| | |  Editorials | Issues 
Mexico Seeks to Unify Police to Fight Drugs and Graft
 Randal C. Archibold - New York Times
go to original
October 02, 2010
Santiago, Mexico — The Mexican government is preparing a plan to radically alter the nation’s police forces, hoping not only to instill a trust the public has never had in them but also to choke off a critical source of manpower for organized crime.
The proposal, which the president’s aides say is expected in the coming weeks, would all but do away with the nation’s 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a “unified command.” It comes at a critical moment for President Felipe Calderón, who faces mounting pressure from the United States and within Mexico to demonstrate progress in defeating the drug cartels.
He has already hurled the military into the fight, using soldiers to buttress the federal police and battle the drug traffickers, but violence continues to soar and corruption among the nation’s police forces remains a constant, fundamental scourge.
Police departments around the country, filled with underpaid, undertrained officers, are heavily infiltrated by criminal organizations or under the thumb of mayors, often simply escorting local officials rather than patrolling the community, according to a report by Mexico’s Senate last month.
Mr. Calderón’s new plan would eliminate what are now wide variations in police training, equipment, operations and recruitment in favor of a single national standard, helping the government field a more professional, cohesive force to work alongside its soldiers and agents fighting the drug war.
The approach has its pitfalls, though. State authorities, which would now control the local police forces in coordination with the federal police, are hardly immune to corruption themselves, and municipal officials are suspicious of surrendering autonomy. It is also unclear how dishonest officers will be weeded out of the new chain of command.
But the government is running out of options, and the public’s worries have only intensified with a recent rash of assassinations.
Here in this pastel-splashed colonial town, it was a shock to most residents when the popular mayor was bundled into a sport utility vehicle in August and found dead days later. It was less of a surprise that several local police officers were accused of the murder.
Eleven mayors have been killed this year. Just this week, the mayor of Tancitaro was found dead from a blow with a stone . The previous mayor and several town officials had already resigned after threats from drug traffickers and complaints that the police were ineffective; the state and federal authorities took over enforcement because the 60-member police force was believed to be enmeshed in crime.
Several mayors here in northeastern Mexico now spend the night in the United States out of concern that the local police cannot protect them, state officials confirmed.
Until now, Mr. Calderón’s main approach has been to draw on the military and the federal police, but the strategy has come under withering criticism for its human rights record. The State Department withheld funds from Mexico under an antidrug initiative for the first time this year partly because of abuses.
The military has been accused of unlawful killings, torture, seizures and indiscriminate fire that has killed innocents.
“We are still waiting for justice,” said Juan Carlos Arredondo, the uncle of one of two students killed in Monterrey by soldiers, who claimed they were criminals and, according to a report by the National Human Rights Commission, manipulated the crime scene to make it look that way.
Last week, Human Rights Watch sent a scathing letter to Mr. Calderón, accusing him of sitting silent in face of evidence that military abuses “have grown significantly with each year of your presidency.”
Mr. Calderón’s aides remain confident that their strategy is making progress and are counting on the police reform to help make the kind of turnover that the president has been promising.
Despite talk in Washington about increasing the role of the United States military here — small teams have advised the Mexican military for several years — Mr. Calderón’s chief security spokesman, Alejandro Poiré, ruled that out.
“This a matter in which we need to rebuild our own institutions,” he said, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the fight against traffickers here was taking on the characteristics of an “insurgency,” angering Mexican officials. President Obama contradicted her the next day.
Since Mr. Calderón took office, the federal police have expanded to more than 30,000 officers from about 6,000, and have often swooped in with the military to take over policing from local officers deemed corrupt or under the control of drug gangs.
The government’s new plan would place local police departments under the command of governors, preserving the closely guarded autonomy of the states and allowing the authorities to more easily move people to trouble spots.
Mr. Calderón announced in June that he would propose constitutional changes for the measure this year and recently held “public dialogues” to help build support. He has proposed spending $2.4 billion next year to carry it out, which might allow for higher salaries and help steer officers away from corruption.
“That is one of the deficits of the last 20 or 30 years of Mexico’s political development, that we didn’t build the police institutions to prevent crime,” Mr. Poiré said.
Officials in Monterrey, a city of two million, recently reported that its police force stood at 350 officers, half what it was a year ago because of dismissals and resignations.
While the new approach would make law enforcement more accountable to state leaders, analysts note that state forces — and even the federal police, where nearly a tenth of the force has been dismissed this year for suspected corruption and other problems — do not have great records themselves.
“The problem is the state governments are not exactly clean,” said John Ackerman, editor of the Mexican Law Review. “It can hardly be worse than the municipal level, but the state has problems too.”
Here in Santiago, the police force has dwindled to about 20 from 160 a year ago, with state and federal police filling the gap, according to the mayor, Bladimiro Montalvo. Residents like Gonzalo Almaguer, a 62-year-old retiree, say they hardly go out anymore, especially at night. “This was a peaceful town but now you don’t know who to trust; it is like the rest of the country,” said Mr. Almaguer, one of the few people in the central plaza last week.
Mayor Montalvo said he worried most about the 50 percent drop in tourism because of the swelling violence around his town, including shootings and kidnappings in nearby Monterrey that prompted the State Department to pull children of its workers out of the country.
“I don’t think so,” he said when asked if he worried for his safety. “Something can happen, but if you are orderly and respectful that is something they will respect,” he said of criminal organizations. He then dashed off, driven away in a sport utility vehicle by two bodyguards. |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us