EDITOR'S NOTE: AP reporter Elliot Spagat follows Tijuana's new public safety chief, Julian Leyzaola, for eight months as he launches the city's most aggressive police reform to date, in the middle of a raging drug war.
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TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Behind every crime is a corrupt cop.
That's Public Safety Secretary Julian Leyzaola's mantra as he storms Tijuana with its most aggressive police reform to date, a mix of counterterrorism and community policing. If it works, it could be a model for other hotspots and a huge breakthrough in a drug war in Mexico that has taken more than 14,000 lives in the last three years.
But the job is as monumental as turning around Al Capone's Chicago. Cops in this border city and many others nationwide now serve as the eyes and ears of drug lords. And those who fight the cartels — let alone those who lead that fight — often end up dead.
Leyzaola, 49, wanted to be in Tijuana. After 25 years in the army and stints running Baja California's state prisons and police, he moved to the police department in 2007 to be at the center of the fight against organized crime. A year ago, he became head of the largest police force in Baja, where 90 percent of officers surveyed last year failed federal security checks.
The Associated Press followed Leyzaola for eight months as he rallied troops, consoled officers' widows and appealed to jaded residents for support. The AP joined commanders and officers on patrol, at target practice and in training classes.
"Listen well," the retired military officer says with his trademark certitude. "No delinquent can survive without help from the authorities. If you do not clean up the police, you will never get rid of drug trafficking."
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Leyzaola's march to recapture the city starts in early 2009 and expands to a new district every three months. The plan is to begin in quieter areas and end in 2011 in the east, the city's most violent section, where Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental wages a vicious campaign to take over Tijuana's drug trade from the Arellano Felix family.
Leyzaola draws his strategy from many sources, including French counterterrorism operations in Algeria in the 1950s and Colombia's war against its cartels in the '90s. He has $7 million in federal money this year, part of the $300 million President Felipe Calderon is giving to clean up police nationwide.
The plan for each district: First, a strike force is sent to make a slew of arrests. Then beat cops are replaced by officers who pass intensive background checks, and former military officers take over as commanders.
They patrol small areas in new pickup trucks with radios less vulnerable to interference by drug traffickers. And they are reprimanded before their peers for every unanswered crime.
"If there are drug dealers, prostitutes, illegal immigrants, robberies, if anything happens ... I'm going after that officer," says Leyzaola, a former lieutenant colonel.
First up is downtown Tijuana.
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In March, Felipe Gandara receives the order to show up for the downtown launch of Leyzaola's aggressive community policing.
Gandara is one of about 400 Tijuana officers who passed the new training and background checks, and he begins by introducing himself at every bank, foreign-exchange business and restaurant.

"It's important to lose your anonymity," Leyzaola says. "I believe police abused their positions because no one knew who they were."

The 37-year-old Gandara lost his longtime partner and close friend, Officer Luis Izquierdo, in the reorganization. Izquierdo had yet to go through background checks and was moved to another district.

But they both like Leyzaola's approach.

"It was a complete change, a lot more responsibility," Gandara says. "Every crime is your responsibility."

Victor de la Cruz, the former Air Force officer appointed to oversee the launch, estimates a 40 percent increase in people reporting crimes in little more than a month.

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The same month, Leyzaola continues his anti-corruption spree.

To date, about 130 officers have been jailed. About 250 others have been fired or pressured to resign.

When Leyzaola suspects cops are dirty, he puts them on patrol in the palm trees outside police headquarters — a job that humiliates most into quitting.

He also like confronting them personally — in his office, at their stations, even on patrol. He sometimes drives them himself to the army barracks, where they are held.

Ricardo Omar Medina, Leyzaola's body guard of 18 months, receives a call late one March night to report at 8 a.m. for a new radio. When he arrives, his boss demands his vest, badge and other equipment.

"I've lost trust in you," Leyzaola tells him.

According to court documents, one of the officers arrested said he got $500 a month from El Teo's gang to keep streets clear of cops during murders and kidnappings. If he refused, his family would be killed. Another officer said he was paid $300 to $500 each time he released criminals at El Teo's command.

Families of the officers come forward immediately to say their loved ones were tortured into false confessions — electrocuted genitals, near-suffocation, severe beatings.

"He couldn't even speak, he just held my hand, trembling," Cristina Zapien says after her first visit at an army base with her husband, Jaime Alberto Avila, a commander accused of taking $300 a month.

Leyzaola says he is not responsible for what happened to officers in army custody.

He says he played a wiretap to one woman who came to his office claiming her husband was tortured. A man on the tape is heard taking orders from a criminal to clear an area of patrol cars.

"Do you recognize the voice?" Leyzaola asked her.

"Yes," she says, "I recognize the voice."

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The threats start on April 24, broadcast over Tijuana's old police radios that drug traffickers routinely commandeer: If Leyzaola doesn't resign, cops will die.

Three days later, Officer Izquierdo, Gandara's former partner and mentor, is on the night shift, patrolling the San Diego border with three other cops.

He joined the force in 2002 for the money, after losing his job at an electronics factory. Tijuana pays police more than $13,000 a year, one of highest among Mexico's local departments. Izquierdo promised his family the job was temporary, but he fell in love with it.

He wants to stay under Leyzaola's reform and seems a good candidate. He has graduated high school, a new requirement for the police academy added this year, and he — like his top boss — is a fitness fanatic.

But his wife, Patricia Isaias, often tells him: "The only thing you're going to get is a tombstone."

That night, Izquierdo walks into a convenience store just as a caravan of black SUVs drives by. Men get out of the vehicles and pump him and three others with more than 200 bullets.

The police scanners hum with a "narcocorrido," or a drug ballad. Three more officers go down in synchronized attacks across the city.

Gandara picks up the radio traffic and calls his wife.

"Luis is dead," he says.

She calls Isaias to break the news: Seven officers killed in 45 minutes, including Izquierdo.

It is the department's deadliest day.

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The next day, Leyzaola stops the community policing, less than two months into the program. His officers are too exposed.

They turn to patrolling large areas in convoys of as many as six trucks. Every patrol vehicle gets an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to boost their firepower against the assassins.

But Leyzaola pushes his other reforms.

He has introduced moving target practice to train police on assassination attempts. The artificial turf at his low-budget shooting range is held together with duct tape, and the "patrol car" for the exercise is two folding metal chairs. But it's still a big improvement: As late as 2007, shooting practice was optional, and cops had to pay for their own bullets.

The department's 2,000 officers get two-week courses on securing crime scenes, surveilling suspects and other basic policing techniques.

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The tip comes in early June: Drug trafficker Filiberto Parra Ramos — wanted for killing two federal agents and for his role in one of Tijuana's deadliest shootouts — is spotted in the Playas de Tijuana neighborhood. The army already is out looking.

Leyzaola, who sleeps with a pistol and a rifle and spends his nights on patrol "hunting" for criminals, joins the massive search.

After a false alarm, Parra is cornered at a shopping center near the airport. Leyzaola personally makes the arrest — nabbing one of El Teo's top assassins without firing a single shot.

The hits ramp up in July.

The body of Officer Geronimo Calderon, pumped with bullets, is left with a note: "If you don't resign, Leisaola (sic), I'm going to kill 5 x week."

That night, a Tijuana cop survives an assassination attempt as he stands unarmed outside a grocery store. An officer dies in drive-by shooting the next day while guarding a Mexican Red Cross center, and a third is killed five days later in an ambush.

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By September, funerals are part of Leyzaola's routine.

The memorials look nothing like the display of pomp in the United States when an officer dies in the line of duty — no long motorcades transporting the casket or hundreds of officers attending from departments around the area. In Tijuana, there isn't even money for $200 plaques to add their names to a City Hall police memorial.

Under a blazing midday sun, Leyzaola eulogizes three officers killed in another convenience store hit, this time in Playas de Tijuana, where seafood restaurants and apartment buildings line the Pacific shore.

"We say goodbye to three colleagues — honest colleagues, with unblemished records," he tells the sparse crowd gathered outside police headquarters. "If there's anyone who says otherwise, if there's anyone who insinuates otherwise, they will have problems with the lieutenant colonel."

When the three caskets are moved to City Hall, they draw curious onlookers, including Gabriel Perez.

"Three cops get killed and not even 100 people show up," he says. "It's sad."

Leyzaola is also quietly campaigning to keep his job after his boss, Mayor Jorge Ramos, is forced out by term limits in December 2010. Leyzaola says senior officials in the Calderon administration assure him they will insist he stay under a new mayor. He tells the Constitutional Lawyers Association in one of his many civic talks that his plan needs five years.

"We're really only in our first year," he says. "In two years, Tijuana will see a real difference."

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After the September killings, Leyzaola moves his campaign to Playas de Tijuana three months earlier than scheduled.

The district gets new radios and 58 new Ford F250s. They had 14 patrol vehicles before.

The new commander, Rafael Dominguez, 39, comes from the Leyzaola mold. The son of a bricklayer in a small village in Veracruz, he had 21 years in the military but no police experience.

As he neared retirement, he called an old army buddy in the department to ask for a job.

"If not, I'm going to work for the other side," he joked.

That led to an interview with Leyzaola, who impressed him with his military-like approach to police reform — clear, long-term goals and detailed short-term milestones.

By October, Dominguez is out patrolling with his officers, arresting vagrants and graffiti artists. He runs down a steep canyon called "Smuggler's Gulch" one night and comes back out with six suspected smugglers.

The officers like the new approach. Old commanders ordered them to release suspects, often under threats that something bad would happen if they didn't. But Dominguez tells his ranks to let him know if they are ever intimidated from making an arrest.

"I'll do it," he says. "I'll be the one to show my face."

All over the city, cops are scared. They routinely patrol with their rifles drawn.

Officer Mario Pena, who works in another district, stops wearing his uniform to work and alternates his routes home. He quits meeting officers for coffee on the job, stops socializing with them on weekends for fear they will be recognized and gunned down.

But he says the killings are a sign that Leyzaola is succeeding.

"We are finishing off the mafia," he says.

El Teo has other plans:

By the end of September, the Mexican army gets another tip: U.S. authorities say a weapons purchase north of the border indicates a plot is afoot to kill Leyzaola.

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The intelligence leads soldiers in October to a Tijuana shoe shop, where they arrest Edgar Zuniga, one of El Teo's men. Zuniga leads them to a ranch on the eastern outskirts, where the plot is being hatched. Among other preparations, the assassins' vehicles are being painted in camouflage to trick the career military man as they approach.

The plan calls for 12 men to approach Leyzaola in a fake military convoy as one takes him out with a .50-caliber rifle. The execution would be videotaped, set to a narcocorrido and posted on the Internet.

Soldiers surprise the planners Oct. 31 in a shootout at the ranch, arresting 13 suspects. They seize more than 3,400 bullets, plus the camouflaged vehicles.

The foiled hit had been personally ordered by El Teo — for the next day.

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In Leyzaola's first year as public safety secretary, 32 officers died, more than in the previous five years total. Dozens went to jail and the department shrunk from about 2,200 to 2,000 — forcing him to extend patrol shifts from eight to 12 hours.

His community policing plan is still on hold.

But Leyzaola already is looking to next year, telling officers he would 150 new hires, send 50 at a time to train with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and issue new bulletproof vests, each backed by a manufacturer's $50 million guarantee.

Six more people are arrested in the assassination plot in November. Leyzaola is feeling confident enough to perhaps resume community policing early in 2010.

He avoids speculating on what would have happened if the plot had gone through.

He says, "God protects me."

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – A teenage Dutch sailor who made headlines when she went to court to fight for the right to sail solo around the world has gone missing, police said Sunday.
Laura Dekker's boat, Guppy, is still moored at its usual berth and the 14-year-old appears to have left her father's home on her own, Utrecht police spokesman Bernhard Jens told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
"We do not believe this is a crime," Jens said.
Utrecht District Court refused in October to let Dekker embark on her attempt to become the youngest person to sail alone around the world, and placed her under the supervision of child care authorities.
Jens said Dutch authorities have alerted neighboring countries to monitor airports.
"That happens with missing minors — if she is seen somewhere else or tries to leave via an airport or something like that, authorities know we are looking for her," he said.
Dekker has joint Dutch and New Zealand citizenship because she was born on a yacht in New Zealand waters. She said earlier this year she might try to go there if Dutch authorities refused to let her sail.
Jens would not comment on a report in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that Dekker withdrew euro3,500 ($5,000) from her bank account a few days ago.
"We are doing everything we can to make sure we can get her back," Jens said. "We are certainly concerned about her health — we are talking about an underage girl."
Dekker's spokeswoman Mariska Woertman did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

WASHINGTON – Have your checkbooks and credit cards ready. There's a price for health care security.
President Barack Obama's overhaul — now looking like it really will happen — should give uninsured Americans options they've never had before. But it won't be a free ride.
As with the Medicare prescription drug benefit that passed when Republicans ran Washington, consumers will face a dizzying lineup of health plan choices — with different costs and benefits.
"People who need to buy coverage as individuals and small employers are going to have a lot more in the way of attractive health insurance options, and they won't have to worry about whether their medical condition precludes them from being covered," said policy expert Paul Ginsburg, who heads the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change.
The downside: "Sticker shock is going to come to some."
Get ready for a whole new set of trade-offs.
For example, people in their 50s and early 60s, when health problems tend to surface, are likely to pay less than they would now. Those in their 20s and 30s, who get the best deals today, will face higher premiums, though for better coverage.
Obama on Wednesday hailed a tentative deal by Democratic senators to give millions of Americans the option of signing up for private plans sponsored by the federal employee health system, which covers some 8 million including members of Congress. The compromise, which also offers people age 55 to 64 the option of buying into Medicare, appears to have given Democrats a way around the dealbreaker issue of a new government plan to compete with private carriers. Senators continued to debate for a 10th day, with Democrats pushing to pass the bill by Christmas.
The 2,074-page Senate bill will grow even longer as amendments are considered, but the basic outlines of the legislation most likely to pass are becoming clearer.
The overhaul will be phased in slowly, over the next three to four years. But eventually all Americans will be required to carry coverage or face a tax penalty, except in cases of financial hardship. Insurers won't be able to deny coverage to people with health problems, or charge them more or cut them off.
Most of the uninsured will be covered, but not all. As many as 24 million people would remain uninsured in 2019, many of them otherwise eligible Americans who still can't afford the premiums. Lawmakers propose to spend nearly $1 trillion over 10 years to provide coverage, most of the money going to help lower-income people. But a middle-class family of four making $66,000 would still have to pay about 10 percent of its income in premiums, not counting co-payments and deductibles.
No dramatic changes are in store for most people who get coverage through their jobs — about 60 percent of those under age 65. The Congressional Budget Office says the bill wouldn't have a major effect on premiums under employer plans, now about $13,000 a year. Parents would be able to keep dependent children on their coverage longer, age 27 in the House bill.
One benefit for people with employer coverage is hard to quantify: It should be easier to get health insurance if they're laid off.
The real transformation under the legislation would come for those who now have the most trouble finding and keeping coverage: people who buy their own insurance or work for small businesses. About 30 million could pick from an array of plans through new insurance supermarkets called exchanges.
Some people's taxes would go up.
To pay for expanded coverage, the House bill imposes a 5.4 percent income tax surcharge on individuals making more than $500,000 and families earning more than $1 million. The Senate slaps a 40 percent tax on insurance plans with premiums above $8,500 for individual coverage, and $23,000 for family plans, among other levies.
The rest of the financing would come mainly from cuts in federal payments to insurers, hospitals, home health care agencies and other medical providers serving Medicare.
Preventive benefits for seniors would be improved. So would prescription coverage. But people enrolled in private plans through the Medicare Advantage program are likely to see higher out-of-pocket costs and reduced benefits as overpayments to insurers are scaled back.

The latest big wrinkles in the debate involve intriguing opportunities for consumers. But even there, it may be less than meets the eye.

Lawmakers have been talking for years about giving average Americans the option of coverage through the federal employee system, "just like members of Congress." The compromise among Senate Democrats would make plans certified by the federal employee system available nationwide, bringing competition to states in which one or two large insurers now control the market.

The other big new idea is to allow people age 55 to 64, one of the groups now most at risk for losing coverage, to buy into Medicare.

Yet from the inside, the federal employee health benefits plan isn't looking all that great these days. Federal workers do have a wide choice of insurance plans, but they're looking at hefty premium increases next year. Individual coverage under the most popular plan is going up 15 percent.

"I don't think you'll ever find someone satisfied with the price," said Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees. "And you've got people who are priced out." The union estimates that 250,000 federal workers are uninsured, mostly because they can't afford the premiums.

And what about Medicare? It is widely accepted, with 74 percent of doctors saying in a recent survey that they're taking most or all new Medicare patients. But buying into Medicare won't be cheap, about $7,600 a year not counting out-of-pocket costs for deductibles and copayments.

Ginsburg, the policy expert, says he's puzzled as to why anyone in their late 50s would want to buy into Medicare instead of picking a plan offered in the new exchanges, the insurance supermarkets. His reasoning: The exchange plans should have lower premiums since they would also include younger people who don't go to the doctor that often.

"The legislation already solved the problem by offering them coverage through the exchange," he said. "A Medicare buy-in based on the older age group is going to cost a lot more."

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) –
The ruckus over MTV's "Jersey Shore" is getting as intense as the hot-headed dramatics on the show.

The controversial new reality series chronicling a spirited group of self-described "guidos" living in a New Jersey beach house has drawn protests of increasing volume. Now it appears that calls for a boycott are having an impact.

The Italian-American group UNICO (which also protested HBO's "The Sopranos") has asked members to complain to MTV's advertisers. In the past couple of days, two advertisers on the show -- Domino's Pizza and American Family Insurance -- have pulled out of the series.

In addition, one major media outlet reported that MTV New York offices were receiving death threats because of the show. The network has denied the report.

"('Jersey Shore' furthers) the popular TV notion that Italian-Americans are gel-haired, thuggish ignoramuses with fake tans, no manners, no diction, no taste, no education, no sexual discretion, no hairdressers (for sure), no real knowledge of Italian culture and no ambition beyond expanding steroid- and silicone-enhanced bodies," blasted New York Post critic Linda Stasi on Monday. "Would that programing ever have been allowed if the group were African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Jewish people?"

MTV president of programing Tony DiSanto, an Italian-American, has remained largely mum on the subject, though he told one group, "The cast takes pride in their ethnicity. In fact, it is a key driver of how they bond with each other and self-identify. They refer to themselves as 'guidos' in a positive manner."

Former "Hills" cast member Spencer Pratt defended the network on Twitter: "Linda Stasi you should change your name to Linda Boring if you can't be entertained by young Italian-Americans enjoying youth and partying!"

The initial round of criticism didn't seem to help "Jersey Shore," which debuted Thursday to a relatively modest 1.4 million viewers.

Adding to the drama is a clip from an MTV teaser for an upcoming episode of the show that's making the rounds online. It shows a man punching out one of the female housemates. But it's unclear if any of the conflict -- onscreen or off -- will improve the show's ratings.