PRAXEDIS G. GUERRERO,
Mexico --
There's a new police
chief in this violent borderland where drug gangs
have killed public officials and terrified many
citizens into fleeing: a 20-year-old woman who
hasn't yet finished her criminology degree.
Marisol Valles Garcia was
sworn in Wednesday to bring law and order to a
township of about 8,500 that has been transformed
from a string of quiet farming communities into a
lawless no man's land. Two rival gangs - the Juarez
and Sinaloa drug cartels - have been battling for
control of its single highway, a lucrative drug
trafficking route along the Texas border.
The tiny but energetic
Valles Garcia, whose only police experience was a
stint as a police department secretary, says she
wants her 12 officers to practice a special brand of
community policing. In fact her plan is to hire more
women - she currently has three - and assign each to
a neighborhood to talk with families, promote civic
values and detect potential crimes before they
happen.
"My people are out there
going door to door, looking for criminals, and (in
homes) where there are none, trying to teach values
to the families," she said in her first official
appearance on Wednesday. "The project is ... simple,
based on values, principles and crime prevention in
contacts house-by-house."
She has been assigned two
bodyguards but won't carry a gun. She says she leave
most of the decisions about weapons and tactics to
the town's mayor, Jose Luis Guerrero.
Whether her decision is
courageous or foolhardy, the appointment shows how
desperate the situation has become in the Juarez
Valley, a lucrative trafficking corridor along the
Texas border.
Local residents say the
drug gangs take over at night, riding through the
towns in convoys of SUVs and pickups, assault rifles
and even .50 caliber sniper rifles at the ready. The
assistant mayor of nearby El Porvenir and the mayor
of Distrito Bravos were killed recently even after
they took refuge in nearby Ciudad Juarez.
While the bullet holes
that pockmarked police headquarters in Praxedis have
been painted over, police buildings in other towns
in the valley remain empty, with broken windows and
few sign of life.
"Let's hope it is not a
reckless act on her part," said Miguel Sarre, a
professor who specializes in Mexican law enforcement
at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.
He said that "a municipal police force cannot
protect itself against such powerful forces."
Local residents like
farmer Arturo Gomez are willing to give her the
benefit of the doubt.
"This is a town without
law," Gomez said. "It is not likely things will
change from one day to the next, but let's see what
a woman can do ... things can't get any worse."
Drug cartels in many
drug-plagued parts of Mexico have killed or
threatened police chiefs and their departments,
buying off some officers and prompting some others
to quit en masse.
In past months, soldiers
and then federal police largely took over patrols in
the Juarez valley, but they stick mainly to the main
road, afraid to venture down unfamiliar dirt roads
that are well-traveled by drug traffickers.
"Here, everybody is
afraid, and anything that can be done to remove that
fear would be good," said Fidel Vega, a 46-year-old
gas station employee. "You can see that this girl
has a desire to get things done."
But question whether a
young inexperienced chief can handle a problem that
has stumped even Mexico's federal government: how to
cope with the drug cartel threat and underpaid,
untrained local police, who are easily corrupted by
criminal gangs in Mexico's roughly 2,022 municipal
police forces.
President Felipe Calderon
has recognized the problem faced by local police
forces, whose officers earn average monthly salaries
of only 4,000 pesos (about $300). Most of them have
completed less than 10 years of schooling and are
either at basic education levels or illiterate,
according to the report.
In some cities and towns,
entire municipal forces have been fired or arrested
for allegedly cooperating with drug gangs, and
officials say their low wages and poor weaponry -
most use shotguns and pistols, while drug gangs have
assault rifles - make them ineffectual or worse.
Calderon has proposed a
"unified command" structure in which Mexico's 32
state governments would have state police take on
the main responsibility, backed up by federal
officers and soldiers where needed.
While the cartels have
been more than able to penetrate much tighter
security details - killing mayors and police chiefs
throughout northern Mexico - Valles Garcia says she
isn't afraid.
For residents, her
personal courage may not be enough.
Amalia Garcia, 58, had to
send her five children to live in Ciudad Juarez for
their own safety, and now lives in Praxedis with her
husband.
"Whoever is here, man or
woman, things are not going to change," said Garcia.
"Things are bad here and nobody pays any attention."
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Associated Press Writer
Mark Stevenson contributed to this report from
Mexico City.
