Pubdate: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 Tuesday August 5 4:50 PM EDT Mexico Launches Crackdown on Organized Crime By Dan Trotta MEXICO CITY (Reuter) Declaring war on organized crime, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo has sent heavily armed police into dangerous neighborhoods this week to round up suspected criminals by the hundreds. Police in Mexico City have arrested nearly 4,000 people since a Zedillo ordered the crackdown in March, officials said, but the recent campaign has drawn the most attention because of its brazen strongarm tactics. Authorities said Zedillo's goal is to clamp down on a crime wave that has soared since a 1995 economic crisis that put a million Mexicans out of work. Crime was a central issue in recent elections that saw Zedillo's governing party lose control of the capital city for the first time in 68 years on rule. The massive roundups have scored points with the public. One newspaper poll showed 77 percent of residents approve of the campaign. Crime shot up 40 percent in 1995 and grew another 13 percent last year, officials say. But critics said the dragnets are poorly thought out and that real crime kingpins are escaping. "I think the ringleaders are laughing right now," Pedro Penaloza, president of the public security commission in the Mexico City legislature, told Reuters in an interview. "The heads of the bands aren't out on the street corner." Only a minority of those arrested 15 percent by one Penaloza's estimate are ever charged with a crime. The rest are let free. Penaloza blamed arbritary tactics in which police arrest suspiciouslooking characters but have no case to present when the defendants appear before a judge. The main targets are traffickers of stolen car parts and taxdodging produce vendors whose criminal enterprises are often protected by crooked cops. "In Mexico there is an impressive network of criminal associations, not just in the police but also among high levels of government," said Penaloza, a member of the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution that will govern Mexico City starting in December. Even more dangerous mafias deal in kidnapping and drugs but so far have not borne the same brunt of the law. Police have plenty of easier foils. In three Mexico City neighborhoods known as the Bermuda Triangle, dozens of hucksters on each street corner bombard motorists with offers of fast and cheap auto repair service. Their goods are widely believed to be stolen. The leader of the National Commission for Human Rights told Reforma newspaper it has received a wave of complaints about police barging into homes and jailing innocent people. One corner auto parts salesman told Reuters that his brother, a cop, told him about rogue officers who looted the homes they were supposed to be searching. "People without any criminal record were taken away and fined 500 pesos (about about $65), and for what? Just to be investigated? It's not fair," Oswaldo Caldino said. Ricardo Garcia Villalobos, chief of the multiagency National System for Public Safety, pledged to keep up the fight in comments distributed by the Interior Ministry. "What I can tell you is that these actions will be permanent and each time more emphatic, more orderly and more coordinated," he said.