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© St. Petersburg Times, published January 15, 2003
MEXICO CITY -- Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made a surprise visit to this sprawling metropolis Tuesday, bringing his law-and-order approach to a city plagued by rampant crime and police corruption.
Under tight security, the mayor and his aides arrived about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday and traveled in a convoy of 12 armored Suburbans with a police escort. TV and radio helicopters hovered above.
Giuliani spent much of the morning visiting some of the crime-ridden neighborhoods of the city, including Tlatelolco and Buenos Aires, known for its car thefts and drive-by kidnappings. Mexico City, with more than 9-million people and 10-million more in the surrounding areas, has one of the worst crime rates in the world. Only Colombia has a worse incidence of kidnappings.
Last fall a group of rich businessmen paid $4.3-million to hire Giuliani's consulting firm for a year. The goal is for the former mayor to draw up a plan much like the one he instituted in New York City, where the "zero tolerance" of criminal behavior helped reduce crime by 57 percent and homicides by 67 percent.
"Although there are different kinds of crime, different levels of crime, the situation in some ways is very similar," Giuliani said at a news conference. "Whatever the differences are in culture, in background and laws, the objective for all decent societies is absolutely the same. That is protection and safety for people as a fundamental human right."
Giuliani said his group and Mexican police officials have exchanged "daily phone calls" over the last three months and held four meetings in New York. They plan to submit general recommendations to the city's legislature in May, and more specific suggestions for how to implement ideas in September.
"New York City back in the 1990 was known as the rotting apple and the crime capital of America," Giuliani said. "And now it's considered one of the safest large cities in America, if not the safest, and an example of how you can reduce crime and improve quality of life."
"I should emphasize that that did not take place in six months or a year," he added. "It took two, three, four years of incremental change to get there. So this is the beginning of a process, by no means the end of it."
Crime is so rampant that many Mexico City residents are afraid to venture outdoors in the daytime. Criminals, many of them former and current police, routinely kidnap residents in daylight.
One resident, Esteban Rodriguez, a maintenance man, echoed the wishes of many when he said: "I just have one thing to say to Giuliani, 'God bless you because you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.' "
Giuliani canceled two earlier trips here, once due partly to a threat by a Colombian rebel group to kidnap him in Mexico City.
Asked whether he was concerned about the kidnapping plot, Giuliani smiled and said: "Do I look concerned? I'm not concerned."
He was expected to leave today after meeting with security officials, lawmakers and business leaders.