosted on Nov. 14 and 15 at New Port Richey’s Sportszone 2.
The tournament is in honor of Cpl. Mike Roberts, a Tampa Police Department officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty on Wednesday, Aug. 9, while investigating a suspicious person.
Roberts, 38, was an 11-year veteran of the force and left behind a wife and 3-year-old son. All proceeds generated by the inline hockey event will go to the Roberts’ family.
Ken Petrillo, a former Pasco sheriff’s deputy now with the Tampa Police Department, is part of the organizing team working to honor his fallen comrade. In addition to working together on duty, Petrillo said Roberts was known by many other officers as the goalie on the Police Department’s hockey team.
Holding a tournament to honor his service would be fitting, Petrillo said.
In late August, the Tampa Bay Lightning also held a charity scrimmage against the Tampa Police team that benefited the Cpl. Mike Roberts Memorial Fund. The game was part of the NHL club’s annual Fan Fest event.
“Mike was the kind of cop that every one of us wanted to be,” Petrillo said. “He was able to balance his personal and family life with the job and he was successful at it all.”
As for the November tournament, play will be broken into three divisions – Law Enforcement/Firefighters, 16 and older competitive and 16 and older recreational.
Registration fees are $300 per team and at least six to eight players are recommended per team, Petrillo said. Signups are tentatively to be capped off by Nov. 1.
Individuals who would like to play but do not have a team are encouraged to call Sportzone 2 at 727-845-7808 to request a place on a squad.
Teams are going to be traveling to New Port Richey for the event from all over the state, Petrillo said. Fort Lauderdale and Collier, Sarasota and Manatee counties will all be represented, among others. He said the initial goal was to round up about 30 teams and spots are still available.
For more information on how to register or to donate money to Cpl. Roberts’ family, contact Ken Petrillo at 727-808-8453 or Rob Gallahan at Sportszone 2 at 727-845-7808.
Sportszone 2 is in the International Granite and Stone Arena, 7716 Rutilio Court, New Port Richey. It is a 21,000-square-foot, air-conditioned indoor sports arena.
By Eric Horchy
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Hertfordshire policeman honoured with national award
A policeman from Hertfordshire has scooped a top national award for his work for the criminal justice system.
PC Kevin Moore, who works predominantly with the Travelling community, has helped to increase trust and confidence while raising awareness of Traveller culture.
Working with members of the Travelling community to establish positive relationships, he has introduced local officers to the sites, breaking down barriers between police and the community.
PC Kevin Moore has also provided colleagues with operational practical advice, removing damaging cultural misunderstanding and considerably reducing tensions within the Travelling community.
At a ceremony held in London on Tuesday, BBC Crimewatch’s Fiona Bruce presented an award to PC Moore for outstanding individual commitment to diversity.
PC Moore, who was also recognised at a local awards ceremony this week, said: “I’m very surprised and extremely proud.
“I don’t think I could have done this without the support of the organisation I work for and the community we work with.”
The Justice Awards ceremony, part of Inside Justice Week which runs from October 17-24, boasts a top level judging panel including the Home Secretary, the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General.
The Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, said: “The quality of the work of all the finalists was tremendous.
“The Justice Awards exemplifies the dedication of staff and volunteers across the Criminal Justice System to making communities better.”
Another finalist for a Justice Award was the Choices and Consequences Partnership, which managed to come second in the Partnership of the Year team award. Highly commended for its efforts over the past two years, it was particularly recognised for its innovative programme for prolific non-violent offenders who want to change their lifestyle and achieve long-term crime reduction.
Chief Constable of Hertfordshire Constabulary, Frank Whiteley, said: “We are incredibly proud of Kevin and the Choices and Consequences partnership.
“Their stories are truly inspiring and a shining example of the dedication that exists amongst the staff and volunteers that work in the Criminal Justice System in Hertfordshire.”
Further information on the 2009 Justice Awards and the full list of winners and finalists can be found at www.cjsonline.gov.uk/justiceawards.
To find out more about the Hertfordshire Criminal Justice Board go to http://lcjb.cjsonline.gov.uk/Hertfordshire/home.html
By Amie Mulderrig
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The Singing Policeman: Tenor Daniel Rodriguez, formerly a New York City police officer, will perform in Great Mills
I LOVE his response to “do you miss it (being a police officer) at all?”
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After Sept. 11, 2001, Daniel Rodriguez, then a member of the New York City Police Department and one of its designated singers of the national anthem, became known as the “singing policeman” for his stirring renditions of both “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America.”
In the aftermath of it all, Rodriguez received an invitation to study under Placido Domingo, who helped the “singing policeman” become confident enough to retire from police work and pursue his lifelong dream. Rodriguez has since become one of America’s most recognizable tenors. He has appeared onstage in symphony concerts and operas and as a solo artist, as he will on Oct. 24 at Great Mills High School.
Rodriguez’s national tour included 17 stops in September. He has 19 dates set for October, at performing arts centers, high schools and churches. While on tour in the Midwest, Rodriguez talked by phone about his solo concert repertoire and how his career has been shaped by what he witnessed on Sept. 11.
Q: Do you set the table with “God Bless America” or sing it as an encore?
A: Encore.
Q: But you sing all kinds of music. Can you tell me a little bit about your set list?
A: I’m on my fourth album now, so most of the songs come from those recordings. … I pick and choose depending upon the occasion and what people want to hear. I could be called a classical crossover singer because I was Broadway operetta starting out and then went to classical and then went back to Broadway operetta. … Most true opera singers do not have the ability, or it is very difficult for them, to do more of the poppy and lighter operatic stuff, whereas I can transfer between both.
Q: Will you change up your show for different parts of the country?
A: I try to get a feel for the audiences, but for most of the shows on this tour it’s an older crowd — 50-plus. The older crowd loves the real romantic era of music — the Jeanette MacDonald, the Mel Sanetti — as well as classical. And they always love when I throw in an aria or two.
Q: Your father and grandfather were singers. Did they pass along any good singing wisdom?
A: Not so much Grandfather, because I was a young man when he passed away. He passed down the voice. … But my father taught me that music is a celebration, and my father was always a happy man. … So my father taught me to enjoy music and to sing with passion.
Q: You had put your singing career on hold to do odd jobs and support your family, and you had been doing a variety of jobs during the five-year period before you became a police officer. Why did you decide to take the route you did?
A: First of all, it was one of the jobs that came up when I took the [state civil service exam] … I had been working in the post office; before that, I was doing jobs that had no benefits or real future. … I thought it would be an exciting job; it would be a real experience for someone like myself, who is now driving around to 117 cities in a conversion van. I am not one who shies away from new experiences … I really had to work hard. I had to, in six months, lose 50 pounds to become a police officer. That kind of determination showed me that it was something I really wanted to do.
Q: Do you miss it at all?
A: Every time I get cut off on the highway.
Q: What was your sense of patriotism before Sept. 11 and how did it change after witnessing what you did that day?
A: I think I always had a sense of patriotism. I had a sense of patriotism for my country. I think it’s a great country. But I also felt very enlightened …because I was given a broad spectrum of understanding of the world and people that taught me to accept all people as children of God. … But after 9/11, I think my life changed in that I saw firsthand that there is a very significant presence of evil in the world. … It’s very important that we do something about it: even in our personal lives, that we live a more positive life so that we can counter the negativity.
Q: You just spoke about music being a celebration. Did the way you sang “God Bless America” change?
A: I think it took on more meaning. When you sing a patriotic song before 9/11, particularly “God Bless America,” it was patriotic from the point of it being a beautiful song from our country. After 9/11, it was patriotic from the point of it being a prayer from a country in need of a prayer.
Q: Literally, would you pour more passion into the song?
A: Absolutely. Directly after 9/11 there was more passion poured into the song because there was more passion in me. I lived the horrors of 9/11. I wasn’t watching it on television. I was at Ground Zero when the towers came down. I lost friends at Ground Zero. I got to know their families as I sang at their funerals. (I sang at more than 100 funerals.) Absolutely there was more, because my whole persona was involved in it and I had to express that in the music. That was my outlet.
Q: Would you have made it this far if 9/11 had not happened?
A: I would hope that I would have continued to do what I was doing. If you look at my history before 9/11, I was singing every day and I was … trying to pursue a Broadway career. I was determined to get to a point where I was singing for a living and back to my first love. … Sept. 11 hurried things along, but it also changed it, too. I think if 9/11 had not happened I would have been just another singer. If I had achieved fame, I don’t think I would have appreciated my situation as much as I do now. My career is much more significant than it would have been. My career really stands for something much bigger than myself.
If you go
The Leonardtown Rotary Performing Arts Series will continue Oct. 24 with a concert featuring Daniel Rodriguez at Great Mills High School. Tickets are $25, $15 for children younger than 15. The high school is at 21130 Great Mills Road. Call 301-475-6999.
By DICKSON MERCER
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Interest High In State Police Trooper Jobs
AP
The Kentucky State Police has been swamped with calls from prospective cadets after taking their recruiting campaign to Facebook and Twitter.
Lt. David Jude said 400 people have applied to be tested for the job next month at the Department of Criminal Justice training center at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.
Jude said he expects to top 800 applicants by the deadline on Nov. 6, based on interest that has been shown so far.
Applicants must be 21, be U.S. citizens in good health and have a valid driver’s license with no more than six driver demerit points. They also must have either two years of college, two years of active military service or two years as a full-time police officer for another agency.
Testing will be done the week of Nov. 16.
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Mexico’s Cops Seek Upgrade
When pressed about why Mexico is struggling in its battle with illegal-drug cartels, Genaro García Luna, the nation’s top police official, likes to put his inquisitors on the spot with a question: Would you encourage your child to become a Mexican cop?
The answer, he says, is often no.
The reputation of Mexican police is so poor that even Mr. García Luna, a stocky, frenetic man with close-cropped hair, would have given the same answer not long ago. As a young domestic intelligence officer at Mexico’s spy agency in the 1990s, he says, he would have been “offended” if anyone referred to him as a cop.
Now, it is his job to change all that. Mexican President Felipe Calderón tapped the 41-year-old to rebuild Mexico’s police from scratch amid a drug war that’s claimed at least 13,000 lives since Mr. Calderón took power nearly three years ago. The centerpiece of Mr. García Luna’s plan: persuading college-educated sons and daughters of the middle class to become part of a new, professional police corps.
“We’ve had a corrupt, uneducated police force, without a budget, driving stolen vehicles and basically decomposing for 40 years,” says Mr. García Luna, an engineer by training who was known in his younger days for tailing suspects on his motorcycle and personally leading raids on kidnapping rings. “I want to break historical inertias.”
Mexico’s future may depend on it. Unable to rely on the police, Mr. Calderón has deployed 45,000 soldiers to confront drug gangs by patrolling hot spots, giving cities such as Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas, the feel of war zones. But experts say military occupations are a short-term fix because traffickers ultimately scurry to set up shop somewhere else. Corralling drug gangs for the long term requires the kind of deep detective work that can uncover money transfers, drug shipments and bribe payments.
Mexico is seeking the capability to pull off the kind of operation announced Thursday by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder: the near-simultaneous, multi-U.S. city arrests of 300 members of the Mexican “La Familia” drug cartel, which has trafficked a flood of methamphetamine into the U.S. while terrorizing Mexico’s Michoacán state.
While this week’s arrests were a U.S. operation, La Familia is a also key front in Mr. García Luna’s drug war. Responding to the July arrest of a top La Familia boss in Michoacan, the group captured, tortured and killed a dozen of Mr. García Luna’s federal agents — some of whom were working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on investigations.
“This is not a one-country problem, and solving it will take more than a one-country solution,” Mr. Holder said Thursday. “La Familia’s attacks against Mexican law enforcement officials only make the valiant effort of our friends and partners across the border more heroic.”
Mr. García Luna has modeled his new Federal Police force after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and other international agencies, with modern equipment, technology and enhanced investigative powers like wiretaps. His plan is to gradually replace the army on the drug war’s front lines with this two-and-a-half year-old force of around 40,000 cops. For now, the army is still in place, and the government won’t give a timeline for pulling the troops out.
The challenge is enormous. The average Mexican cop never made it past the eighth grade. Some can’t read or write. Many Mexicans’ only contact with a beat cop comes when they pay $5 bribes to get out of traffic stops. In some cities like Tijuana, well over half the local cops have recently failed lie-detector tests, according to one former city official familiar with the tests. In 2007, local cops in the Pacific resort town of Rosarito ambushed a new police chief drafted to help clean things up. He lived, but his bodyguard didn’t.
Mr. García Luna’s supporters, including senior officials in the Calderón government and a group of businessmen he helped when members of their families were kidnapped over the years, see him as a Mexican Eliot Ness, the 1930s-era Chicago crime fighter. They say he is risking his life — four of his top aides have already been gunned down — to keep the nation from disintegrating into a narco-state. They point out that so far his Federal Police have seized nearly 30 tons of cocaine and arrested more than 300 prominent traffickers.
Critics, including some opposition lawmakers, deride him as a wannabe J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director, and say his efforts are plagued by incompetence and ethical lapses. Like Mr. Hoover, they say, he has used strong-arm tactics against critics, trumping up legal charges against them to compel their silence. In his zeal for boosting the image of the Federal Police, he admitted to staging a kidnap rescue for the benefit of television cameras. During a raucous, eight-hour appearance before congress in September, opposition lawmakers blasted him for failing to keep Mexico’s murder rate from soaring this year.
A rash of scandals among those close to him hasn’t helped Mr. García Luna build credibility. Though he has never been charged with a criminal act or implicated in a corruption scandal, some of his senior aides have. Last year, his top antidrug commander was arrested and charged with helping a cartel. He is in jail awaiting trial. Another officer in Mr. García Luna’s anti-kidnap squad was arrested for allegedly organizing phony police checkpoints to abduct victims on behalf of a kidnapping gang. She is being held for possible trial by Mexico City authorities.
“García Luna should resign because at this point his credibility has been so damaged that it is threatening his whole project,” says Alberto Islas, who runs a Mexico City-based consulting firm that has worked on drug-war issues for the Calderon government. “The debate has become about him, rather than the police institution he wants to build.”
Mr. García Luna says he is clean, and he says the fact that his aides were arrested shows that corruption is no longer tolerated. He says all arrests he has made have been on legitimate warrants. He compares the state of Mexican police to that of 1970s New York, which inspired movies like “Serpico,” where Al Pacino plays a lone clean cop in sea of corruption. His voice fills with vehemence when his record is challenged. “There is an end to this film,” he says. “We’re going to do this, you’ll see. Remember me.”
The Bribe or the Bullet
Much of the skepticism about whether Mr. García Luna can succeed is rooted in the history of Mexican law enforcement. The government has announced plans to reform its police so many times over the decades that it is hard for some to take new attempts seriously.
Popular wisdom holds that eventually, law-enforcement officials in Mexico must choose between plata, the money of a bribe, or plomo, the lead of an assassin’s bullet. In 1997, Mexico’s antidrug czar, Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, was caught on a drug-gang payroll, and is now behind bars.
“What Gutiérrez Rebollo taught us is that you just never know,” says a senior Calderón administration official who supports Mr. García Luna. “But at the end of the day, you have to trust the guys you’ve got, or else you have nothing.”
Mr. García Luna’s reliability is a concern for U.S. security officials as the two nations draw closer in the drug fight. The U.S. has begun transferring $400 million in drug aid for Mexico, by far the biggest commitment since the Gutiérrez Rebollo case shattered U.S. confidence. Around half of this money will flow to Mr. García Luna, mainly in the form of Black Hawk helicopters and other equipment.
To give the new federal force a fighting chance, Mr. García Luna has provided officers with souped-up patrol cars, body armor, AR-15 assault rifles and an array of technology including surveillance balloons that hover above cities. He guards these assets jealously, and senior Federal Police officers say he gets particularly upset when an officer crashes one of the fleet of Dodge Charger squad cars he acquired.
For the first time, Mexico is putting together a national database of vehicle registrations, arrest warrants, jail inmates and other data, a crucial tool for nabbing fugitives.
Of course, all the fancy technology in the world can’t take down drug gangs if the police themselves remain corrupt and inefficient. That is where Mr. García Luna’s plan to recruit middle-class college graduates comes in. Many in this demographic have a hard time finding good jobs in a sluggish economy where the highest paying positions still tend to go to the elites. And though Mexican law enforcement has always favored brawn over brains, recruiting primarily from the lower classes, Mr. García Luna says the world’s best police agencies actually have it the other way around: “When I first visited the FBI, I realized most everyone there had master’s degrees. Why can’t we do that?”
The experiment began in earnest in June as Mr. García Luna began recruiting thousands of college grads from top universities to form a new division of investigative agents at the Federal Police. Around 1,300 have since graduated from two months of course work at a new police academy in the town of San Luis Potosi and are now receiving three months of field training. Mr. García Luna says he plans to hire around 10,000 new investigators.
The rest of the officers will be required to have high-school diplomas — a standard that previous national forces haven’t imposed — and will go through similar field training.
A Clear Career Path
It is the investigative unit in particular that Mr. García Luna hopes will spearhead a fundamental change in the way Mexican police operate. Until now, police have built cases mainly around confessions of witnesses, a situation ripe for accusations of coercion. Instead, these new officers will build cases based on collecting evidence, such as phone records.
To attract them, the base pay of a federal police agent has been raised by more than 30% to around 16,000 pesos per month, or about $1,200, more than many white-collar jobs pay. All recruits get access to cut-rate mortgages, health care and a retirement plan.
That was enough to convince Juan Pablo Viay, a 35-year-old father of two who was recently laid off from his job at Chrysler’s Mexico City corporate headquarters. Now he is training at the police academy and hopes to apply his white-collar skills, like analyzing spreadsheets, to crime fighting. With his wife and parents worried for his safety, he is pinning his hopes on an analyst job that would keep him largely out of the line of fire.
The increased pay alone won’t be enough to stem the tide of corruption, says Mr. García Luna, since a drug gang can always offer more money. That’s why new recruits are tested to gauge their susceptibility to bribes, including a lie-detector test and a follow-up a visit to the recruit’s home. More broadly, by offering an upward career path, cops have an incentive to stay on the straight and narrow, says Mr. García Luna.
For Elizabeth Mendoza, a 29-year-old Federal Police recruit, the decision to sign up was a mix of economic need and a desire to do something to help her country. She quit her job as an administrator at a truck manufacturer after seeing a TV advertisement for the Federal Police that promised merit-driven promotions.
These days, Ms. Mendoza, a married mother of one, gets up before dawn for a 6 a.m. assembly of recruits in a large courtyard at the Police Academy. Standing at attention as the sun rises, she and other recruits sing the national anthem and a new Federal Police hymn — commissioned by Mr. García Luna in a bid, he says, to build esprit de corps.
Along with hundreds of other aspiring cadets clad in a uniform of jeans and white shirts, Ms. Mendoza attends classes on conducting investigations, collecting evidence and giving testimony, as well as shooting weapons and cuffing suspects. She is surrounded by recruits with a similar economic and social background. Eighty percent have never held a weapon before.
More than half of Ms. Mendoza’s instructors hail from the U.S., Spain, Colombia and other nations where agents often have university-level educations. The presence of overseas instructors sends a powerful message for young Mexican recruits who lack homegrown models of professional police, says Academy Director Severino Cartagena.
On a recent Thursday along a main highway in Ciudad Juárez, José Menera, a 34-year-old chemical engineer turned Federal Police officer, nabbed a man driving a load of marijuana in a hidden compartment in his gas tank. The young officer did it from the air-conditioned cab of a high-tech roadside scanning machine purchased under Mr. García Luna’s overhaul.
Catching the ‘Ear Cutter’
Mr. García Luna took an unlikely path into police work. Raised in a working-class enclave of Mexico City, he was a 19-year-old mechanical engineering student when he took a job with a new Mexican spy agency, the CISEN. He rose fast, and was sent for training exercises with the FBI and at police agencies in Spain and elsewhere.
Among his first assignments was tracking an urban guerrilla group that specialized in kidnapping. His defining moment came in 1998, when he assembled a covert squad that captured Daniel Arizmendi, a former cop turned leader of a violent kidnapping ring. Mr. Arizmendi had become a national terror, popularly called the “Ear Cutter” for his practice of slicing off victims’ ears and sending them to families to pressure them to pay ransom.
In 2001, newly elected President Vicente Fox tapped him to head up the Federal Judicial Police. Arriving at the Judicial Police headquarters in a rough Mexico City barrio, he found crumbling offices reeking of sewage. The few beat-up computers on desks were not connected by a network. Bullet proof glass separated the chief’s office from the police themselves. Some officers drove stolen cars and employed freelance thugs called “madrinas” to enforce their will on the streets.
Mr. García Luna tried to modernize the force, culling nearly half of the 6,000 officers after they flunked lie-detector tests or other aptitude measures. But his plans to form a new force, the Federal Investigative Agency, fell apart after many of the fired police went to court and won reinstatement. Soon AFI agents were being implicated in crimes.
He got another chance. In 2006, Mr. Calderón named him to the cabinet level post of Public Security Secretary. Starting from scratch, Mr. García Luna took the best men from the AFI and made them the core of the new Federal Police.
Even if Mr. García Luna proves he is clean, his biggest obstacle may be time. Mexican politicians are not big on institutional continuity, meaning the Federal Police could be dismantled and Mr. García Luna pushed out the door after elections in 2012.
By JOHN LYONS
LINK/PICS
Welcome home, Rocky!
I’ve been without a computer for the last few days, so let’s catch up on all the ‘good’ news…
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Rocky has come home.
The Windcrest Police Department said the two-year-old Belgian Malinois known as ‘Rocky’, who had been missing since Tuesday afternoon, was returned to his handler, Officer Adam Lee, Thursday morning.
But Rocky’s adventures were actually short-lived. Apparently, soon after he got out of his fenced yard in the Valley-Hi area, Rocky was spotted by a dog handler from Lackland Air Force Base. LAFB also trains these dogs, and the handler thought Rocky was one of theirs.
He picked up Rocky, and then did a quick inventory of their dogs.
Realizing none of LAFB’s dogs were missing, the handler started checking the news for a report on a missing dog. He saw Rocky’s plight mentioned on television Thursday morning and contacted the Windcrest Police Department.
As a dual purpose police dog, Rocky spends his days working as a skilled police dog. But by night he is the much-loved Lee family pet. The Windcrest Police are working on Rocky’s home enclosure to prevent any future escapes.
Rocky has been with the Windcrest Police Department since 2008.
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