Corruption Slows Tijuana Slaying Probe : Mexico: Investigators suspect that killers of the city’s police chief have ties to law enforcement agencies as well as to a drug cartel, sources say.

TIJUANA — A few weeks before his murder, the city police chief received a chilling overture from the Tijuana drug cartel: We want to talk to you.

Chief Jose Federico Benitez Lopez, a lanky, bespectacled reformer, met secretly at a restaurant with Ismael (El Mayel) Higuera Guerrero, acting boss of the cartel run by the Arellano brothers, according to Mexican and U.S. government officials familiar with the case.

The presence of the fugitive kingpin and his thugs in a public place set the tone: The Arellanos still owned Tijuana. The gangster told the chief that aggressive raids by his municipal officers were interfering with business. The cartel would pay $100,000, with more to come, for him to stop meddling. Benitez refused, saying he was going to do what he had to do.

“Very well,” the gangster replied. “Then we will also do what we have to do.”

Six months ago today, Benitez died in a highway ambush: A gunman in a passing Ford Bronco sprayed him with AK-47 fire after another vehicle cut him off. The murder stoked an already growing sense of anarchy in Mexico created by politically charged violence, especially the March 23 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in Tijuana.

There have been no arrests in the Benitez slaying. According to Mexican and U.S. government sources, state police investigators suspect an explosive scenario: The chief’s killers were connected not only to the cartel but to the federal and state police as well. The investigation has reached the brink of confrontation with a convoluted network of corruption; some doubt it will go further.

The case remains an unfinished tale about the clash of good intentions with the reality of Mexico’s often-rapacious police culture. Benitez was an outsider who went beyond the call of duty by challenging a drug underworld that threatens the stability of the nation. His combination of courage and inexperience made him a lonely hero. And ultimately, it drove him to his death.

“Here was a truly good official, a man who was doing his job with honesty and enthusiasm,” said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, Baja’s former human rights prosecutor. “He had a great preoccupation with drugs, the presence of drugs among children. He risked his life. This leaves the government with the moral responsibility of resolving the case: Justice must be done.”

Soon after the assassination, Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel said publicly that the crime had “dangerous roots” in police corruption. Ruffo said in July that the investigation was almost complete. And he has said that a state homicide division commander arrested last month in an Arellano safehouse was linked to the killers.

But the governor has said little more. Both he and Mayor Hector Osuna Jaime have surrounded themselves with bodyguards. Osuna declined to be interviewed about the case. The probe has moved slowly because the suspects have powerful protectors and state officials fear retaliation, sources said.

The suspects include “people at the level of federal commander,” according to a law enforcement official close to the investigation, who said some have been transferred to other states.

Moreover, the results could embarrass the governor because of the suspected complicity of state officials, according to critics that include Victor Clark Alfaro, a human rights activist who has exposed corruption on his own.

“Almost immediately after the killing, they knew who the material and intellectual authors were,” Clark said. “It is irresponsible of the government to make statements that the investigation is advancing, that they know who did it. It is both a political and a police matter. If it were strictly a police matter, they would have resolved it by now.”

Mexico has struggled with an antiquated justice system dominated by the machine politics of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Ruffo and other officials of the opposition National Action Party (PAN) are neophytes in this gritty milieu, having won power in Baja only within the last five years.

In Mexico, the federal judicial police have prime responsibility for drug enforcement, state judicial police investigate felonies, and city officers are dedicated to crime prevention. Although there are many honest officers, the cartels have gained alarming influence.

The Arellanos have operated with impunity in Baja, even after authorities put a price on their heads last year for the murder of the cardinal of Guadalajara. In March, state police serving as bodyguards for kingpin Ramon Arellano engaged in a deadly firefight with federal agents from Mexico City and allegedly helped Arellano flee. The scandal led to the resignation of Ruffo’s attorney general.

A series of federal commanders have also been jailed or dismissed for suspected collusion with drug traffickers.

Benitez’s municipal police stepped into this treacherous turf last year, using tips from citizens to hammer at the street-level operations of a multimillion-dollar empire. The Grupo Tactico, a youthful, SWAT-like unit, busted smuggling convoys, raided stash houses and racked up seizures of marijuana, cocaine and weapons.

Benitez complained privately that federal counterparts gave him little support. His tenacity angered the drug lords, a former colleague said. “It wasn’t as much the quantity of the busts as Federico’s attitude that bothered them.”

The result was the offer from El Mayel to join the Arellano payroll. By refusing, Benitez crossed a fatal line, sources said.

“The position of municipal chief can be pretty powerful if you want it to be,” said the law enforcement official. “They wanted to make an example of him.”

Benitez told Mayor Osuna and others about the implied threat by the drug lord, according to sources who heard the account from top Baja officials and from the Benitez slaying investigators. But the chief apparently did not take major precautions.

The assassins struck as Benitez, accompanied by a bodyguard, drove his city pickup truck to get a haircut after work. The hit had professional trademarks: the use of four-wheel-drive vehicles, the skillful interception on a dark road, the marksmanship.

“Every bullet he fired hit (Benitez),” the law enforcement official said. “The bodyguard was killed by bullets that passed through Benitez.”

A theory persists that the Benitez slaying is connected to the Colosio assassination, but it is more likely that drug traffickers killed him in revenge, sources say. They note that the municipal police have curtailed drug enforcement since the murder.

When Osuna took office two years ago, he appointed Benitez precisely because he was an outsider. Benitez, a lawyer, had worked 18 years as a factory administrator and one year as a legal adviser in state government.

In a world of PRI-connected police veterans who wear leather jackets, cowboy boots and pistols jammed in their waistbands, Benitez looked very much the technocrat in his suits and large glasses. He was fervently pro-PAN and Catholic; during an Ash Wednesday interview, he excused himself to stand in line with officers receiving the blessing of the city’s bishop, then returned to his desk with the cross of ashes marked on his forehead.

Benitez’s campaign to modernize the department won admirers on both sides of the border.

“We have never seen a chief like that in Tijuana who has gone out of his way to make a difference,” said San Diego Assistant Police Chief George Saldamando. “He had vision.”

The chief restructured the 1,300-officer force into 18 districts to improve response times and break down the barriers of fear and distrust between police and citizenry. He attacked corruption, firing an unprecedented 400 officers and instituting human rights training. He raised salaries 20% and obtained new vehicles, guns, bulletproof vests, computers and communications systems for the underpaid, poorly equipped agency.

Nonetheless, Benitez made a host of enemies. His intolerance for corruption-as-usual disturbed the border mafias involved in immigrant smuggling, gambling and prostitution. Tijuana’s muckraking police columnists printed gossip from disgruntled subordinates, ridiculing Benitez as authoritarian. They nicknamed him “Robo-Cop.”

Although some remember him as genial, others say he could be abrasive and impulsive.

“Not only was he inexpert in police work, he overcompensated for his insecurity by being impulsive and authoritarian,” a former colleague said. “He made important changes without calculating the risks. He did not cultivate much support among his people.”

A municipal police veteran said Benitez was “a good organizer, but a bad policeman.”

But critics and admirers agree that his commitment to law and order verged on an obsession, whether he was personally citing a truck driver for illegal dumping or ordering officers to deal harshly with fellow police they caught breaking the law.

The 42-year-old chief’s legacy endures in the shiny new equipment sported by the Tijuana force, a street renamed in his honor and a corrido , one of the popular songs that celebrate fallen Mexican warriors: “The Death of Benitez.”