War of Words Between Police Chiefs

Late yesterday Juan Carlos Bonilla, the police chief, revealed on Honduran TV that the police were linked both to the 2009 murder of General Julian Aristides Gonzalez and the 2011 murder of Alfredo Landaverde.

The former police chief, Ricardo Ramirez del Cid, seems to have taken that as a personal attack.   Ramirez del Cid told a local radio program:

If anyone has evidence against me they should present it but not send me subliminal messages in the media trying to blemish the image of retired officials, attacking from the inside will not resolve anything.

Del Cid also said:

He left us guessing; he didn't mention anyone's name but he left us guessing.  That's not good because the same thing could happen to him (Bonilla) tomorrow.

He went on to complain that Bonilla knows that there are many police stations in such precarious conditions that they could not possibly be used to commit crimes!

Ramirez del Cid seems to have been referring to finances when he said "precarious conditions".  The only way I can make sense of this statement is as a reference to the motorcycle used to kill General Gonzalez, which Bonilla said left from, and returned to, a Tegucigalpa police station. The implication seems to be, hey, our motorcycles wouldn't be in good enough condition for a drive-by shooting.

Ramirez del Cid also denied that any acts of police corruption occurred during his six months as police chief.

We will simply point to the killing of Julieta Castellanos's son, which happened during Del Cid's time as police chief. It was his handling of the event for which he was ultimately fired. Thw implicated police officers were allowed to escape. This was the case that led to police corruption becoming a focus in Honduras.

There is nothing in Bonilla's comments that we can see to lead Ramirez del Cid to take then as a personal attack.

It may be a guilty conscience.

Ramirez del Cid is one of 11 high ranking police who failed to show up for their appointment for the process being employed to identify sources of corruption in the Honduran police. The group not complying with the law includes pretty much everyone in the police command before Bonilla was appointed. Ramirez del Cid was the man in charge.

Del Cid is still an active duty police officer despite having no duties.  He still receives a salary, and therefore must submit to the tests under the law passed by Congress. The process he is ducking involves drug tests, psychological tests, financial investigation, and answering standardized questions while connected to a lie detector. 

Instead, he says he's asked to retire. But that isn't stopping him from launching a war of words with his successor.

What Makes a Good Chief of Police?

Honduras' president, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, isn't saying. At least not in words.

But we now have plenty of actions on which to reach some conclusions about his criteria.

Way back in October 2011, Lobo Sosa bid goodbye to then-chief José Luis Muñoz Licona after the four police officers suspected of killing a group of university students (including the son of Julieta Castellanos) went missing. His minister of security, Pompeyo Bonilla, reshuffled all the top security officers, bringing us Ricardo Ramírez del Cid.

Then just a little over a week ago, Lobo Sosa-- newly returned from consultation in the US with unnamed representatives of the US government-- removed Ramírez del Cid, replacing him with Juan Carlos "el Tigre" Bonilla Valladares.

The apparent pressure for the change came from the recent murder of prominent radio broadcaster (on the national HRN) Alfredo Villatoro, whose body was recovered dressed in a police uniform. Villatoro's death brings to 24 the number of Honduran journalists killed since the 2009 coup.

Press reports yesterday say that, unlike the preceding 23 cases-- including the immediately preceding, and still under-reported death of LGBT and Libre party primary candidate Erick Martinez Avila-- there have now been already multiple arrests in the Villatoro case. At least one of those arrested is reputed to be a police officer.

So it seems like Lobo Sosa finally has what he wants in a police chief: someone who gets results quickly.

Which should give everyone pause. Bonilla Valladares definitely has a history of getting results. But that history shows that the "results" came from his exercise of extra-judicial power.

New coverage by the AP has explored this history, which led to Bonilla being tried for a 2002 murder. As the AP article correctly notes, he was acquitted in 2004, a decision that was ultimately reaffirmed by the Honduran Supreme Court in 2009. But being acquitted is not the same thing as being innocent. In Honduras, the rule of law fails because the entire system is corrupt: original evidence is not collected, contaminated, or lost, investigators are prevented from completing their work or are threatened if they do so honestly, evidence is lost, witnesses flee or die.

The victims in the cases where Bonilla was accused of involvement were young men, targets of murder in Honduras under the ideology of mano dura for their known or suspected involvement in gangs.

The AP story includes crucial information from Maria Luisa Borjas, the head of internal affairs in the Honduran police who was charged with investigating that case, and who was suspended when she went public with complaints about interference in her investigation.

An investigative story on a Salvadoran news site,  El Faro, published in August of 2011, gives a first-hand view of Bonilla Valladares, based on shadowing and interviewing him, that adds to the testimony of Borjas:

In 2002, the Internal Affairs Unit of the Police accused El Tigre [Bonilla Valladares] of participating in a death squad for supposed delinquents in San Pedro Sula... This included having a witness that said he had been present at one of the executions by this death squad formed, supposedly, by police and called "Los Magníficos". El Tigre had to pay a 100,000 lempiras (more than $5,000) bail for his liberty during the trial. Afterward, in proceedings that many paint as rigged, where the principal promoter of the denunciation, the ex-chief of the Internal Affairs unit [Borjas] was removed from her job in the middle of the case, Bonilla was exonerated.

—Have you killed anyone outside legal proceedings?-- I asked him, while we left behind El Paraíso.
—There are things that one carries to the grave. What I can say is that I love my country and I am disposed to defend it at any cost, and I have done things to defend it. That is all that I will say.

El Faro adds more from the statement by Borjas to Honduran media that got her suspended by then Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez. In those exchanges Borjas quoted Bonilla Valladares as saying

—If they want to send me to the courts as the sacrificial lamb this Police force is going to rumble, because I can tell the Minister of Security [Oscar Alvarez] to his face that I am the only one that complied with his instructions.

Oscar Alvarez, remember, was the author of mano dura in Honduras, the minister of security when the extrajudicial killing of young men became rampant, under whose watch such crimes were not prosecuted or prosecutions were interfered with so badly that the cases failed.

Lobo Sosa's solution for violence and police corruption in Honduras is a police chief with intimate experience with impunity, with a record of accusations of imposing his own view of morality through the use of force, and a self-righteous belief that what he does is good for the country.

Now we know what makes a good chief of police in the eyes of the Lobo Sosa administration.

And that seems to be just fine with the US government as well; the AP quotes Ambassador Lisa Kubiske as saying

"We definitely hope this change in leadership really leads to effective, lawful cleaning up of the police."

Which is, we are sure, exactly what she would say if a police officer who wouldn't deny having carried out extrajudicial executions were appointed to a jurisdiction in the US. As long as he was patriotic and willing to follow whatever orders his superior gave.

New Head of Police

Overnight, Porfirio Lobo Sosa fired his head of Police, Ricardo Ramirez del Cid, who had been in office about six months, and replaced him with Juan Carlos "el Tigre" Bonilla Valladares.  Ramirez del Cid will be assigned another job sometime in the future.  In the meantime, he'll still collect his salary.

What do we know about his successor?

Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares is a graduate of the Carabineros police academy in Chile.  Back in 2002 he was accused by human rights organizations of violations of human rights, but was acquitted by the Honduran courts when the prosecutor quit, mid case.

He had been alleged to be a member of "Los Magnificos", a group composed of ex-police and current police that was carrying out an assassination campaign against the youth of Honduras. Los Magnificos arose out of the Maduro administration's get tough attitude towards gangs.  Even suspicion of being a gang member was the crime of "illicit association", punishable by a mandatory 30 year jail sentence. 

(This, by the way, is when Honduras began to experience the jail overcrowding that led to the current prison problems and inhumane conditions.)

Marta Borjas, then head of Internal Affairs of the Honduran Police, said that at least 20 police units operating under the name "Los Magnificos" were murdering suspected gang members in Honduras.

El Faro published a profile of Bonilla when he was commander of the Police in the Department of Copán in 2011, where the drug trade with Guatemala thrives. Three villages in Copan were described as under drug trafficker control: El Paraiso, La Jigua, and El Espiritu.

Bonilla filed complaints about the commander to whom he reported, Jorge Baralaga, for overruling him and allowing the police force in Copan to provide security for the drug-linked mayor of El Paraiso, saying

"Why are we leaving the whole department unguarded to guard one lost mayor?"

Each of the 60 police officers that made up the Copan Department police force, and 20 soldiers, were paid 1000 lempiras by the mayor for their participation in his inauguration.

This reported complaint seems to suggest that Bonilla was not content to work for the drug trafficking political elite.

This is consistent with his actions after his transfer from the department of Copán, to Olancho in October 2011. There, he also named police officers allied with the drug traffickers.

In a press conference this morning, Bonilla said he took away three lessons learned during Ramirez del Cid's tenure as head of the police:  that he needs to speed up the cleanup of the police, that he needs full control of the penitentiaries, and that he needs to reduce crime.

Arturo Corrales: Corrruption Accusations are OK

Arturo Corrales doesn't get it.

The Honduran Police are corrupt.  There are over 5000 open investigations of police officers for criminal acts, human rights violations, and acts of corruption.  In addition, its commanding officers don't feel that they are bound by Honduran law.

An example of this is the revelation that in 2010 the police commanders allowed the registration of 143 assault rifles, which are banned from private ownership by Honduran law.  The charges, against the highest police officials, including former police commissioner Ricardo Ramirez del Cid, and ex head of the investigative police, the DNIC, Marco Tulio Palma.  Palma has also been charged with aiding in the escape of four police officers wanted for the murder of two university students.

Into this corruption comes the Comisión de Reforma de la Seguridad Pública , an oversight group charged with cleaning up the police, judges and legislators.  This commission consists of three national members, and two international members.  Lobo Sosa asked Chile and Canada, his go-to countries for foreign yes men, for nominations to the commission.

But in order to be credible, this commission, and its members, must be beyond reproach.  No one has raised doubts about the Honduran members, nor the Canadian member. The Chilean nominee, General Aquiles Blu Rodriguez, is accused of corruption in his own country; specifically with appropriating 20 kilograms of cocaine from drugs confiscated by the Chilean Caribineros, taking money confiscated from suspected drug traffickers, and changing an official police report to protect the child of a former director of the Carabineros.

Congress person Augusto Cruz of the Christian Democrat party called on Lobo Sosa to reject General Blu given the accusations against him.

"We can't have him in Honduras when there are already doubts about his participation in acts associated with drug trafficking."

Arturo Corrales told the press that none the less, General Aquiles Blu will be part of the commission.

"We had knowledge of this before the news broke; his curriculum vita is impeccable, his resume is untouchable. There is nothing more that we can do except thank President Piñera, and the Chilean government who have sent us someone with such an excellent record of service in the Carabineros of Chile."

Corrales rejects the charges against General Blu, arguing that Blu resigned when the charges were announced in Chile, but other sources report that Chilean President Piñera passed over Blu because of the accusations and forced him to retire.  The charges were serious enough that Blu, according to Chilean sources, was forced to resign, and the Director of the Carabineros, General Eduardo Gordon, whose son Blu was protecting, resigned amidst scandal.

While Chilean sources seem to think the charges were substantiated and resulted in Blu's forced retirement, really the truth or falsity of the charges doesn't matter.  There's too much at stake in reforming the Honduran police, for there to be a place for anyone whose antecedents have been publicly questioned.  His mere presence on the commission will call into question the validity of everything it does.  How can the Honduran people have confidence in such a commission when one of its members is accused of the kinds of acts it seeks to eliminate from the Honduran police?

Arturo Corrales doesn't get that, but Matias Funes does.  Funes is one of the Hondurans appointed to the Comisión de Reforma de la Seguridad Publica. He met with Porfirio Lobo Sosa Thursday to point out that what Honduras needs is renowned people who will help clean up the image of the police, and not people who have questions about them.  Funes expressed his preoccupation that Blu is not what Honduras needs.  Lobo Sosa replied that he was sure that Chile had sent an appropriate person.

If General Blu is the honorable man that Corrales believes him to be, he will recuse himself rather than taint the commission's work with the corruption accusation against him.  Yet press reports in Honduras say he will arrive to begin work in the next few days.

Arturo Corrales doesn't get it, and if Lobo Sosa allows Blu to serve, he doesn't get it either.

Prison Fire in Honduras: Another Chapter in an Old Story

The English language press is reporting another prison fire in Honduras, this time in a prison in San Pedro Sula with as much as 1800 or 2250 inmates, that was built to contain a maximum of 800, according to Honduran press reports.

According to CNN, the dead include "a prisoner who was decapitated". Ricardo Ramirez, described as chief of police of San Pedro Sula (actually now the head of the National Police), is cited as saying that before the fire "shots had been heard from inside".

USA Today titled its article 14 dead in Honduran prison fire amid riot. Quoting "authorities" they summarize the deaths as occurring "after armed inmates started a fire during a riot". They quote police commissioner Yair Mesa:

"The uprising has been put down with the need to fire shots," Mesa said by telephone from inside the prison. He added the 14 victims apparently died of burns or asphyxiation. The cause of death could not immediately be determined because the bodies were so badly burned.

Also quoted: fire chief Jose Danilo Flores who USA Today quotes as saying that

the prisoners themselves appeared to have fought the fire inside the facility. But Flores said the armed inmates had kept firefighters from entering earlier in the day.

This is a far too familiar story. USA Today actually managed to add the most necessary context:

In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, Honduras' prison system had nearly 38% more prisoners than it was built for, according to the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies.

Perhaps predictably, Honduran coverage was less subtle. La Prensa wrote "13 muertos dejá motín" (uprising leaves 13 dead), putting all the responsibility for the deaths on the prison uprising, and avoiding any discussion of the overcrowding the grows out of the policies of the government:

The uprising was produced after a quarrel among the group of prisoners called "los paisas", who are the prisoners that are not related to either of the two gangs that operate in Honduras.

The point at issue was generated after there was encountered inside a cell, the decapitated body of Mario Álvarez, one of the sub-coordinators of los paisas. The head of the prisoner was thrown from inside toward the area of the entrance to the jail area, whose control has not been possible to be retaken in its totality by the Police to avoid a repetition of the gunshot that accompanied the beginning of the incident, that left another 12 dead.

The confusing use of the passive voice here, so important to avoid getting into who shot first, makes it hard to completely visualize the turn of events. Now add this:

Police sources stated that the prisoners, among whom firearms had been encountered, presented to the Police a sheet of demands to return control of the jail, but they threatened that if they were not given a response, they would kill another coordinator of los paisas.

What those demands were goes undocumented.

Given the normal propensity for La Prensa to provide the most lurid and stereotyped view of things, their coverage of this fire seems almost matter of fact.

But a comparison to coverage in El Tiempo allows us to see some differences. Start with the title: Sube a 13 el numero de víctimas (the number of victims climbs to 13).

The account of the fire is also somewhat different: Tiempo repeats the claim seen in La Prensa that the fire was in the kitchen area, crediting it to a "police official". But it also includes other reports: that the origin point was the conjugal visit cells, citing a fire officer; and that it began in "Zona 18, occupied by gang members", the latter without a specific source.

The AFP reproduced a Spanish language story that indicated that the prison was back under the control of the authorities. Despite repeated quotations of Honduran police and government officials saying that the actual events would only be clarified by investigation, the AFP story includes repeated claims about how the incident started, who was responsible, and what happened, sometimes by the same person almost simultaneously saying that the investigation would have to be carried out to know what they just said they knew:

For example, Walter Amaya, a police official, is quoted saying that

"organized bands that are in conflict provoked" the fire in San Pedro Sula, but he asked "to await the results of the investigations" to have more precision about what happened.

AFP, which is the source of the higher prison population estimate of 2250, follows Honduran government sources in describing the inmates entirely as members of

fearsome gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS) and Mara 18 (M-18), and other bands of drug traffickers, kidnappers, and vehicle thieves.

What they omit is how many of the prisoners were not so fearsome: whether, as was the case in Comayagua, a portion of the incarcerated were uncharged or still awaiting trial.

Police Shakeup

The head of the National Police, José Luis Muñoz Licona is out. Today the Secretary of Security, Pompeyo Bonilla, replaced him with José Ricardo Ramírez del Cid. There's no surprise here. Over the weekend, the four officers who are suspected of killing the two university students disappeared.

It came out over the weekend that the head of the Tegucigalpa Police, Jorge Alberto Barralaga Hernández, told them to take a few days off and report Sunday, releasing them from custody. Naturally, they disappeared. El Heraldo says they know that setting the police free was a "strategy" because they were innocent and the investigation had no physical evidence to tie them to the crime. When the four policemen failed to report Sunday, Barralaga Hernandez lost his job. Today the head of the National Police lost his job over the same issue.

In the meantime, four more policemen suspected of involvement in the killing were captured, and 300 FAL rifles and 300,000 cartridges for them disappeared from the Police Special forces (a.k.a. the Cobras) arms locker.

Bonilla also named a new Vice Minister of Security, Coralia Rivera, who previously was the Inspector General of the National Police.