Fox Fires Police Chiefs for Late Response to Mob

MEXICO CITY —  President Vicente Fox fired two police chiefs Monday for their role in the tardy response to a mob attack that killed two undercover agents. But the move failed to halt partisan squabbling over responsibility for the Nov. 23 lynching of the officers.

With public outrage still simmering, Fox ousted Marcelo Ebrard, the capital’s police chief, who works directly for Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leading opposition candidate for president in 2006.

Fox also dismissed the head of the Federal Preventive Police, Jose Luis Figueroa, whose agents, mistaken for kidnappers, were set upon by a mob in a poor Mexico City neighborhood, tied up, doused with paint thinner and burned to death.

The president spared Ramon Martin Huerta, a longtime crony now serving as his minister for public security, despite criticism that Huerta should share the blame. Both Huerta and Ebrard are subjects of a federal investigation into why it took police more than 3 1/2 hours to reach the scene, quell the mob and rescue a badly beaten third undercover agent.

Fox postponed a state visit to Peru to manage fallout from the incident. He told a live radio broadcast that he had acted “to strengthen public order and defeat impunity” and to “guarantee the security that Mexicans legitimately demand.”

The lynching has set off a bout of national soul-searching, with some commentators calling it a pivotal moment in Mexico’s transition from the decades of one-party dominance that ended with Fox’s 2000 election. Violent crime and a corrupt criminal justice system have undermined public confidence in the president’s freely elected government, prompting citizens to take the law into their own hands and get away with it.

Because last month’s victims were policemen and because news crews managed to arrive long before police reinforcements, the widely televised killings created a scandal and prompted authorities to react differently. The 29 people arrested the day after the violence are the first known suspects to face charges for such a killing, according to Mexican media.

Public attention has focused more on the question of blame for the bungled police response. Testimony in the federal probe last week revealed that both federal and city police officials had received a “maximum alert” on the mob attack more than an hour before the two agents died.

Such disclosures have stirred unrest within the 14,000-member federal force that employed the slain agents. Hundreds of its officers had been threatening to strike unless Fox removed Figueroa as their chief. In doing so, Fox has also ordered a shake-up of the force.

Lopez Obrador, the early front-runner to replace Fox, has said the city’s police did “everything they could under the circumstances” to save the doomed officers. He refused to fire Ebrard, who had argued that clogged, narrow streets and understaffing kept the city’s 84,000-strong police force from getting to the scene earlier.

Because Mexico City is a federal district, Fox has ultimate authority over many matters, including the firing of the city’s police chiefs. Ebrard had been hired as the mayor’s choice, with Fox’s approval, and had spent much of his tenure trying to implement crime-fighting recommendations by former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The police chief’s dismissal widened the rift between the leftist mayor and Fox, who came to office four years ago as the candidate of the center-right National Action Party and is barred from a second term. Fox had not questioned Ebrard over the killings and made his announcement while Ebrard was testifying about them before Mexico City’s municipal legislative assembly.

After breaking off his testimony, Ebrard accused Fox of acting precipitously, out of fear of what investigators would find.

“The truth about the events is going to cause many problems for the federal government,” he said.

Ana Maria Salazar, a political analyst who specializes in security matters, said the rift between the president and the mayor could paralyze any reform legislation Fox hopes to push through a Congress in which the president’s party is a minority and needs allies.

“Fox acted in a sloppy manner,” she said. “Instead of having a healthy debate about reforming the criminal justice system so people will trust it and stop taking justice into their own hands, he simply fired these guys and did it in a way that makes it look like one more political attack on his enemies.”