Civilian Policing "Reform" Consolidates Power

Investigation of crimes came to a screeching halt Tuesday in Honduras as Security and Defense Minister Arturo Corrales ordered the suspension of all 2,200 members (approximately 1400 police and 800 employees)  of the Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal (DNIC).

Corrales further ordered that organizationally the DNIC should be merged with the Dirección Nacional de Servicios Especiales de Investigación (DNSEI).  Corrales is calling the merged group, the Fuerza de Tarea Policial de Investigacion (FTPI) which loosely translates as "Police Investigation Working Group".

This is basically a take-over of the resources, personnel, and equipment of the DNIC by the DNSEI whose head is now in charge of the merged organization.  It is a further step toward militarization of civilian policing, which began with the centralization of military and police under Corrales.

Yesterday DNSEI personnel examined the offices and equipment of the closed DNIC offices and made plans for their use.

Members of the ordinary police arrived at DNIC facilities across the country and escorted all employees from the building and padlocked them.

Citizens are now supposed to report crimes to this new working group, but Corrales forgot to order the dissemination of that information to the public, or tell them the new locations to do so.

Corrales explained his action as derived from the fact that the DNIC was leaking information to organized crime.  All 2200 employees, country wide, are suspended until they have submitted to, and passed, the police confidence tests.

Not that those tests have been ordered or scheduled. 

The result was that DNIC police and employees staged public rallies Wednesday and Thursday asking to return to work while they wait for their confidence tests to be scheduled.  They issued a public statement applauding the decision to ask them to submit to the confidence tests but asked that their rights be preserved, including the right to an assumption of innocence.  They called the current plan "improvised" and said that criminals currently held will go free because of the lack of investigation.  They further suggested that Corrales should have created a schedule for their testing and allowed them to continue working until the tests can be done rather than suspending all of them, "denying justice to Hondurans."

On Thursday several hundred of the protesters took over the former DNIC offices by force, throwing out the DNSEI officers who were there including the man who nominally is their new boss, Alex Villanueva Meza, the head of the FTPI.

A lawyer for the officers arbitrarily dismissed began legal action to get them reinstated because their suspension violated their rights to due process and presumption of innocence.

A sargent with 26 years of experience in the DNIC said:

Our families feel bad; they [the government] consider us a bunch of criminals; they should give us the confidence tests and those that they have to fire, they should fire....The objective [here] is to mark us as criminals without paying us a lempira of the funds they legally have to and go back to the 1980s, fire the police to put the military in our place.

In Honduras, the reference to the 1980s would resonate: this was the last time that civilian policing was linked to the military.

Suspicious Occupations For Foreigners

Operation Xatruch II confirms the presence of foreigners in the Bajo Aguan

So screamed the headline in yesterday's La Tribuna.

Our gentle readers will remember the repeated claims (here, and here) of the presence of foreigners training and leading the peasants in an insurgency against the large landowners of the Bajo Aguan, always citing "military intelligence" as the source of this gem. Despite numerous previous attempts to locate these "foreigners" on repeated militarization of the zone, none were ever located.

The headline promises that now they have, but what it delivers is something much more tame.

"We have some Colombian citizens, two Panamanians and one Nicaraguan,"

said an unnamed spokesperson for the Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal to a radio program. All were in the country on 90 day tourist visas.

He continued:

"The activities they're engaged in are suspicious because some are wandering around selling coffee and fruit drinks in the zone, and others are buying gold from those that pan for it in the rivers."

La Tribuna tells us these are "screening activities (actividades pantalla)" according to the National Police: "they aren't occupations that generate income" an unnamed police spokesperson told them.

Really? Screening activities? Have the National Police been to a market or city street, say in the heart of Tegucigalpa, the capital, lately? There they will find many many people engaged in making and selling drinks to the general population. They do seem to be able to make some sort of living by doing this. Are they too suspected foreigners in the heart of Honduras? Have the police checked?

Its hard to imagine that buying gold from artisanal miners is not an activity that could generate a profit.

Now the really suspicious thing is that they were in Honduras and working, on a tourist visa, which is illegal, but that didn't seem to bother the police one bit.

Funny how all the sources in this article are anonymous despite calling in to the radio and speaking with reporters in some official capacity. It's almost like it's a PR campaign, to make the operation look good when in fact, its been completely ineffective in stopping the violence, or in locating the putative arms caches alleged to exist in the region.

These suspicious drink vendors and gold buyers remain under investigation.

Surreal

Sometimes Honduras is surreal.

In the 1980s the only way you could tell someone was part of the investigative arm of the police (the Dirección Nacional de Investigación or DNI) was that they openly carried guns in public. They didn't wear a uniform, but did openly carry weapons at a time when you needed a permit from the military dictatorship to have a weapon. Thus when men in street clothes carrying guns stopped you on the streets to question you, you were obliged to assume they were police and obey them. There was no way to distinguish them from the criminals, who also had guns and often openly carried them in public.

Fast forward to now. As part of the modernization of the National Police everyone got uniforms. The Dirección General de Investigación (DGIC) or Dirección Nacional de Invesitgación Criminal (DNIC) which replaced the DNI has a simple uniform. Their uniform shirt, as I recall, is either a dark blue or black shirt with the name of the DGIC written on the back. Its simple, modeled after what FBI agents wear in many TV shows when out on a "bust".

Maybe its too simple a uniform, though. Anyone with silkscreening equipment, say a t-shirt shop, can copy it. The DGIC complains that criminals are impersonating them by wearing their uniform shirt. You can't tell the criminals from the real police. Shades of the 1980s.

So, how do they propose to solve this problem? La Tribuna, in its minute by minute column, tells us the solution is simple; they're going to stop wearing uniforms, or at least, the uniform shirt. Its the obvious solution, isn't it?

Lets see, the problem is that the criminals are wearing police uniforms, which the police wear so that citizens can tell they're the police and not criminals. So now, the police will stop wearing the uniforms, so you won't be able to tell them from ordinary citizens or criminals with guns. So once again, we're back to the 1980s, you can't tell the police from the criminals.

The DGIC says this will stop the delinquents from passing as police.

Really?

Without a uniform, once again, there is no way to tell the police from the criminals. This seems like a transparent attempt to reduce the number of human rights abuse claims against the DGIC, by making it harder to ascertain who committed the abuse. Can the COBRAS be far behind?