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| Photo: José Antonio López |
La Jornada: Gustavo Castillo García
Nearly four years after its creation, the twenty-four Federal Police laboratories of specialties in criminology have not been certified. Of the 700 employees that were supposed to staff them, there are currently only 314. Moreover, during the tenure of Genaro Garcia Luna only 357 opinions were issued, most of them "in support of administrative units" of the Federal Police itself, according to data obtained by La Jornada through a public information request.
In November of 2009, then head of the Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) Genaro García Luna, and President Felipe Calderón opened the facilities of the Federal Police Intelligence Center, including the Scientific Division. During the ceremony, it was said that more than 700 specialists would conduct research and perform expert forensic work.
As then stated, the agents would be able to reconstruct forensically the identities of alleged offenders and compare physical and genetic data obtained with data stored in databases of the prosecutors and public security departments of the country, especially the Mexico Platform, which is connected to Interpol and Central and South American agencies.
As then stated, the agents would be able to reconstruct forensically the identities of alleged offenders and compare physical and genetic data obtained with data stored in databases of the prosecutors and public security departments of the country, especially the Mexico Platform, which is connected to Interpol and Central and South American agencies.
The Scientific Police facilities were built on Constituents Avenue in the Federal District with resources provided by the U.S. government under the Mérida Initiative.
Officially, the 700 agents who were to make up the police division, would, in most cases, be graduates in such fields as biology, law, chemistry, physics, engineering, anthropology and areas related to the development of forensic investigations, and they would be on a par with the work of the Attorney General of the Republic.
La Jornada asked the Federal Police to provide copies of the documents for certification of each crime lab, and the agency's response was
"in Articles 15 and 67 of Federal Police Regulations, no reference is made to Certification."
Officials from the National Commission of Security disclosed that this lack of certification may contribute to the failure of those investigations in which the expert work of the Federal Police has been used to establish the criminal liability of an alleged offender, since it would now consider that its findings have no scientific backing and will not hold up when the new criminal justice system starts up, if they don't rely on methodologies approved by national and international legislation.
La Jornada also asked on what date each of the specialty laboratories began operating, and the institution responded that
"the Coordination of Criminology has a total of twenty-four laboratories, which began to operate on the same date, under national and international standards, forming the Scientific Division of the Federal Police, under the rules of the Federal Police Act, published in the Official Journal of the Federation on May 17, 2010."
Regarding the number of experts, the agency indicated that its staff is composed of "324 employees" with "professional or specialty profiles" in management, tourism management, industrial administration, accounting administration, public administration, communication and journalism, communications and electronics, biochemistry, communication sciences, dental surgery, foreign trade, language and modern literature, criminology, criminal sciences, pharmacy and nursing, among others.
As for the number of opinions prepared since 2010, the agency reported that four were carried out in 2010; in 2011, there were 46; and in 2012, there were 307. Of these, 127 related to police cases; 33 related to injunctions; and 197 supported Federal Police administrative units. Spanish original