Disputed Border Crime Unit, Idled After Slayings, to Resume Patrols

SAN DIEGO —  Federal and city law enforcement officials say they plan to redeploy a controversial border anti-crime unit that shot to death two Mexican men while they were allegedly handcuffed and fleeing back to Mexico.

“We’ll be back in the field very shortly. It could be a matter of days,” Mike Rice, deputy San Diego police chief, said Friday.

The unit has been largely idle since the Jan. 4 shooting. But authorities attributed the inaction to the routine recruitment and training interval between shift changes and the standard evaluations that occur after shooting incidents.

Officials said there has been no suspension of the task force, composed of members of the San Diego Police Department and the U.S. Border Patrol. The task force is known as the Border Crime Prevention Unit.

San Diego attorney Marco E. Lopez has charged that witnesses saw the two most recent victims being gunned down from behind, while handcuffed, as they attempted to flee back to Mexico.

The witnesses said the two men were handcuffed as they were arrested, according to Lopez. However, a San Diego Police Department official, Capt. Dave Hall, said the men were handcuffed after they were shot.

Families of the men have retained the lawyer, who said he plans to file two $15-million wrongful-death claims with the U.S. government. The shooting prompted the Mexican Embassy in Washington to send a protest note to the U.S. State Department.

The two men were the fourth and fifth Mexican citizens killed by the unit in a three-month period. In its five-year history, the unit has been involved in 35 shooting incidents that have left a total of 18 people dead and 26 others wounded.

All of the shootings have been ruled justified, which has prompted charges by critics that authorities have failed to investigate the cases adequately. The assertion has been denied by the San Diego County district attorney’s office, which reviews shooting incidents involving law enforcement officers.

Police maintain that the two most recent victims were suspected bandits who were shot near the border fence as they attempted to rob members of the police patrol. The shooting involved three U.S. Border Patrol agents who were assigned to the police unit. All officers in the unit volunteer for the assignment.

The unit is assigned to patrol the canyons, mesa tops, river bottoms and other rugged terrain between Tijuana and San Diego, the principal entry point into the United States for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens each year. The unit, modeled on a similar patrol that was disbanded in 1978 and chronicled in Joseph Wambaugh’s book, “Lines and Shadows,” is designed to cut down on crime against the aliens by border bandits who prey on illegal crossers.

The officers patrol an area that is, in the words of San Diego Police Cmdr. Cal Krosch, “probably the most dangerous police beat in the country.”

Officials say the patrol has been successful in reducing crimes against illegal aliens.