A local police officer (R) holding two shotguns leaves the local police headquarters as a soldier (C) watches in Tijuana, Mexico, Jan. 3, 2007. Mexican federal government on Wednesday sent a massive anti-drug force to its border city of Tijuana, manning checkpoints and inspecting local police stations as part of President Felipe Calderon's latest offensive against powerful drug rings.  (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery >>>

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Mexican federal government on Wednesday sent a massive anti-drug force to its border city of Tijuana, manning checkpoints and inspecting local police stations as part of President Felipe Calderon's latest offensive against powerful drug rings.

    Soldiers went into at least two local police stations and checked the documents and weapons of hundreds of officers.

    Federal investigators alleged there was a corrupt network of police in the city supporting traffickers who smuggle tons of cocaine over the busy border crossing into the United States.

    Tijuana, in the Mexican state of Baja California, also saw around 365 murders and nearly 100 cases of kidnapping in 2006. Local police said the drug rings, Arellano Felix Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, were mostly responsible for the incidents.

    Some 500 soldiers and police officers out of the 3,300 originally planned, arrived in Tijuana three weeks after Felipe Calderon, who took power as Mexican president on Dec. 1, sent a similar 7,000-strong force to his home state of Michoacan.

    The state has suffered 600 murders this year alone as the Los Valencia and Sinaloa cocaine cartels battled for smuggling routes.

    Calderon told media on Wednesday that his government was "determined to regain security, not just in Michoacan or Baja California, but in every part of Mexico that is threatened by organized crime."

    Huge quantities of cocaine from South America pass through Mexico on its way to the United States, and Mexico also produces marijuana, methamphetamines and heroin. Mexico's municipal police are so poorly paid and badly equipped that even officers are widely considered to be inept and in some cases corrupt.

    Calderon also called for an improvement in the justice system, saying "We need laws that help us chase and imprison criminals, not the ones that save them from the punishment."