The Fight to Save Juárez (19 page)

Later that afternoon, Guillermo Prieto and Juan Antonio Román, the department's chief of operations, met in Prieto's office. The chief, in a celebratory mood, pulled out a bottle of tequila. The two heads of the Juárez municipal police marked the day's accomplishments with a shot. One shot then led to another. Prieto and Román started reminiscing and reflecting on the hard road they had been traversing. The recent death of their friend and colleague Francisco Ledesma was still fresh and weighing heavily on their minds. Ledesma had been gunned down in late January, just days before his name had appeared on the Sinaloa cartel's “For those who did not believe” list. Both men were acutely aware of the fact that Román's name topped the “For those who still do not believe” list. Many on this second list were now dead.

That evening Román told Prieto how much he missed the simple things, such as going to restaurants with his family or hanging out with his friends. The marked man now traveled with a heavy security detail at all times. Later that night, Román decided to call one of his
compadres
: “Let's go play dominoes. Get some friends together,” Román told him.

Perhaps Román felt assured that he had not been followed. Perhaps he felt safe in the hands of the friends who he'd be joining at the domino table. Or perhaps he was simply exhausted and the tequila had lulled him into dropping his guard. Whatever the reason, once Román arrived at his friend's house, he dismissed his bodyguards. “I'm going to be here late,” he told them.

Román and his friends played dominoes, drank, and talked until nearly three in the morning before Román decided it was time to head home. He left his friend's house alone. Somehow, through the network of informants and collaborators, the would-be assassins had learned that Román had released his security team, which meant that he was defenseless. Someone recognized the unusual opportunity to execute the police's second in
command
, and by the time Román arrived at his house, a cartel commando unit lay in wait for him. When Román pulled up to his house, he was killed in a hail of gunfire.

At home in bed, Reyes Ferriz received a call from Guillermo Prieto. The police chief was breathless, running to Román's house. “He was extremely agitated,” the mayor would later remember. “They've just attacked Román!” Prieto screamed into the phone, and when he was close enough to verify the report, he seemed to break down: “It's him! Damn it! Why him? Why him?”

At a hastily assembled press conference later that day, a shaken Reyes Ferriz attempted to put a brave face on it all. “This administration will not waver in the face of these attacks by organized criminals who want to destabilize the [police] department,” he said. But behind the public pronouncements lay a more desperate reality: the cartels were continuing to decimate his police force, tearing it apart and systematically eliminating its leadership. Back in Mexico City, the morning after their visit to Juárez, the members of Calderón's security cabinet awoke to the news of Román's assassination. It was the cartels' response to the government's plans for saving Juárez.

.   .   .

The day of Antonio Román's funeral the words he'd spoken four months earlier at the funeral services for Francisco Ledesma seemed hauntingly prescient: “When you die in battle, confronting a criminal, that's nice,” Román had said at Ledesma's graveside. “That's how police want to die,” he'd continued.

“He always said: ‘If they're going to kill me I want to go down shooting,'
” the mayor would later tell me. “And he did. He fired six shots from his pistol that night.”

When asked if he was going to resign from the police force after his name had appeared on the “For those who still do not believe” list, Román had replied in the negative. “This is a real bitch,” he'd said, “but I'm continuing here. When it's your time to die you're going to die.” At the time of his death, Román was the last one on the infamous list who was still on the force. The remaining sixteen individuals were either dead or had resigned. Román's loyalty to Guillermo Prieto was the reason most often cited for the fact that he'd stayed on. Just a month earlier, Prieto had talked Román into remaining on the force after the mayor had convinced Prieto himself to stay on until the army could launch Operación Conjunto Chihuahua.

José Reyes Ferriz felt this assassination more personally than most, because he'd had considerable contact with Román. “He was a strong, brave guy who wasn't afraid to get into things,” the mayor said. He recalled one of the last times he'd seen Román, not long before his assassination. At the time, the police were feeling the pressure of the threats and the reality of so many executed comrades, and, as everyone was all too aware, Román's
name
topped the “unbelievers” list. “He came into the
presidencia
and he was wearing his bulletproof vest,” the mayor recalled. With inch-and-a-half-thick steel plates, the vest reputedly could withstand the impact from an AK-47 round. “I could see it in his eyes,” the mayor recalled. “The fear. He was afraid of being killed.” The mayor continued after a moment, “I thought he was an admirable man,” he said. “It was tough, hard, very tough emotionally. They say that JL personally came to kill him,” the mayor added. “JL” was the man running the Juárez
plaza
for Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and the Juárez cartel. Although the Sinaloa cartel had been behind the “unbelievers” list, Reyes Ferriz believed that the Juárez cartel also wanted Román killed because he had been cooperating with the federal government's Confidence Tests. Being hunted by both cartels had reduced Román's likelihood of survival to zero.

Evidence marker at execution scene. Photo copyright © Raymundo Ruiz.

.   .   .

One detail about Antonio Román's funeral caught the attention of nearly every observer: Guillermo Prieto, the police chief, was not present. Nor was he present at the subsequent news conference in which José Reyes Ferriz addressed Román's execution. This immediately set off a flurry of speculation as to his whereabouts and whether he had resigned.

Román had been assassinated in the early hours of Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, Prieto himself had received death threats. The police
department
was already decimated. With Román dead, all of the section heads had either been killed or left the force. Prieto put in a call to Reyes Ferriz. “I'm going to resign,” he told the mayor. Reyes Ferriz went directly to police headquarters where the chief was holed up to talk with Prieto in person. The chief told him he was going to El Paso. It took some convincing, but the mayor and Prieto reached an agreement: Prieto would take refuge in El Paso, but he would not formally resign. Instead, he would continue running the department over the phone while Reyes Ferriz looked for his replacement. It was a desperate measure to preserve the illusion that the police department was not in utter shambles. Prieto issued a press release saying that because of the threats against him he would remain at an undisclosed location for security reasons, but that he continued as chief of the Juárez municipal police.

Later that day, as Mayor Reyes Ferriz headed home, a convoy of Suburbans driving at an exceedingly high speed blew by his security detail. “We were frightened,” the mayor recalled. They had momentarily taken the convoy to be a cartel hit team, but it turned out to be the police chief and his security team heading for the international bridge and the sanctuary of El Paso, Texas. Press releases notwithstanding, Guillermo Prieto's tenure at the helm of the Juárez municipal police was finished.

C
HAPTER 14

The Pajama Chief

Within a day of Guillermo Prieto's departure for El Paso, General Juárez Loera presented mayor José Reyes Ferriz with a recommendation for a new police chief. The mayor immediately flew to Mexico City to interview the candidate, whose name was Roberto Orduña. Orduña was a retired army major with some law enforcement experience; Reyes Ferriz offered Orduña the position on the spot and, to his surprise, Orduña accepted. “I didn't think anyone would take the job,” the mayor later recalled, noting his relief. The one condition that Orduña placed was this: he wanted to have nothing to do with the media. “I'm allergic to them,” the soon-to-be-chief told Reyes Ferriz.

Orduña was sixty-four years of age and had a serious air about him that complemented the bearing of a career military man. He sported a salt-and-pepper moustache and slicked-back hair with a receding hairline. Orduña's sagging eyelids gave his brown eyes a hooded look, and thick lines marked the man's face. He was crusty and no-nonsense, but then only a man with a steeled outlook toward life would have accepted the offer to be chief of the Juárez municipal police. There wasn't a corner of the Mexican republic where people had not heard about what was taking place there.

At 7:30 on the morning of Monday, May 19, 2008, Mayor José Reyes Ferriz swore in his new chief of police. The dysfunctional state of the force was obvious, the challenges facing the mayor and the police chief enormous. “To those who thought that the municipal police had been defeated, and that we had capitulated in the face of the cowardly attacks perpetrated by organized crime,” the mayor told the assembled press and dignitaries, “today we are here before society to say to those voices that they are mistaken.” He acknowledged that there were “bad elements” collaborating with organized crime within the police force. “We will fight all of those black grains in the rice,” he said, noting that the police cleanup would continue. The mayor promised that the episodes of terror that had engulfed the city and generated a climate “of psychosis” would come to a stop. “There are more of us who wish to live in peace than there are of them,” the mayor said.

The press learned from a short biographical sketch circulated at the swearing-in ceremony that Orduña had retired from the military after
twenty-
five years of service in 1983. He appeared to have had an illustrious career, serving with the 4th Artillery Regiment within Mexico's prestigious Heroico Colegio Militar. He'd had a smattering of law enforcement positions thereafter, including antinarcotics courses taught by the DEA and antikidnapping courses taught by the FBI. The curriculum vitae disseminated to the press had omitted the fact that Orduña had faced “labor problems” during a short five-month stint as chief of police in the city of Gómez Palacio, Durango, but some journalists had tracked this information down and raised it during the Q and A following the ceremony. Orduña played the episode down, saying only that it was a “disciplinary” matter that had been resolved within twenty-four hours through the intervention of the city's mayor. It was evident that he resented the questions. This was the initial salvo in what would become an ongoing battle between Orduña and the Juárez press.

The new police chief appeared intent on isolating himself. With the exception of his interactions with the mayor and his staff, the military, and the requisite contacts with state law enforcement, Orduña's interactions were mostly limited to his commanders within the municipal police. While it was typical for new chiefs to bring in their own trusted people and place them in the department's top positions, Orduña had negotiated no such arrangements when he'd met with the mayor in Mexico City. He seemed not to care about such details. When Orduña arrived in Juárez, he came by himself. No one knew if he even had a family.

The mayor had offered the services of his staff to help Orduña find a house to lease, but the former military man was uninterested. Instead, he asked Reyes Ferriz to construct living quarters for him at the headquarters. It was an odd request, to be sure, but the mayor complied with Orduña's wishes and an apartment was created for him inside the Babícora precinct compound. The existing police chief 's office had been an ample room on the second floor with a large conference table on one side, across from a work area where the chief 's desk sat. The office already had a bathroom, but no shower. The mayor had a partition built dividing the room in half, and the conference table area became Orduña's bedroom. A closet was converted into a shower.

Roberto Orduña was eccentric and, toward the outside world, misanthropic. He took to living like a monk. His entire life seemed to center around the challenges of wresting the police force from the clutches of the cartels. He brokered no fools and he eschewed niceties or even rudimentary comforts. Orduña announced that henceforth the media would not be permitted on the grounds of the Babícora station (headquarters) “for security reasons.” He claimed that with all the threats against the police it would be too easy for assailants to infiltrate the building. The chief said he would
host
a weekly press conference on Monday mornings, but that would be the extent of the media's access to him.