Great increases in crime rates, like Mexico City's unprecedented jump last year, occur only when societies are being shredded and pulverized, according to one of Mexico's leading criminologists. For a public almost as distrustful of police as they are fearful of crime, expanding police forces only adds to the problem. PNS contributing editor Sam Quinones is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.

MEXICO CITY -- This city saw the largest increase in crime in its history last year as it limped through the latest and worst of 20 years of economic crisis. Crime here jumped an unprecedented 35.7 percent in comparison with 1994. Economic crime -- burglary, robbery, auto theft and others -- accounted for the bulk of the increase, according to government figures.

"In this century we've only seen an increase of this kind in places where there's been a brutal ripping of the social fabric -- like Tokyo in 1945, or Spain the year after dictator Franco died," says Raphael Ruiz Harrell, a criminologist who has studied crime figures for this city of 8.6 million. Here too, necessity is the mother of crime.

In fact, 1995 was a year of deep disappointment for most Mexicans. While government leaders had promised that the modernizing of the economy and entry into NAFTA in 1994 would usher Mexico into the developed world, 1995 began with a devalued peso that plunged further in value as the year wore on. Interest rates and inflation topped 50 percent. Mexico City ended the year with the highest unemployment rate in the country -- and the highest per capita crime rate.

"It used to be strange to meet a victim of crime," said Victor Mendez, a spokesman for the city prosecutor's office, who was robbed in a taxicab in December, and whose wife was robbed shopping earlier in the year. "Now everyone you meet has been robbed, or has a cousin, or brother-in-law, or friend who's been a victim."

Given Mexicans' universal disdain for and lack of faith in their police, the real number of crimes were almost certainly much higher, say criminologists. Nor does expanding the police force offer any quick fix solution to the burgeoning crime problem. Indeed, Mexico is already over-policed in comparison with Western countries, according to Samuel Gonzalez, a law professor at the national Autonomous University of Mexico. Gonzalez's figures show that Mexico has 67 police officers per 10,000 inhabitants over 14 years old, compared to France with 59 or the U.S. with 33.

Nevertheless, last week the city government announced it was adding another 1,000 officers to the force -- a move Gonzalez says is simply a waste of money if not actually a way of fueling the crime rate.

"Mexican police -- poorly trained, equipped, educated, paid and deployed -- in fact are frequently the ones who commit the crimes," Gonzalez points out. Last year offered ample evidence. An off-duty police officer, who later said he felt depressed, opened fire in a Mexico City Metro station, killing two people and wounding several more. Three other off-duty police officers tried to hijack the chauffeur-driven car of the son of President Ernesto Zedillo, apparently not realizing who he was. The attack was foiled by his bodyguards, who arrested the officers.

Perhaps the most depressing police news was the arrest this summer in the state of Jalisco of Hector "El Guero" Palma, one of Mexico's most-sought drug cartel leaders. Marring enthusiasm for the capture were the 33 federal police officers arrested at the same time, who were acting as Palma's paid bodyguards.

Mexicans' distrust of their police became painfully obvious last year. The city government moved a section of the police department into a building in the middle-class Roma neighborhood. Residents there feared an increase in victimization at the hands of officers and staged sit-ins and all-night vigils in protest until they left.

Ruiz Harrell agrees that more police won't solve the problem. "It doesn't attack the cause, which is unemployment and the drop in buying power. In Mexico City, necessity is the mother of crime."