MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- Mexico City's police force, seen as
                  notoriously inefficient and corrupt, will be placed under the supervision of
                  Mexican civic groups, the capital's police chief said on Monday.

                  Police chief Alejandro Gertz said he hoped the new watchdogs would
                  restore some confidence in the police, in a city where many crimes go
                  unreported by victims who feel that going to the police is a waste of time.

                  "They (the civic groups) are going to support us ... watching over our work.
                  This watchdog will be invaluable," Gertz told journalists at a ceremony to
                  announce a plan to decentralize Mexico City's police force and place it
                  under greater "citizens' control."

                  The groups have not been officially named but will be Mexican civil groups.
                  One used as an example was group called Mexico United Against Crime.

                  Crime in Mexico City has soared in the last three years since the country
                  tumbled into its worst recession for decades after a disastrous devaluation in
                  late 1994.

                  Leading leftist politician Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was elected in the first
                  modern elections for Mexico City mayor last year on a campaign pledge to
                  improve law enforcement and combat the police's complicity with crime.

                  Cardenas is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate for the Party of
                  the Democratic Revolution in the year 2000, and his administration says
                  statistics show crime rates have begun to fall since it took office in December
                  1997.

                  But independent surveys by business groups say robberies are still rising and
                  lack of personal safety in Mexico City is a barrier to economic development.

                  The Mexico City Chamber of Commerce (Canaco) said one-third of stores
                  they surveyed in the capital were robbed in the third quarter of the year, but
                  less than 40 percent of the storekeepers bothered to seek police help.

                  "The interviewees said they didn't report crimes to the authorities because of
                  their bad reputation and the certainty that criminals enjoy impunity, which
                  allows them to walk free in short order and take reprisals," Canaco
                  president Jose Antonio Fernandez told a recent news conference.

                  To make matters worse, the police themselves have often been accused of
                  committing crimes.

                  A Norwegian tourist denounced uniformed Mexico City police for
                  kidnapping and robbing him on Oct. 15, before locking him inside the trunk
                  of a car they abandoned on one of the city's main traffic arteries at 4:30 a.m.
 

                  Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.