Animal Politico: Ernesto López Portillo*
Translated by Rachel Alexander
Would you buy a car from a failed brand? Me neither. This is how one should view the proposal for single command or the single state police. In this case, those selling the idea are the governors and their brands is the state police that depend on them, none of which have currently, in a strict sense, consolidated into a professional and modern model as evaluated by independent agencies. On the contrary, many house the worst practices and reproduce the most serious crimes and violations of human rights.
Buying the single command is like acquiring a car from a brand that, with an uncertain frequency, puts units on the street with major faults. The vendor is not convincing when it doesn't have a good brand. They are selling us the idea that police forces totally controlled by governors will be the best just when there are police like this who are already directly responsible [for crimes] and, in many occasions, show the worst.
The very substrate of public policy is to define the problem you want to solve. If the definition of the problem is bad, all public policy will be bad. The failure of origin in the proposed single command lies here. The President and the governors who promote it intend to convince us that the adjustment the Mexican police need is organizational. According to them, if the command is adequately organized, everything else will correct itself. I see exactly the reverse: the structural weakness of the Mexican police begins precisely because of the political and operational command they have been subjected to. Far from being an organizational problem, the fracture is therefore, before anything else, political.
For decades, presidents, governors and mayors have been tolerating and reproducing a pattern of intertia towards police institutions, which has made it impossible to reconcile them with the society they should serve. The main characteristic of this pattern of inertia is the dysfunction of democratic controls. Mexican police are sick because they have been given powers, but have never been subjected to effective accountability. Powers and controls are out of balance in favor of the first, and this decision has been, before anything else, political.
The proposals for a single command or unified state police can only be convincing if key accountabilities are written in. On the contrary, evidence doesn't allow us to conclude anything other than it has to do with a political strategy whose sole guarantee is empowering the governors yet again. Giving total control of a state's police force to a governor who is already today responsible for a sick political institution is like making a million-dollar investment to make more cars with the same technology that's already been shown to be a chronic failure.
The risk of approving the proposal without political will and a favorable legal and institutional design for accountability is hardly imaginable. Available evidence is irrefutable and shows that police, whether local, state or federal, are not properly accountable for failures and deviations, small or large. In general, Mexican police are not properly managed, and again, this is only possible because of a political decision.
It's not reasonable to expect that a legal reform which reorganizes command will result, in itself, in police institutions which manage themselves and work on behalf of citizens. Legal reforms alone will not reconstruct reality. What is done in the world to enable real police reform beyond mere reorganization by way of legal changes, is precisely a plan of public and transparent reform, with responsible parties determined and subject to accountability.
When the governors tell us that police in Mexico will be better if there's a single command or unified police, we are facing a political statement without any technical foundation which is susceptible to complete refutation based on experience. It's surprising and worrisome however, that even today, having seen a mountain of evidence of crisis in the police, that someone can expect a reform without a plan to be convincing. A plan would state the definition of the problem, in turn supported by scientific investigation and technical tools. A route map that fixes the destination and how to reach it.
Chronic political decay nurtures the crisis of insecurity and violence which in turns exacerbates the social pressure to find solutions. Hence the political discourse that creates offers of change, sometimes popular, whether grounded or not. If today, politicians and the media seem to be leading us to a scenario where the bipolar options are only for or against the single command or the unified police, I would rather place myself on the side of the national plan for police reform, including legal reforms and all other actions that really consolidate policing. International experience leaves no doubt that the plan does not guarantee reform, but there is no reform where there is no plan. Spanish original
*Ernesto López Portillo is founder and director of Insyde, the Institute for Security and Democracy, a multi-disciplinary research organization dedicated to analyzing the structural lacks and weaknesses of Mexican government institutions related to security and human rights . A lawyer by training, he is considered a leading Mexican expert on security and human rights issues. @ErnestoLPV
See more on Mexico police single command issue:
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