Pubdate: Wed, 03 May 2000
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053
Fax: (213) 237-4712
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Forum: http://www.latimes.com/home/discuss/
Author: Juanita Darling, Times Staff Writer

TO COLOMBIANS, HE IS THE WAR ON DRUGS

*Latin America: Federal Police Chief Carries Hero Status At Home. Now His 
Victories Are Altering The Battle--And His Role.

GUAYMARAL AIR BASE, Colombia--Dressed in a pale blue sport coat instead of 
his usual olive green uniform, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, Colombia's top 
police officer, stepped out of his helicopter a few yards from the hangar 
where three U.S.-donated Black Hawks were undergoing the manufacturer's 
final inspection.

They were the last of six helicopters promised in 1998, when the Colombian 
National Police became the first law enforcement agency in the world to fly 
the military helicopters. Serrano was here to thank the U.S. congressional 
aides who had delivered them.

He was especially grateful because, as the helicopters were flying here, 
two more Black Hawks were pledged to the police as part of a $1.3-billion 
aid package before Congress to help fight drugs in Colombia.

For the general's congressional supporters, as for many people in the 
United States and Colombia, Serrano and the police are this nation's fight 
against drugs.

Here, polls consistently rank the gray-haired general as the nation's most 
popular public figure.

Serrano kept U.S. anti-drug money flowing in ever greater quantities even 
after Colombia's previous president's U.S. visa was revoked because of 
suspected ties to narcotics traffickers, and even while a horrendous human 
rights record prevented the army from receiving aid.

At a time when U.S. officials trusted no one else in Colombia, Serrano 
collaborated with the Drug Enforcement Administration to break up the Cali 
cartel, then the world's most powerful cocaine syndicate.

But now, thanks in part to the effectiveness of the police, the nature of 
the drug war in Colombia is changing.

The fight has spread from the cities to the countryside. The big cartels 
have atomized into smaller, more flexible networks that are believed to be 
run largely from Mexico and Miami.

The success of eradication programs in Bolivia and Peru has forced 
traffickers to move production of coca--the plant used to make 
cocaine--into the Colombian jungles.

That brings the traffickers into partnerships with the brutal, heavily 
armed leftist rebels and right-wing counterinsurgents who have been 
fighting the Colombian government and each other for 36 years.

Police, even with Black Hawks, do not have the equipment or training to 
fight a drug war that is blurring into a guerrilla war. The proposed U.S. 
aid package, which emphasizes military hardware for the armed forces, 
reflects those changes, as well as U.S. confidence in Colombia's current 
president, Andres Pastrana.

Serrano and the police are no longer the only representatives of their 
country's fight against drugs.

At age 57, the general must guide the police into a new role of cooperation 
with the armed forces and explain that role to his supporters on Capitol 
Hill, who fear that he is being discarded.

"Now we have to operate more on an international level, to share more 
information and teach others from our experience," Serrano said during an 
interview on his way to the airport and an anti-narcotics seminar in 
Argentina. In the same week, he had already met with the congressional 
aides, visited a remote village where guerrillas had killed 21 police 
officers, attended their funerals and cut the chains of a young kidnapping 
victim after police rescued her.

Serrano's ability to anticipate change and respond has allowed him to 
survive four defense ministers and two presidents during his more than five 
years as police director.

That's impressive for a kid from the little town of Velez who admits that 
he joined the police at age 17 because he liked the uniform.

"Serrano is more than a great policeman," said Myles Frechette, former U.S. 
ambassador to Colombia. "He also has a natural political instinct and he is 
patriotic."

Serrano has demonstrated those qualities by walking a tightrope held on one 
end by his friends in the U.S. government and on the other by sometimes 
jealous Colombian politicians. The only safety net is his tremendous 
popularity.

In his 1999 autobiography, "Checkmate," Serrano writes that he has no idea 
why former President Ernesto Samper chose him for director in 1994, 
skipping over half a dozen more senior officers.

He was not Samper's first choice, or even his second, according to sources 
close to the decision-making.

However, those sources said, U.S. officials made it clear that 
anti-narcotics aid hinged on Serrano's heading the police.

Convinced that Samper's 1994 presidential campaign had accepted $6 million 
from drug traffickers, the Americans dealt directly with Serrano, ignoring 
the president and even revoking his U.S. visa.

Their anger with Samper overshadowed what Serrano said is the police 
chief's greatest triumph: a two-year effort, ended in 1996, to capture 
leaders of the Cali cartel.

Even then, the United States refused to certify Colombia as a fully 
cooperative partner in the war against drugs.

Nevertheless, anti-narcotics aid to Colombia--mainly for the police--kept 
growing, from $85.6 million in 1997 to $289 million last year. And 
Serrano's popularity grew with it.

When he visited an army base in Tolemaida last year with the military high 
command, soldiers politely stepped past the defense minister and armed 
forces commander to shake hands with the top cop. After lunch, the kitchen 
staff shyly emerged to ask Serrano to pose for a picture with them.

"It is difficult to provide him with security because people rush toward 
him to touch him, to take a picture of him," said Capt. Herman Bustamante, 
his chief of security and the son of his close friend Hernan Bustamante.

"Fortunately, I do not have to take care of him alone," said the younger 
Bustamante. "I have the help of 100,000 police and 90% of the population of 
Colombia."

Actually, Serrano's approval ratings come in closer to 94% in most recent 
surveys--which, paradoxically, also show that Colombians' biggest worry is 
safety in a country that averages eight kidnappings a day.

"Everybody loves Gen. Serrano, but nobody loves the police," said Maria 
Victoria Llorente, a crime researcher at the prestigious Los Andes 
University. "It's something I cannot understand."

Her only explanation is that Colombians do not blame Serrano for the lack 
of public safety because common crime cannot be separated from the violence 
of this country's long-standing guerrilla war and drug trafficking. Serrano 
said he worries about public safety: "I wish that there were no narcotics 
and that we could concentrate on crime."

Colombians appear to accept that reasoning and to respect Serrano's 
reputation in a nation crippled by corruption. "The police are riding on 
the coattails of his prestige," Llorente said. "It is a cult of personality."

And Serrano undeniably has a magnetic personality.

"Everyone sees him as their father," said Jorge Serrano, 23, the youngest 
of his three children. "He looks like a teddy bear."

Serrano turns his defects into positives.

He unabashedly acknowledges the struggle with weight that deprives him of 
his favorite sweet, bocayo de guayaba--a candy made in his hometown of 
Velez. He even published a book of weight-loss exercises.

He is open about his humble origins as the son of a seamstress and a meat 
salesman. Frechette recalled that Serrano asked him to arrange for a used 
firetruck to be delivered to Velez, about 100 miles north of the capital, 
Bogota, through a U.S. program that allows the U.S. military to transport 
the trucks when there is space on ships or planes.

Serrano is an avid tennis player, known for his ability to put a spin on a 
ball so that it drops just past the net. A well-publicized tennis game was 
used to hush rumors of a rift between Serrano and Pastrana last year. "The 
president chooses him as his doubles partner," said the younger Bustamante. 
"It's better to have him on your side."

The general is never more human than at the all-too-frequent funerals for 
officers who have died in the line of duty. Serrano visits the murder 
scene, often a remote village that has been attacked by guerrillas, and 
talks with the officers to raise their spirits.

He always serves as a pallbearer.

"He takes the loss of his boys seriously," said a European diplomat.

Because the government provides pensions only for the widows and orphans of 
officers who have more than 15 years of service, Serrano's wife, Hilde, 
runs a private charity to benefit other families.

"He never abandons a subordinate in trouble, neither those who have been 
attacked in battle or those who have faced accusations," said Gen. Luis 
Enrique Montenegro, his second in command. "People are confident that if 
they are loyal to him, he will be loyal to them."

The most public example of that loyalty has been Serrano's staunch defense 
of Maj. Oscar Pimienta, a hero of the Cali cartel capture who was accused 
last May of skimming U.S. aid. American officials are still trying to work 
out how to conduct an audit that will not compromise police security.

When Judge Diego Coley ruled that there was enough evidence to hold 
Pimienta for trial, he said, he was called to Serrano's office.

He surreptitiously recorded the upbraiding that Serrano gave him, accusing 
the judge of trying to destroy a brilliant police career and besmirch 
Serrano's reputation.

Coley filed a complaint with the attorney general over Serrano's conduct. 
When newspapers published the story, radio talk show hosts immediately 
sprang to Serrano's defense.

Callers to the shows disparaged Coley.

"Instead of hurting Serrano, this incident has increased his popularity," 
Coley said. "People think, 'Yes, the general should put that judge in his 
place.' "

Coley, who was transferred a few days after the ruling, has become 
disillusioned. "I met him when he was a colonel and he was friendly.

Now he is arrogant--all he cares about is his image."

Serrano does not discuss the incident, but his supporters say he has good 
reason to suspect attempts to undermine his reputation. In the midst of 
their operations against the Cali cartel, Montenegro recalled, intelligence 
agents discovered that drug traffickers had set up bank accounts in the 
Cayman Islands in the names of Serrano and Montenegro in an attempt to make 
it appear that the police officials had taken bribes.

Further, corruption is a sensitive issue for Serrano, who has dismissed 
more than 6,500 officers suspected of ineffectiveness or dishonesty. The 
campaign began five years ago, when half the Cali force was on the drug 
traffickers' payroll.

"Dishonesty makes him angry," Herman Bustamante said. "He takes drastic 
measures when corruption is involved."

Serrano's anti-corruption campaign has made him enemies among the dismissed 
officers, who Bustamante said are as much a threat to the general and his 
family as the criminals he has captured.

As a result, the Serranos must travel with escorts at all times.

All have apartments in the same building--the general's is the 
penthouse--with police security in the lobby and a roadblock at the end of 
the street.

They have lived this way for more than a decade.

"Our life changed," Jorge Serrano said. "I had few friends--only those who 
dared to be my friends.

I had to go everywhere in an armored car. With five bodyguards around all 
the time, a person feels inhibited."

Even so, they do not feel safe. Jorge Serrano and his family recently 
joined his brother and sister in exile.

"We understood that we had to make sacrifices," the younger Serrano said 
during an interview on his last day in Colombia. "All that he has done for 
the country is reflected in us. He is a dedicated person who believes that 
the more he sacrifices, the harder he works, the better things will turn out."
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart