General Takes Top Mexico City Police Post

An army general has taken charge of law enforcement in the Mexican capital, promising to use force only as a last resort to arrest soaring crime rates, public insecurity and police corruption in one of the largest cities on the globe.

As he assumed Mexico City’s top police job over the weekend, Gen. Enrique Tomas Salgado indicated that he will appoint military officers to key public security posts to professionalize Mexico City’s police ranks. But he stressed plans to increase citizen participation at all levels in forming police policy.

The general’s predecessor, David Garay Maldonado, was fired by President Ernesto Zedillo last month after city riot squads clashed with teachers demonstrating in the streets, leaving dozens of elementary school teachers injured.

“I insist on better participation and involvement by social groups, parents, youth, workers and businessmen,” declared Salgado, an expert in public security who has a master’s degree in the subject.

“We believe that we can be helped a great deal by teachers, women, social leaders and every person of good faith who wants to make this city a secure place.”

Despite Salgado’s soft rhetoric and intellectual approach, the political opposition warned that the general’s appointment signals the “militarization” of this city of about 20 million at a time when an enduring economic crisis has driven street crime and police corruption to almost unbearable levels.

City Council members from the populist opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party called the appointment another error by the city’s mayor, who is appointed by Zedillo under the Mexican Constitution. They said the city needs more jobs and higher salaries--not more military officers and police.

Council members from the conservative National Action Party asserted that the naming of a military officer to a civilian job will confuse the public and that Salgado is unfamiliar with the capital, having served in military garrisons outside Mexico City throughout most of his career.

But the appointment of Salgado, 59, a Mexico City native who most recently commanded the military division based in Acapulco, is hardly without precedent. City records show that in the last 100 years, 31 of Mexico City’s 62 police chiefs have been military generals, 16 have been colonels and just 15 were recruited from the ranks of civilian law enforcement.

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The appointment also comes at a time when many independent analysts say the city needs a strong, honest and professional figure to clean up a police force in which nearly 1,000 officers have been dismissed--more than a tenth of them jailed--for misconduct during an 18-month purge that began soon after Zedillo took office.

In officially assuming command Saturday, Salgado vowed that, under the supervision of the military officers he is bringing into the Public Security Secretariat, “law, order, discipline, loyalty and our profound commitment to service will reign” throughout the police force.