TIJUANA The state's police force will be reorganized to improve its professionalism and to reduce corruption and will serve as a model for the rest of the country, the state Public Safety Secretary Daniel de la Rosa announced Friday.
The new state police agency will be made up of the 422 agents currently on the force, as well as another 150 who will be recruited among university students studying engineering, psychology, law and criminology.
The department will now be called the Accredited State Police and for the first time its agents will be certified by the National System of Public Security, De la Rosa said.
The plan is to follow the highest international standards to fight crime, De la Rosa said. The department will be made up of three divisions: Tactical analysis, investigations and operations.
"The focus is to create a model police force that identifies more closely with the community and not so much like it is now, which only has relationships with other police departments," De la Rosa explained. "The idea is to make officers more reliable, and better equipped with cutting-edge technology."
Currently, state police agents carry out operations on their own or in support of authorities in the three levels of government.
As the reorganization is implemented, he added, operations will be based on intelligence and investigations, and crime will be prevented through improved investigations and the ethical and legal training the agents will receive.
"This model seeks to reduce to a maximum degree, through a series of tests and the addition of personnel from universities, the infiltration of organized crime elements," said De La Rosa.
Starting next week, the state's Public Safety Department will begin recruiting at universities and colleges to hire 150 people who will be added to state police ranks after passing a series of social, psychological, toxicological and physical exams.
"Contenders to work under this new model should be professionals with a vocation to always serve and protect society with integrity and courage," he said.
According to De la Rosa, this will be the first state police force in the country to follow national and international police standards.
Further, it will be the first step of President Calderon's proposed plan to have all police departments in a state report to the governor.
That proposal adopts what the federal government calls "the principle of co-responsibility," that clearly mandates that each police department should support one another, and allows municipal police departments to exist as long as their officers obtain meet the appropriate standards.
Currently in Baja California, there are a total of 5,680 officers working for the state's five municipalities, in addition to 900 investigative police officers and 422 state police officers.
Ever since the federal government declared war on the drug cartels, authorities have begun a campaign to root out corruption from police ranks.
Between November 2007 and February 2011, a total of 2,066 officers statewide were removed from their jobs, 38 of them state police agents, De la Rosa, added.
More information about the new state police force is found in the web page:
