44 Mexico City Police Officers Held on Corruption Charges

          By SAM DILLON

                MEXICO CITY -- In an anti-corruption crackdown ordered by Mexico City's new police
                chief, detectives arrested 44 city officers Monday on charges that included murder, rape,
          extortion and abuse of authority.

          Mexico City's attorney general, Samuel del Villar, called the roundup "an unprecedented effort to
          impose the rule of law."

          Arrest warrants for some of the officers had been issued as long as six years ago but had never been
          served. A week ago, Police Chief Alejandro Gertz Manero, a former university rector who took
          office in August, announced that violent crime is soaring because mafia leaders are defying attempts
          to end police corruption.

          So on Friday, he ordered about 215 city police officers whose names appeared on lists of arrest
          warrants compiled in Mexico City and three neighboring states to report Monday morning to several
          police precincts and a downtown police training academy.

          More than 100 officers who showed up were detained by scores of city detectives, many wearing
          masks. But only 44 of them were later identified positively as men whose names were included on
          the arrest warrants, Del Villar said. Some of those summoned failed to appear, he said, and others
          were able to prove that although they may share similar or identical names with those sought for
          crimes, they were not the wanted individuals. Del Villar did not give details of the charges.

          Most of the officers who were arrested belong to the city's Auxiliary and Banking Police, two
          government-controlled agencies with a total of 59,000 uniformed officers whose services are rented
          out to banks, corporations and wealthy individuals. The officers stand sentry outside office buildings
          or serve as bodyguards.

          In addition, Mexico City has 35,000 traffic and beat officers, known as preventive police and 3,700
          plainclothes detectives, known as judicial police; none of those officers were arrested Monday.

          Both Del Villar and Gertz work for Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who is expected to run for
          president in 2000 representing the leftist party he formed in 1988. The success he and his aides
          show over the next months in curbing violent crime is likely to be a major factor in the campaign.

          Cardenas' presidential opponents will include candidates from President Ernesto Zedillo's
          Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, and from the pro-business National Action
          Party.

          If Monday's action was dramatic, it did little to reduce the enormous number of Mexican police who
          are wanted for crimes but remain at large, authorities acknowledged. Thousands of officers in
          federal, state and municipal police agencies are still wanted in connection with serious crimes, at least
          on paper.

          Many of those who have have not been arrested are protected by corrupt superiors. And others
          avoid arrest because chaos in the country's judiciary and police systems prevents authorities from
          matching the names of corrupt officers with the warrants for their arrest.