San Diego To Assist Baja California In Training New Tourist Police Force

The San Diego Police Department will help train members of a new Mexican metropolitan tourist police force that will patrol from Tijuana to Ensenada.

The training agreement was formalized in a letter of intent signed Monday at San Diego City Hall by Mayor Jerry Sanders and mayors of the Baja California cities of Tijuana, Rosarito and Ensenada.

The new force will patrol primarily the 50-mile coastal tourist corridor from the U.S.-Mexico border to Ensenada. Exact size of the force and other details will be developed in the next few weeks prior to the start of training.

The goal is to have the force in operation by early next year. It will be designed primarily to deal with visitors from the U.S., Baja's traditional main market.

“We’ve always prided ourselves on our working relationship with our friends to the south,”

Sanders said, adding that the economies of the two regions are closely tied and both benefit from binational tourism.

“What’s good for Rosarito and Tijuana and Ensenada is good for San Diego,”

he said.

Sanders also commended the three Baja California mayors on their “very courageous” efforts in Mexico’s crackdown on organized crime elements involved in the international drug trade.

Rosarito Beach Mayor Hugo Torres said that having San Diego police, who are very experienced in dealing with international and U.S. tourists, assisting with training would be a great benefit.

“It will help us find out how American police work so we can provide better services,”

Torres said.

Torres said that visitors always have been safe in Baja but the new metropolitan tourist police would help make them feel more comfortable, secure and welcome.

Rosarito in 2008 started its own 30-member tourist police force, a special city department for attention to tourists, an ombudsman’s office to assist visitors and now issues bilingual traffic tickets that can be mailed in with fines from the U.S.