Progress Report on Police Anti-Corruption Reviews

The Dirección de Investigación y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial (DIECP) has reportedly issued a press release stating that the 24  police officers of all ranks who have not submitted to the proof of confidence testing required by the DIECP will probably be fired.

The DIECP reported that none of the 24 had provided a reason for not showing up for their scheduled appointment. The DIECP press release points out that this is disobedience of a superior's order, punishable with dismissal according to the police charter.

The files on these 24 police officers will be turned over to the police chief, Juan Carlos Bonilla, for disposition.

Proceso Digital reports that the DIECP has attempted to review 169 police officials, most of them members of the highest levels of command.  Of these, 145 have submitted to the exam, and 24 refused.  That is a rate of resistance to the campaign to excise corruption of about 14%.

The DIECP has not released the results of the confidence test on any of the 145 who have taken it so far, so the actual proportion of police officers who do not meet the requirements is not (yet) known.

The DIECP hopes to have conducted over 400 confidence tests by the end of 2012, and over 5000 in the next three years. 

Emergency Police Cleanup

The Honduran Congress, which went into recess six days ago, was called back into session today to vote on an emergency decree requested by the Security Minister, Pompeyo Bonilla. 

The bill they are considering suspends all of the guarantees police have about due process before being dismissed.  Specifically, the new law requested by Bonilla suspends chapters V, and VI of the Police Charter contained in decree 67-2008, about disciplinary acts and protection against suspension, for 90 days.

The decree is for an initial 90 days but may be extended indefinitely at the determination of the Dirección y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial (DIECP).

Oscar Alvarez was fired last September as Minister of Security for proposing a law to clean up the police that similarly would have suspended the existing due process guarantees of police officers.  At the time, Lobo Sosa thought it was important to continue those guarantees.

Its not clear why the concerns about constitutional guarantees that called Alvarez's law into question don't equally apply to this law.

It's been a busy Congressional recess so far. 

Congress was called back Wednesday to create a new Executive Branch Directorate of Investigation and Intelligence, to be directed by General Julian Pacheco Tinoco. 

This morning Congress approved an anti-doping law which allows the DIECP to conduct drug tests of police officers and then act on them.

Added to the abrupt dismissal of the chief of police earlier this week, it seems something has made reform of the police urgent.

Whither Free Speech

It is customary at the end of each year for some Hondurans to construct paper maché, wood, and fabric figures of the bad things that happened that year and burn them, to symbolically kill all the bad of the current year and usher in the good of the next year. Normally these would be filled with fireworks: rockets, mortars, and firecrackers, but this year there's a complete ban on fireworks, so they'll reportedly be stuffed with paper, grass, and other combustible materials.

It's New Years Eve and a weekend, so the reporters stayed close to home this year (coverage: El Heraldo, El Tiempo, La Tribuna, and La Prensa, and international press coverage in EFE and Univision.). Here's what Hondurans in Tegucigalpa want to leave behind.

One figure is a Transit Police vehicle with the bodies of Rafael Alejandro Vargas Castellanos and Carlos David Pineda Rodriguez thrown carelessly in the back.

Another is a tank driven by Porfirio Lobo Sosa and ENEE boss Roberto Martin Lozano with text that calls into question the final thermo-electric generation deal. To quote one of the creators,

"They have been cruel to the people of Honduras with the increases in the cost of electricity....It's a government that has the people on their knees, and they cannot do anything to get out of poverty."

Still another is a figure of a police officer, in a uniform and orange colored official vest donated by a police officer disgruntled by the corruption, holding up a sign that says "A Bribe or Your License".

Another figure is an assassin standing before a tree labeled, the "Tree of the Poor". "This is the assassin, we have to kill him so that he won't kill more people," said the creator.

The owners of an upholstery shop constructed a figure of a man and a woman riding a red motorcycle. They want to protest the new law that restricts who can be a passenger on a motorcycle.

The creators of the Transit Police Car report receiving death threats:

The figures were almost done; we had them outside the house but mysteriously the (figure of) the driver of the patrol car disappeared. Another day, around 6 pm as we were finishing up the final touches, someone shot at us from a moving car."

This morning, Police officers came by and confiscated all the figures related to police corruption. The commander of the National Police, José Ricardo Ramirez del Cid, ordered that the Police "not retain the figures", noting that:

The people have a right to protest. I call on all the police, and we are talking here about an order, that they let people protest; we do not have a reason to be offended; we are subject to criticism. If we have committed errors we'll try to fix them.

So far, not sign of anyone returning the confiscated figures.