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Tijuana's Former Top Cop Favors Legalizing Marijuana
March 12, 2009SAN DIEGO (10News) -- "Of course nobody is happy about what they see in the news. But it’s the cost. It’s not easy," said former Tijuana Secretary of Security Alberto Capella.
We first met Capella in November. As Tijuana’s top cop, he was considered a marked man in the eyes of the Mexican drug cartels.
At the time reporter, Steve Atkinson asked Capella, “Is this how you expected to live your life?” Pointing to at least 16 bodyguards, Atkinson continued, “I see a bodyguard here. A bodyguard there. A bodyguard here. And a bodyguard here.”
Capella replied, “No, but somebody has to do this job.”
It wasn’t the cartels that got to Capella. It was politics. Shortly after our interview, the man known as the "Tijuana Rambo," was relieved of his duties, even though he forced out hundreds of corrupt police officers and was showing progress.
“Some people tell me I have committed two sins,” said Capella in a recent follow-up interview. “The first one is that I’ve been Secretary of Public Safety with the mind of a citizen. I said, ‘That’s a sin?’ ‘That’s a sin?’ I am trying to do what the people need.”
We reconnected with Capalla at a Trans-Border seminar in San Diego. It was one of his limited public appearances. The bodyguard count has dropped from 16 to three or four. But he’s still fighting the fight against crime and corruption in Tijuana. But now as an outsider.
“I have my own particular point of view about how to resolve the problem,” said Capella.
It’s not a popular view in the United States. But after battling corruption and the cartels for years, Capella supports an idea once considered by the former President’s of Mexico and Columbia. A controversial idea of beating the cartels at their own money making game by legalizing marijuana.
“With that idea, with the new legal aspect of the problem, we are going to take the financial (advantage) from the narcos,” said Capella.
Capella is sharing that idea with others as he travels through Mexico and the United States. At times, it is almost as if he never left the Tijuana police force. Many of his ideas were not popular then and some are not popular now.
In closing Capella said, “When you try to do the right things, at the end you are going to be alone with a lot of enemies.”
Mexican President Felipe Calderon is not in favor of legalizing marijuana but he did stress this is no longer just Mexico’s problem. Calderon told reporters in a recent interview that as long as the United States is the number one consumer of drugs from Mexico, the violence and corruption in Mexico will continue.
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