Mexico police chiefs face drug, lie detector tests

JIUTEPEC, Mexico, June 1 (Reuters) Senior Mexican police will face drug and lie detector tests to weed out those who have been corrupted by wealthy narcotics gangs, the country's security minister said today.

Authorities have already forced 180 senior officers to undergo tests, including psychological and medical evaluations, and another 1,200 will be vetted in the next couple of months, Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna told reporters.

''We are beginning to evaluate police chiefs all over the country,'' Garcia Luna said at a meeting of chiefs in the town of Jiutepec. ''There has been a serious structural deterioration of municipal police, they have been abandoned.'' President Felipe Calderon is struggling to contain drug-related violence that has killed some 1,000 people since the start of the year, as a three-way war between rival drug gangs and the Mexican military spirals to unprecedented levels.

Mexico's poorly paid and undertrained police are often in the pay of wealthy drug traffickers, who corrupt them with offers of cash backed by threats of violence if they do not accept.

Soldiers have confiscated the guns of several municipal police forces suspected of being in the pay of drug gangs.

Garcia Luna said he hoped to have 12,000 high-and mid-level officers tested by the end of the year and half of all of Mexico's police examined early next year. He refused to say how many had failed the first round of drug and lie detector tests.

Opposition lawmakers have urged Calderon to depend more on police to fight drug gangs and send troops, who have been accused of human rights abuses, back to their barracks.

REUTERS PDS BST0114