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Families, some officials suspect police are involved

By Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times

An air of impunity hangs over the city of Juárez. Hundreds of women have been killed or have disappeared, but little progress has been made in their cases.

A Juárez policeman worked his beat recently on a downtown street, in the past nine years, Juárez police officers have3 been accused of killing and sexually assaulting women.

Many in this border city of 1.2 million blame police corruption and incompetence for the lack of progress in solving most of the killings of young women since 1993. And many wonder how cases of serial killings can be solved when police officers and officials are suspects in violence against women.

Are women’s lives so cheap, people ask. Does anyone care?

“Many people have long suspected that police are involved in the murders, and that they cover up for whoever is killing the women,” said Judith Galarza, president of Chihuahua Independent Committee for Human Rights. “Over the years, we’ve seen cases of police who were accused of rapes, of homicide, and nothing happened to them. People here are afraid of the police.”

Former U.S. DEA Special Agent Phil Jordan said the Juárez drug cartel has corrupted federal, state and city police to the extent that “police no longer investigate murders. They’re too busy protecting drug shipments for the narcos.”

Drugs and violence

Two Mexican federal agents, Carlos Cardenas Cruz and Jorge Garcia Paz, are wanted for questioning by Chihuahua state authorities in connection with the 1998 disappearances of Silvia Arce, 29, and Griselda Mares, 24.

Chihuahua officials said the agents allegedly had Arce and Mares tortured and killed over missing weapons that were stored at the old Pachangas Club, where the Juárez women worked. Witnesses said the federal officers mistakenly thought Arce and Mares had stolen the weapons, which had been moved, state officials said.

The bodies of Arce and Mares have not been found.

Chihuahua state police asked Cardenas and Garcia to report to the police offices in Juárez to respond to allegations they were involved in the women’s disappearances, but they never showed up. Instead, the federal attorney general’s office transferred them to the state of Queretaro in southern Mexico.

“We don’t keep track of federal agents once they leave the district,” said Manuel Del Castillo, spokesman for the Mexican federal police in Juárez. “Whoever was in charge then, their superior, isn’t around anymore either.”

Four years later, “the case is still under investigation,” Chihuahua state Prosecutor Jose Ortega Aceves said.

Juárez police accused

Over the past nine years, other city, state and federal police in Juárez have been accused of killing and/or sexually assaulting women.

•In 1998, Chihuahua state authorities alleged that state police agent Pedro A. Valles shot his girlfriend to death. Rocio Barraza’s body was found inside Valles’ police vehicle in front of the state police academy.

At the time, Valles was assigned to investigate crimes against women.

He “is still a fugitive,” former police spokesman Juan Manuel Carmona said. It’s believed a personal dispute led to the shooting.

•In 1999, Juárez policeman Dagoberto Ramirez was arrested in the death of his girlfriend, Gladys Lizeth Ramos, but he was freed after he convinced a judge that she committed suicide. Ramirez was not allowed to return to the city police force.

‘Official’ suspects

Other Mexican law-enforcement officers in Juárez have been suspects in the deaths, disappearances or sexual assaults of women in recent years. Here are some of the cases:

•May 1999: Two women, ages 14 and 28, told city police that a bus driver and an armed federal police officer sexually assaulted them near Lomas de Poleo. Nothing came of the city police report.

•April 1999: A 16-year-old girl told police that El Sauzal’s community police chief, Julio Alfonso Rodriguez Valenzuela, tried to sexually assault her. El Sauzal was the site of two other homicides involving women. State police said Valenzuela fled to El Paso or New Mexico and that El Paso law officials were contacted to assist in his capture.

•February 1999: A Juárez woman filed a complaint against a police officer at the old city jail. She alleged that the officer had fondled her. A similar complaint against another officer at the same jail was filed in 1998. The victim was the wife of a doctor. The complaints went nowhere in both cases.

•February 1998: Maria Maura Carmona de Hernandez, 30, died of gunshot wounds at her Juárez home. Her husband, Sergio Hernandez Pereda, 32, a Chihuahua state policeman until 1997, was suspected of killing her, according to police who said Hernandez fled the area.

•July 1998: A woman accused four Juárez city police officers of sexually assaulting her at the city jail. The officers denied the allegations. They were arrested in October 1999, then released after a judge said there was no evidence to hold them.

•August 1998: Six agents of the special city police group Fortac were accused of kidnapping the 21-year-old wife of an alleged drug-trafficker in exchange for $1,000. The woman’s husband said the six agents told him they would protect him if he gave them the money. After he refused, police said, the six agents took his wife hostage in a city police vehicle. She later was released unharmed. Charges against the agents were not filed.

•September 1998: A 23-year-old woman reported being brutally beaten by a city policeman downtown. She identified her attacker by his nickname, “Fausto,” and told authorities that he got mad because she would not perform oral sex. The woman, who said she was epileptic, said the officer preyed on vendors such as herself. Although there were witnesses, and the officer’s partner allegedly saw what happened, the complaint never reached a court.

•1995: Elizabeth Gomez, 29, was stabbed to death. Her body was found in the Pemex sports park. State authorities said they suspected a city policeman.

•1995: Laura Ana Inere, 27, was shot to death. Her body was found in the municipal cemetery. Authorities said a city policeman was suspected because of the weapon involved.

•1995: Melchor Baca, a federal policeman, threatened his wife, and then chased and fatally shot Ruben Vasquez, a friend of hers, at the federal courthouse where she and Vasquez worked. Baca fled and remains at large.