Mexican anti-crime forces launch new combat plan
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- Mexican authorities on Thursday unveiled an
900-strong task force to fight crime in a neighbourhood in the capital
where
more than 130 of the city's most dangerous criminals have been identified.
The Mexico City Attorney General's office and Ministry of Public Security
said in a news conference they would call in 100 federal agents to the
grimy,
impoverished Tepito district, joining 800 officers from the capital.
The move was the latest by Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas to
make good on his 1997 campaign pledge to crack down on crime, which
has soared in the four years since a sudden currency devaluation plunged
Mexico into its worst economic crisis in half a decade.
The Tepito neighbourhoods has a particularly bad reputation for crime,
notably drug dealing, car theft and black market sales of arms and stolen
goods.
Crime has so petrified many Mexicans, many of whom no longer venture out
a night, that the new show of force failed to impress one Tepito resident.
"There are so many drug problems here, what will you do with that? Given
the size of the problem this is really worth nothing for us," one woman
shouted to officials announcing the plan in a parking lot in the middle
of
Tepito.
Onlookers backed here up with cheers of "Viva Tepito!"
Mexico City Attorney General Samuel del Villar called the project "an
extraordinary joint effort" between police and prosecutors.
Del Villar said that his office identified more than 1,000 criminals operating
in
organised groups in Tepito. Some 130 to 145 of them were identified as
ring
leaders of at least 14 syndicates or labeled as "especially dangerous
criminals."
Copyright 1998 Reuters.