Don't forget: as the Idiot-in-Chief likes to say, "Family values don't stop at
the border."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/perkins/20031128-9999_mz1e28perki
n.html
Joseph Perkins
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
November 28, 2003
The young couple and their 9-year-old son were detained by police on the
evening of Oct. 7 after having crossed the U.S.-Mexico border earlier that day.
Two officers walked the husband and the son to an ATM, relieving the husband of
the cash they forced him to withdraw. Meanwhile, two other officers escorted
the wife to a police station.
She was ordered to take off her clothes – the better to strip search her.
Then one officer allegedly .d her as the other kept watch.
Had this crime occurred in San Diego, had the young couple and their son been
Mexican nationals, it would have touched off a firestorm. There would have been
demands for justice by a rightfully angry Mexican community. There would have
been marches and demonstrations organized by activist groups like MEChA.
There would have been declarations by politicians – like California state
Senate President Pro Tempore John Burton, who suggested last week that anyone
opposing driver's licenses for illegal immigrants is "racist" – that the
police are hateful toward brown-skinned people.
But there have been no demands for justice in this case. No marches or
demonstrations in support of the victims. No blanket condemnations of the cops
by politicians.
That's because the crime took place in Tijuana. And the victims were Americans.
So the husband and the wife, a 32-year-old with an Iowa driver's license, are
left to the tender mercies of the Mexican judicial system.
After filing a criminal complaint with the Baja California Attorney General's
Office, four Tijuana municipal police officers were charged with crimes against
the American turistas.
The most serious charges, including ., extortion and abuse of authority,
were made against officer Héctor Manuel Arias Campos. He's a supervisor on the
Tijuana police force working in a unit assigned to assist tourists.
Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.
Baja California's top state law enforcement official promises to throw the book
at Arias Campos and his three subordinates if they are found guilty.
"In this case," said Attorney General Antonio Martínez Luna, "the punishment
has to be more severe. Police officers are the first ones who should obey the
law."
But Mexican officials have been anything but severe with Tijuana police
officers who prey upon the border city's 26 million yearly visitors.
Earlier this year, in fact, the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana beseeched city
officials to follow up on complaints from American tourists who said they had
been shaken down by the border city's crooked cops.
Tijuana's internal affairs unit responded by recommending punishment for 16
officers involved in eight different incidents. And a six-member commission –
including two Tijuana City Council members, two city government employees and
two private citizens – acted upon the recommendations, suspending the 16
officers 30 days without pay.
That, apparently, is the going punishment south of the border for shaking down
Yankee turistas.
Indeed, the leniency with which San Diego's Mexican neighbor deals with its
corrupt cops explains why, as a spokeswoman for Martínez Luna's office
acknowledged, "Police extortion is common among tourists."
Let us consider again if the situation were reversed, if Mexican nationals were
shaken down by cops in San Diego or Nogales, Ariz., or Columbus, N.M., or El
Paso, Texas.
You can bet your last peso those police officers would not get off with a mere
30 unpaid days away from the force. They'd be fired. They'd be thrown in jail.
They'd be vilified as racist, xenophobic cops on the evening news, on the front
page of the morning paper.
Yet there hasn't been even the slightest suggestion in any quarter that the
Tijuana police officers who allegedly .d an American women, who shook down
her husband were either racist or xenophobic.
That's because, under the liberal orthodoxy, only white folks can be racist.
Only Americans can be xenophobic.
Well there's at least one young American couple that knows better. They've
learned firsthand, from the Tijuana police, just how hostile some brown folks
can be against non-browns, how contemptuous some Mexicans can be toward
Americans.
"If ye love wealth better than liberty ... servitude better than ... freedom,
go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or your arms ... May your
chains set lightly upon you. May posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams |
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