Reforma: Lorenzo Meyer*
Translated by Leslie Castillo Navia
If the life expectancy of men at the turn of this century in Ciudad Juárez was 66.8 years, violence brought it down to 57.7 years in 2010 (Manuel Ordorica, Coyuntura Demográfica, no. 9, December 2015, pg. 17). The Tijuana magazine, Zeta, keeps a meticulous record of figures of violence in Mexico. According to this source, between December 2012 (at the beginning of Enrique Peña Nieto's government) and January 2017, the number of executions in the country was 90,694. If the 5,799 homicides reported between February and April are added (El Financiero, May 22) the total is now up to 96,493. At the end of this six-year administration, the figure could equal or surpass the previous figure of 121,163. Moreover, between 2007 and 2016, the Secretary of Defense recorded 3,921 violent encounters between the army and organized crime: 1.07 per day! (La Jornada, May 13). More indicators can accumulate.
Mexico today is an area of disaster with regards to security and violence. Proposals for preventing crime and combating organized crime are not lacking, but at this point in the six-year term, the most that can be hoped for is that the situation does not get any worse. However, society should delve deeper into a discussion of the causes, effects, and possible solutions to rampant violence and insecurity in order to act on the political situation which could open with the change of government in 2018.
In a seminar on violence and peace that Sergio Aguayo has directed for a while at the College of Mexico, on May 16th, the subject "What to do with the police?" was addressed. The speaker, Raúl Benítez Manaut, discussed the profound legal and political contradictions implied by the increasing participation of the armed forces in police tasks. Benitez analyzed errors within the current security policy and presented various possible police models for our country. Inevitably, the analysis covered the controversial subject of militarization or semi-militarization in those models. In the discussion, Jorge Amador Amador, Director of Public Security of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (CN) [adjacent to Mexico City], argued in favor of politically maintaining and acting according to the difference in the nature of tasks and behaviors typical of military and police personnel. It is worth delving into the subject.
Amador strengthened his claims with the experience in CN, whose "neighborhood police of proximity" - around 2 thousand police in a municipality of 1,140,000 inhabitants - was recognized in 2015 by the Center of Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) with the "Government and Local Management" award in a contest of 159 social impact projects. The remarkable thing was that, between 2013 and 2015, political and police action caused the criminal index of CN to fall by 64% (El Universal, December 2, 2015).
The action of the armed forces, Amador claimed, is based on a concept of central and vertical command, where superiors design and direct operations based on intelligence information. In this model, subordinates who have basic training in the use of force must comply with orders. Considerations about the consequences and effects of the action are important to "the superiors", not to the troops.
In contrast, in the model implemented in CN, general police must analyze the potential consequences of their actions in every case, particularly with regards to the use of force. Police cannot know in advance how they will have to proceed when faced with a problematic situation. They must use their discretion and awareness before acting. Ideally, they should be knowledgeable of citizen rights, be familiar with the social and cultural environment, be familiar with the neighborhood and be recognized for doing so, handle the situation with empathy, and make decisions accordingly. The majority of information that is relevant to police should not come from above; rather, it should come from the environment. Of course, there is also a chain of command within this police activity, but it is shorter than that of the army, and the type of relationship between police and their superiors is different than that of soldiers with their superiors because, in theory, their measures of success are very different.
An example of this difference is fatality. In Mexico, the army is noteworthy. There were 3,327 encounters reported between soldiers and criminals between 2006 and November 2011, and in 4 of every 10 encounters there was perfect fatality: all suspected criminals were killed (Alejandro Madrazo et al, "The War on Drugs in Mexico", CIDE, Cuadernos de trabajo, 2016). Police expect something different: a minimal use of force, more people brought before the authorities, and less deaths.
Finally, there is the enormous problem of endemic corruption. The police must, should and can be more or less monitored by organized citizenry and the responsible political body: the local authority. In the case of the army, this is practically impossible.
In summary, it seems that at least in one of the 2,462 municipalities and delegations that exist in Mexico, the crime rate has declined significantly. Surely there are other cases with similar experiences. We must identify them, study them, and use those experiences to develop a project to recover the security that was snatched from us. The task is urgent.
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*Lorenzo Meyer is a political scientist, historian and columnist. He earned the Bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the College of Mexico and pursued postdoctoral studies in Political Science at the University of Chicago. Author of several important works on Mexico’s foreign relations and on the Mexican Revolution, he has also written on the Mexican political system, its authoritarian forms of power and democratization processes of the 20th century. He has taught in Mexico, the USA, Spain and England. He has been a columnist for NOTIMEX, Excelsior and currently Reforma. His most recent book is "Nuestra tragedia persistente: la democracia autoritaria en Mexico" ("Our Persistent Tragedy: Authoritarian Democracy in Mexico"). @DrLorenzoMeyer