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Master Sergeant
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 152
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The Saturday Profile: Mexican Police Chief Produces Results, and Scrutiny
JUST a few days into his new job as the police chief here in Mexico’s longtime murder capital, Julián Leyzaola said, he received a phone call from the boss of a crime syndicate named La Linea. Mr. Leyzaola had been threatened before, quite often, in his last job as the head of public security in Tijuana. But this call was different. It came from a former police officer, who called the chief’s cellphone to suggest a partnership. “It’s Diego,” said the crime boss, José Antonio Acosta Hernández. “I’m at your service.” Chief Leyzaola, 51, a trim former <a href="http://www.womenfashionbag.com/marc-jacobs-handbag-embossing-leather-black935230-p-18415.html"><strong>marc jacobs bags</strong></a> military officer with a flair for drama, smiled at the recollection. The call came in March. In July, he arrested El Diego and his main collaborators, including several police officers. “I don’t dialogue with delinquents,” he said. But ever since that victory over La Linea, Chief Leyzaola — already Mexico’s most renowned and controversial policeman — has been under a spotlight that keeps getting hotter. Positive and negative developments have intertwined: violence has declined in Juárez, with murders down by around a third over the last year; at the same time, complaints of human rights abuses by the police have increased, including some against the chief himself; and now that La Linea is gone, one of its rivals, the Sinaloa cartel, has become more powerful. This appears to be the Leyzaola package. A similar dynamic played out during his time in Tijuana from 2008 through 2010, and just as residents there <a href="http://www.womenfashionbag.com/new-coach-tote-bag-gold-kahki-model-7874360-p-19514.html"><strong>international buses</strong></a> are still trying to make sense of his approach, the people of Juárez are also now scratching their heads with cautious awe. “We’re seeing the results we asked for,” said Federico Ziga, president of the Ciudad Juárez restaurant association. “Not everyone agrees on the cause, but the results are there.” IN a wide-ranging interview at his office here, Chief Leyzaola said he had long aimed to destroy the “narco dream” by showing that the authorities could take away “their guns, their cars, their drugs, their money.” Like a boxer or wrestler, he treats his tough-guy image as a necessary tactic. In Tijuana, he punched a dead cartel gunman in the face as bystanders watched. There and here, he insists on calling criminals “mugrosos,” or slimeballs. “You can’t apply a strategy from a desk,” he said, sitting behind a desk with just a few papers and a fruit smoothie. “You have to apply it in the street.” Specifically, he says he has calmed Juárez by dividing the city into sectors and locking down troubled areas, starting with the central business district where La Linea was based. For months at a time, he said, he deployed the police to stop and question everyone going in and out of certain neighborhoods. Critics contend that while the effort destroyed La Linea, an especially violent gang implicated in the 2010 massacre of teenagers at a house party and the killing of a United States Consulate worker, it has also led to unjustified arrests for anyone young or poor who looks like trouble. “It’s a systemic violation of human rights,” said Gustavo de la Rosa, a Chihuahua State human rights investigator. “More than 5,000 illegal detentions were reported in the months of October and November.” Chief Leyzaola has also been accused of personally beating prison inmates with a two-by-four after a riot at the local jail in July. An American who has since been released said he saw the chief hitting inmates. More recently, two other prisoners accused the chief and seven other officers of killing a friend <a href="http://www.womenfashionbag.com/gucci-cosmetic-case-black-p-19974.html"><strong>chanel 5171</strong></a> after the three men were arrested together in November. Though his office did not respond to requests for comment on these specific beating and homicide allegations, Chief Leyzaola has not denied using arrests and “intense, harassing patrols” to break the link between petty criminals and organized crime. Young people, he said, must understand the consequences of claiming to be a big shot.
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