Mexico's Unrule of Law: Implementing Human Rights in Police and Judicial Reform under Democratization

Mexico’s Unrule of Law

Mexico’s Unrule of Law Implementing Human Rights in Police and Judicial Reform under Democratization

Niels Uildriks With the collaboration of Nelia Tello Peón

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uildriks, Niels A. Mexico’s unrule of law : implementing human rights in police and judicial reform under democratization / Niels Uildriks. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-2893-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3510-5 (electronic) 1. Police—Mexico. 2. Police brutality—Mexico. 3. Criminal justice, Administration of—Mexico. 4. Human rights—Mexico. I. Title. HV8161.A2U45 2010 363.20972—dc22 2009046876

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface

vii

Introduction

xi

Acronyms

xv

1 Mexican Policing and Reform: A Theoretical Introduction

1

2 A Lynching of Police: A Case Study of Mexican Policing

35

3 Mexico’s Criminal Justice System: Organized Chaos

61

4 Reducing Police Abuse: The Democratization Project

89

5 From Inside the Police: A Survey 6

131

Police and Politics: A Legacy of Mistrust and the Failure of Reforms So Far

171

7 Police and Justice Reforms, Security and Human Rights

219

Appendix A: Research Methodology

263

Appendix B: Survey

269

Appendix C: Open Interview Protocol

273

Bibliography

275

Index

293

About the Author

313 v

Preface

Research on policing and criminal justice systems characteristically is begun with considerable enthusiasm. The learning experience within this field is intrinsically motivating, and can lead to the gathering of a wealth of data. The completion stages, however, are often frustrating. Other projects or responsibilities take over, making a satisfactory completion of the study increasingly difficult. The manuscript is reviewed for suggestions on improvement. In cases like this study of policing, reform, and human rights in Mexico, analysis of issues must be evermore complex and refined. By the time this has been done, new relevant literature emerges, or perhaps even a complete overhaul of the judicial system, as was the case in Mexico. Frustration risks turning into despair, the prospect of successful completion of the work within a reasonable timeframe seeming to disappear beyond the horizon. At one point this book seemed to go down that road. However, the inevitable uncomfortable emotions at the end of the project were brushed aside by the impressive work done by Malcolm Willison. He is undoubtedly one of the finest editors in the United States, taking the process from line editing to restructuring and adding another dimension to the flow of the book. The amount of time, dedication and quality he put into it are hard to overrate. He was assisted by Carolyn Micklas, who was somehow able to make sense of his handwriting and complicated directions and was thus indispensable for putting it all together. Working with them during the final stages of the book also encouraged me to incorporate enthusiastically, at a very late stage, the judicial reforms of Filipe Calderón that became law in December 2008. Without a discussion of these reforms the book would have been more a historical study of reform efforts and proposals up to and vii

viii

Preface

under the presidency of Vincente Fox than fulfilling one of its ambitions to offer an up-to-date insight into the evolving Mexican system of policing and criminal justice. The research was developed jointly with Nelia Tello Peón, an expert on policing in Mexico City. Her experience concerning the developments of Mexican policing, and the analysis she provided during the initial stages of the study regarding the likely impact of reforms, was invaluable. Together we worked out the methodological approach of the study, and she played a crucial role in the design of the survey. She was responsible for administering the survey and the interviews with police, as well as the (statistical) analysis of the data involved. With her experience of having conducted much research on policing in Mexico, she knew how to circumvent the practical problems involved in conducting the research (for example, not to seek formal permission!). She decided which were representative neighborhoods where police officers were selected to participate in the surveys and interviews that formed the empirical heart of this study. She was very helpful in shaping the arguments set forth in the book, and she contributed significantly to the writing of chapters 3 and 5. During the study itself and in the writing of this book I am indebted to many people; it is impossible to mention them all. Elena Azaola cannot be thanked enough. As an expert on Mexican policing, she offered invaluable help during the initial stages and most generously allowed me to participate during group interviews with Mexico City’s judicial police. This experience put a human face to offset and correct my initial stereotype of Mexican police. During our meals following these interviews we extensively discussed the background and specifics of what had been said, giving me the necessary understanding for successfully embarking on the project. She also helped during the final stages of preparing the survey. Others have also contributed at different stages. Mark Ungar went into great detail in offering valuable suggestions on two earlier versions of the manuscript. I want to thank Desmond Arias and Dick Bennett for their encouragement and interest in the study, and Steve Morris particularly for offering me the manuscript of his impressive book Political Corruption in Mexico: The Impact of Democratization, published May 2009. I also thank Kees Koonings for his feedback on an earlier draft of the first chapter and his reflections on some of the theoretical concepts used in the study. My appreciation goes to Robert Varenik for sharing his experiences with the Mexican police and politics with me when I was in Mexico City, and to Ernesto López Portillo (INSYDE) for his interest in this study and for organizing a conference where we presented the empirical findings of this study. Diane Davis was a source of inspiration who shared with me her article on police reform in Mexico City, and I thank her for her comments on part of the manuscript.

Preface

ix

Wil Pansters is one of the great Dutch experts on Mexico, and Mexican politics specifically. I am indebted to his knowledge in this area and particularly enjoyed the discussions with him on Mexico and the terrible lynching of the three police officers on the outskirts of Mexico City in 2004. Martha Huggins and Piet van Reenen have been important, responsible as they were for the original research program that received a generous grant by the Dutch Scientific Research Council for the project “Implementing Human Rights Within the Police in Brazil, Mexico, Jamaica and Costa Rica” which allowed the Mexican study to take place. Their comments have helped to sharpen some of the arguments developed within the book. This kind of study can only be successfully embarked upon with generous institutional support. The study took place within the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), as part of the School of Human Rights Research at Utrecht University, and I am indebted for the support it offered. The students of the Social Work Department at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma México (UNAM) deserve praise for their enthusiasm, for the quality of their work, and also for their courage in administering the survey and carrying out the interviews with police. I thank the Police Academy of the Netherlands for offering financial support for the editing of the manuscript. We did not seek institutional police approval in Mexico for administering the survey and carrying out the individual interviews, but we very much thank all the officers who chose to participate. Niels Uildriks Maarn, The Netherlands August 2009

Introduction

This book is about the police and human rights in Mexico City under democratization. More specifically, it is a study of the police and criminal justice reforms invoked to reduce police abuse that were heralded with so much optimism at the inauguration of President Vincente Fox in 2000. In addition, because Latin America since the 1980s has been generally developing democratic forms of government from dictatorial regimes, our study of these Mexican reforms has a much wider significance: It also provides insight into the problems that confront a society and its polity in the process of evolving from one-party rule (with dictatorial tendencies) to one seeking to establish its democratic credentials. The current state of Mexican police and criminal justice institutions and their relation to the political domain are illustrative of the challenges facing Mexico, if it is to make a democratic transition beyond the constitutional and electoral levels where it has so far been most successful. The rule of law, so crucial for any country if it is to truly live up to its democratic principles, has remained a weak force at the institutional level in Mexico, in spite of its democratic developments. As Chappel Lawson points out in “Mexico’s Unfinished Transition,” the quality of democracy depends upon how well government and intermediary institutions function, as well as on the “various informal norms and practices that shape how the formal rules of the game currently operate” (2000: 275). The study at the heart of this book took place in the period 2004–2006 and seeks to understand the influences of the different reforms embarked upon during the Fox era (2000–2006). More recently under President Felipe Calderón major judicial reforms have been introduced. These do not diminish the relevance of this study of current policing in Mexico City: Indeed it sheds xi

xii

Introduction

an important light on what may be expected from these recent reforms. We compare and discuss the major reforms introduced in 2008, allowing for an updated picture of both the current and the future systems of policing and justice in Mexico. In the end, this book becomes a case study of the difficulty of changing people’s mentality and behavior in order to integrate democratic principles into the country’s institutions. These problems were illustrated in a very direct way by the gruesome lynching of three police officers in Tláhuac in November 2004, which occurred in the midst of our study and is described and discussed in chapter 2. The fact that the lynching took place at all illustrated the lack of legitimacy of public state institutions. The incident itself, together with the ensuing internal police and political fallout, shed a disconcerting light on current realities in the country’s institutions that was hard to ignore. The difficulty of achieving lasting reforms on many fronts and an integration of democratic principles and the rule of law on an institutional level appeared crucial for understanding the problems of attaining effective reforms and especially adherence to human rights. Any study of police reform and human rights in Latin America inevitably faces the issue arising from public insecurity, or to be more precise, the possibility of conflicting pressures on the police to both provide security and at the same time adhere to human rights practices. In many ways, it is clear that to keep crime and public disorder under control is easier under authoritarian than under more pluralistic and democratic rule. In the face of citizens’ high levels of citizens’ insecurity in Mexico City—and in Latin America as a whole—public opinion surveys indicate that large sections of the Mexican public are prepared to tolerate human rights violations, if they believe this increases their personal security. The issues of human rights, police reform, democracy, and personal and civic security are therefore interconnected. Discovering the extent to which this is the case in Mexico, we decided that our study would be of most value if all these aspects were covered in our endeavor to understand the relevance of past reforms and in our search for meaningful future reforms. In this respect the book is ambitious, seeking to draw practical lessons for the future. These lessons not only test the relevance of the police and criminal justice reforms proposed by Fox in 2004 but also those that became law under Calderón in 2008. They have also led us to formulate ideas and an agenda of reform that goes against the grain of traditional human rights thinking. Our book is therefore not only of importance to those with a general or specific academic interest in the policing issues, but also to those concerned with the development of

Introduction

xiii

democracy in Latin America, security in its cities and increasing police adherence to human rights.

PLAN OF THE BOOK The main thrust of this book is twofold. We probe the impact of different police reforms in terms of reduction of human rights abuses. We also look into some of the main institutional control mechanisms, putting these in the context of Mexico’s wider “democratization project” started in the 1990s. In addition we draw upon our understanding of current social and institutional realities in Mexico to suggest an agenda of reforms we consider required for the police to overcome the profound present crisis in policing, by both reducing human rights violations and increasing public security and trust. To appreciate the effect of different police and criminal justice reforms and institutional control mechanisms, a thorough understanding of the organizational and political realities of policing in Mexico is required. For this we draw upon our own and others’ empirical studies as presented in chapters 3 through 6 in relation to the relevant literature laid out in chapter 1. After first considering some theories and hypotheses in chapter 1, we present in chapter 2 a description and discussion of the lynching of three police officers in November 2004 in a village within the greater Mexico City Federal District. This incident during the early stages of our research provided revealing insight into the organizational, societal, and political realities of Mexican policing. The incident and its aftermath afford a first point of reference for assessing the impact of current police and criminal justice reforms and the kinds of reforms required in the future. What do the events and responses connected to this police lynching show us about the organizational and societal context in which policing and constitutional reforms take place? And what does this tell us about the relevance of such reforms? To answer these questions requires first of all more understanding of the structure of the Mexican police and wider criminal justice system—outlined in chapter 3—as well as the police and criminal justice reforms themselves—in chapter 4. In chapter 5 we come to the empirical heart of our study, namely an analysis of the influence of police reforms and human rights initiatives on Mexico City policing, based on our police survey and interviews. Have specific reforms had an impact on police and have they contributed to a decrease of corruption and abuse of power? How have they influenced police attitudes toward human rights? We shall discuss police experiences with and views on internal control mechanisms, the National Human Rights

xiv

Introduction

Commission, and police training, seeking to understand these against the background of police responses to the organizational and societal realities in which Mexico City Police operate. Throughout the book it will become increasingly clear that Mexico City policing finds itself in deep crisis. The public mistrusts the police, and there exists a pervasive sense of insecurity: Criminality, violence, corruption and violations of the rule of law by the authorities constitute part of Mexico’s daily realities. Understanding these aspects, the inhibitory influence of certain political, cultural, and organizational characteristics on the success of a variety of specific reforms and institutional controls will become apparent in chapter 6. In considering the implications of the foregoing analysis for future police reforms in the final chapter 7, we return to the themes outlined in the first chapter. What is the relevance of reforms aiming to professionalize the police? How meaningful in a Mexican context are initiatives to introduce community policing as a type of externally oriented reform as a solutionoriented approach developed in conjunction with the community? A key argument is that police legitimacy in the eyes of the Mexican public needs to be fundamentally improved. To achieve this, the problems of public security and the police failure to act in accordance with the rule of law and human rights principles can and should be linked, and the role of the police within Mexican society radically rethought.

Acronyms

AFA AFI ALDF APPO CAT CDHDF CFPP CIDAC CIDE CITCC

CJF CNDH CNSP

Agencia Federal Antisecuestros, (Federal Anti-Kidnapping Agency) Agencia Federal de Investigación (Federal Investigation Agency) Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal (Legislative Assembly of the Federal District) Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) Commitee Against Torture Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Distrito Federal (Human Rights Commission of the Federal District) Código Federal de Procedimientos Penales (Federal Code of Criminal Procedure) Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo (Center for Development Studies) Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (Center for Economic Investigation and Instruction) Comisión Intersectarial para la Transparencia y el Combate a la Corrupción (Inter-secretarial Commission for Transparency and the Combating of Corruption) Consejo de la Judicatura Federal (Federal Judiciary Council) Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Human Rights Commission) Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Pública (National Public Security Council) xv

xvi

CPPDF DEA DEDH DF ECOSOC EOPSAC EPR FBI FEADS FGF GAFES GDF GERI GPG HRW ICCPR ICESI IFE IFP INCD INSYDE IRCT ITFP JAMA LFcDO LFDP

Acronyms

Código de Procidimientos Penales Distrito Federal (Federal District Criminal Procedure Code) Drug Enforcement Administration Dirección Ejecutiva de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Executive Directorate) Distrito Federal (Federal District) (Mexico City) Economic and Social Council Estudios de Opinión y Participación AC (Study of Public Opinion and Participation) Ejército Popular Revolucionario (Popular Revolutionary Army) Federal Bureau of Investigation (U.S.) Fiscalía Especializada de Delitos contra la Salud (Federal Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Health) Fiscalía General de la Federación (Public Ministry General of the Federation) Grupo areomóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Air Mobile Force Group) Gobierno de Distrito Federal (Government of Mexico City) Grupo Especial de Reacción e Intervención (Special Reaction and Intervention Team) Giuliani Partners Group Human Rights Watch International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad (Citizens’ Institute for the Study of Insecurity) Instituto Federal Electoral (Federal Electoral Institute) Instituto de Formación Policial (Police Training Institute) (Judicial Police) Instituto Nacional de Combate a las Drogas (National Institute to Combat Drugs) Instituto para la Seguridad y Democracia (Institute for Security and Democracy) International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims Instituto Técnico de Formación Policial (Police Technical Training Institute) Journal of the American Medical Association Ley Federal contra la Delincuencia Organizada (Federal Law against Organized Crime) Ley Federal de Defensoria Pública (Federal Public Defenders Law)

Acronyms

LFGF LFpPST LGSNSP LOPF LOPJF LOSDF LPFP LSPDF NAFTA NGO NWO PAN PBI PFP PGDF PGE PGR PJDF PJE PJF PNCTDA

PND PNDH

xvii

Ley de la Fiscalia General de la Federacion (Law of the Federal Office of the Prosecutor General) Ley Federal para Prevenir y Sancionar la Tortura (Federal Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Torture) Ley General del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública (General Law for the National Public Security System) Ley Orgánica de la Policía Federal (Organic Law on the Federal Police) Ley Orgánica del Poder Judicial de la Federación (Federal Law of Judicial Powers) Ley Orgánica de la Secretaría del Distrito Federal (Organic Law for the Secretariat of the Federal District) Ley de la Policía Federal Preventiva (Federal Preventive Police Law) Ley de Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal (Public Security Law of the Federal District) North American Free Trade Agreement nongovernmental organization Netherlands Scientific Research Council Partido de Acción Nacional (National Action Party) Policía Bancaria e Industrial (Bank and Industrial Police of the federal District) Policía Federal Preventiva (Federal Preventive Police) Procuraduría General del Distrito Federal (Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Federal District) Procuradurías Generales de los Estados (Offices of the Public Prosecutor of the States) Procuraduría General de la República (Office of the Attorney General of the Republic) Policía Judicial del Distrito Federal (Judicial Police of the Federal District) Policía Judicial Estatal (State Judicial Police) Policía Judicial Federal (Federal Judicial Police) (predecessor of AFI) Programa Nacional de Combate a la Corrupción y Fomento a la Transparencia y el Desarrollo Administrativo 2006 (National 2001-2006 Program to Combat Corruption and Promote Administrative Transparency and Development) Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2001-2006 (National Development Plan 2001-2006) Programa Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Human Rights Program)

xviii

PNPJ PRD PRI PRODH PVEM SCDO SCJN SECODAM SHCP SIEDO

SIU SNSP SSP SSP DF TSJ UCCO UEDO UNAM UNDP USAID

Acronyms

Programa Nacional de Procuración de Justicia (National Program to Obtain Justice) Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolutionary Party) Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party) Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Augustín Pro Juárez Partido Ecologista de México (Mexico’s Green Party) Subprocuraduría contra la Delincuencia Organizada (Deputy Attorney General of Organized Crime) Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (Supreme Court) Secretaría de la Contraloría y Desarollo Administrativo (Ministry of Comptrollership and Administrative Development) Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (Ministry of Finance and Public Credit) Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigation into Organized Crime) Sensitive Investigative Unit Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública (National Public Security System) Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Federal (Federal Public Security Secretariat) Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal (Public Security Secretariat of the Federal District) Tribunal Superior de Justicia (High Court of Justice) Unidad contra el Crimen Organizado (Organized Crime Unit) Unidad Especial contra la Delincuencia Organizada (Special Anti-Organized Crime Unit) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico) United Nations Development Program United States Agency for International Development

1 Mexican Policing and Reform: A Theoretical Introduction

Mexico was in the past regarded by many as the largest country longest under dictatorship in Latin America, with political rights and freedoms almost totally absent. Nevertheless, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in power since 1929, eventually helped facilitate a transition towards democratic elections in a relatively transparent and peaceful manner. Under pressure from the opposition parties, over the years it helped to create an institutional apparatus capable of organizing free and democratic elections. In 2000 this culminated in the election of the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN); Vicente Fox, as the new president, brought fresh hopes for Mexico’s becoming a full-fledged democracy. The challenges to Mexico’s renewed democratic order indeed have been formidable, and both the federal and Mexico City governments have faced constant and increasing pressure to tackle public insecurity, corruption, and organized crime. Between 2000 and 2004, both President Fox and Mexico City’s Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador put forward various proposals to improve security. Fox had been elected partly on a social reform ticket, and, against general impunity for public officials, had specifically committed himself to improving Mexico’s notorious human rights record. Over a long period, police, military, and other state agents had been implicated in extra-judicial killings, including massacres, forced disappearances, torture, and other horrors. After Fox’s election, various legal and organizational reforms were proposed to modernize the police and reduce the level of police abuse. In spite of considerable initial enthusiasm and optimism, after Fox’s election it became clear that many of the old authoritarian habits of the political elites remained, only with different actors. David Corrochano 1

2

Chapter 1

(2005) bluntly concluded that by 2005 Mexican state reform and its democratization process were at a standstill. Whereas the election process has become much more open and democratic, the manner in which power is exercised has on the whole remained closed and authoritarian (Guerrero 2004 as discussed by Morris 2009: 23). The extent to which democratic values and human rights have really been integrated within the democratic process and among the political elites in Mexico has thus remained clearly in doubt. In “Undermining the Rule of Law: Democratization and the Dark Side of Police Reform in Mexico” (2006), Diane Davis probes the complex links between democracy, the rule of law, and policing. She contends that the institutional legacies of police power inherited from Mexico’s previous one-party system severely constrained its newly and democratically elected state’s effort for reform. Furthermore, the transition from one-party rule created an environment of partisan competition, decentralization of the state, and fragmentation of its coercive and administrative apparatus. These led to intrastate and bureaucratic conflicts that prevented the government from reforming the police sufficiently to guarantee public safety and secure legitimacy and public trust. When more democracy serves to undermine the rule of law, Davis concludes, more democracy paradoxically can actually diminish democracy and its quality. Her study thus offers an intriguing theoretical perspective for understanding the impact of Mexican police and criminal justice reforms. But Mexico’s troubled relations between the rise of democracy and the rule of law do not stand alone. Mexico shares many of the economic, social, cultural and political characteristics prevalent throughout Latin America. To understand their relevance for police and wider criminal justice reform under democratization, both theoretically and empirically, an exploration of the relevant concepts and elements used in this study gain in depth when placed against the background of the continent’s wider experiences.

LATIN AMERICA’S AUTHORITARIAN LEGACY OF POLICING With the notable exception of Costa Rica and Venezuela, authoritarian and military regimes dominated Latin America from the late 1960s to the mid1980s. During these years military influence over the police had increased substantially. All police forces of the various Brazilian states were brought under the military control, and in Chile, the General Director of the Carabineros was a member of the ruling military junta. Until the early 1980s in Nicaragua, the military also performed police functions, as did the military in Panama until the U.S. invasion in 1989 (Frühling 2009: 23). Public order policies were enacted to protect regimes rather than citizens, and Latin America’s “National Security” doctrines provided the legal framework for

Mexican Policing and Reform: A Theoretical Introduction

3

what Neild (2003: 278) refers to as “regime policing,” thereby allowing police and the military to abuse human rights with impunity. “Regime policing distorted the skills and practices of the police and criminal justice system, leaving institutions with little aptitude for fighting crime in a manner that respects human rights principles” (Ibidem). Characteristically, many Latin American police forces were military in nature, and a strict division between the police responsibilities and armed forces was absent. David Bayley suggests that police-community relations had specific characteristics emanating from the police orientation to the needs of government rather than those of the citizens: A significant percentage of crime actually reported to police involved allegations of serious crimes, since the public only resorted to reporting crimes to the police when absolutely necessary. Latin American police forces characteristically used force more frequently than those of developed democracies in similar situations, and there was less supervision of the police. Police enjoyed a low degree of public support, and as a result of internal functioning and structure subordinate personnel obeyed orders but lacked autonomy to respond creatively to problems they faced (Bayley 1993, as discussed by Frühling 2009: 23). Since the early nineties many Latin American countries that were under authoritarian rule have been democratized in one form or other. Some have a military legacy (Argentina, Brazil, Chile), Mexico emerges from authoritarian political rule, Jamaica has a British colonial history and in Guatemala, democracy followed the 1996 Peace Accords after decades of bloody civil war. The historic heritage of these countries varies, and so do the problems of building police forces capable of providing security, abiding by the rule of law and upholding democratic and human rights standards. In all of these countries state actors and civil society alike have struggled with the question of how police and criminal justice systems should change and professionalize in a manner which enables them to provide security and effectively tackle rising crime rates, yet acting in accordance with human rights standards and the principles of rule of law. The route to integrating these different goals has been an arduous one, littered by failure and uncertainty rather than accompanied by unambiguous successes (Uildriks 2009). Some experiences are clearly more successful than others (Bailey and Dammert 2006; Hinton 2006; Tulchin and Ruthenburg 2006; Uildriks 2009). But the difficulty of achieving lasting police and criminal justice reforms, security and an integration of democratic principles and the rule of law on an institutional level is what perhaps most characterizes initiatives in Latin America to modernize and democratize policing and criminal justice systems. Democratization and Police in Latin America The move towards political democratization in Latin America implies an inevitable shift in the role of the police in society from regime to citizen

4

Chapter 1

orientation. Throughout Latin America there have been many attempts to modernize police forces. The crucial issue addressed in this book is whether the political democratization process has also been accompanied by a democratization of policing, and how, or indeed whether, matters can be improved on the short-term. A democratic police force, in the words of David Bayley (1997), distinguishes itself from authoritarian police forces in that they are “responsive to the needs of individuals and private groups as well as the needs of government, and accountable to multiple audiences through multiple mechanisms” (as discussed by Ward 2006: 173). The concept of democratic policing can also be used more broadly. Beyond the presence of some kind of democratic political system it requires: (1) Police subordination to the law and accountability to an independent judiciary. The legal boundaries of the police include two guiding principles governing the police use of powers and force: proportionally and subsidiarity (police should only use force if there is no alternative). (2) The separation of policing from political responsibilities, with the police being operationally independent, nonpolitical and nonpartisan. Elected officials should not be involved in the daily management of the police. (3) Police management should be open, involved and self-critical and generally receptive and responsive to public opinion (Mendes, 1999; Uildriks and Van Reenen 2003: 33–34). Finally, being subordinate to the rule of law implies that a democratic police should also be receptive to human rights as determined by international law. We return to this last issue later in this chapter, after first exploring some notions of the democratization process and the role of civil society therein.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND DEMOCRACY Democracy flourishes more in some societies than in others. The gulf between democratic promise and real-life practice varies concordantly. Specific characteristics of civil society have been found that influence how well democracies function. In a standard-setting study of Italy, Making Democracy Work, Robert Putman (1993) found a positive relationship between the degree of civic engagement and democratic governance. Linking associational life and democracy, he concluded that social capital networks accumulate trust and reciprocity through face-to-face voluntary interactions. These micro-social processes yield positive effective governance. The core of Putman’s argument has been challenged by Ariel Armony (2004) in his in-depth analysis of contemporary civil society in Argentina. Armony found that civic participation there failed to breed generalized social trust, that is to say, individual confidence in other people outside of one’s immediate circle of friends and group members. If such participation

Mexican Policing and Reform: A Theoretical Introduction

5

occurs in a social and political context characterized by growing inequality and polarization, it is likely to result in widespread immunity from the law, and a gap between formal laws and their implementation. Growing inequality and polarization are therefore important contextual factors undermining the rule of law. Social polarization—whether political or in terms of class, income, ethnic or religious difference—is thus a key determinant affecting trust and social cooperation, as Stephan Knack and Phillip Keefer point out (1997): In polarized societies, individuals differ in background and are less likely to share mutual expectations about behavior, making it more difficult to set up self-enforcing agreements. In an adverse social and political context, participants in social groups may use their social capital to discriminate against others or to exacerbate existing political and social inequalities—distinctly undemocratic outcomes. In such a situation Armony concluded, groups tend to refrain from linking up with one another and with government institutions, viewing them as inherently authoritarian and corrupt. Paulo de Mesquita Neto (2006) is more upbeat than Armony about the impact of civil society in Argentina, contending that its role in Latin America is most important for democracy in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, where the independence of police and judicial institutions is more established, and civil society is more organized and mobilized. Yet even de Mesquita Neto appears unsure of the impact of civil society, pointing out that it especially manifests itself in long debates and intense conflicts among legislators and policymakers over the relative value and priorities of external organizations, internal formal governmental, and informal societal controls over police and judicial institutions. The degree to which democracy flourishes, research has shown, also depends on the degree of social capital in society (Baron, Field, and Schuller 2000: 39).1 The term, in Putman’s definition (1993: 67), refers to “features of social organization, such as networks, norms, and trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.” But the level of social capital as such is not decisive. As Krishna concluded on the basis of her study of developing countries, for social capital to be relevant for democratic development “some kind of change agent is usually necessary for converting social capital into flows of benefit” (Krishna 2002: 12, as discussed by Parás 2007: 329). The introduction of new democratic governance replacing old authoritarian regimes is invariably accompanied by high expectations and demands. But in the face of an ineffective and inadequate response by the new regime public frustration is likely to set in. “A cycle of high expectations, governmental ineffectiveness, media exposure, public frustration, and greater demands . . . is of key concern because it threatens to erode support for democracy and increase the appeal of populist or authoritarian formulas

6

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that may ultimately work to undermine the rule of law” (Shirk and Ríos Cázares, 2007: 7). While formal democracy in the political sphere has been developing throughout Latin America since the early 1990s, it has become increasingly clear that this has not necessarily been accompanied by a greater belief in, adherence to, or practice of democratic and rule-of-law principles by state actors and civil society alike. In fact, the description of democracy in the Latin American region is characterized by the use of such terms as “low-intensity citizenship,” “illiberal democracy,” democradura, or dictablanca to describe regimes in the region (Godoy 2006). The region, Reichel Neild points out, has seen a model of uncivil democracy emerge in which electoral democracies continue to violate human rights systematically and where violence, injustice and impunity are the norm, despite considerable successes in democratising political institutions. “The failure to deepen democracy and the rule of law and extend citizenship rights across all social sectors shakes public confidence in the police and judicial system, weakens the rule of law and increasingly undermines support for democracy.” (Neild 2003: 281). Comparing reforms throughout Latin America, de Paulo Mesquita Neto (2006) concludes that a legacy of authoritarian and military control over the criminal justice systems is among the most important obstacles that reform must overcome. How to insert the rule of law as part of the relationship between state, civil society and democratization in post-authoritarian societies is a crucial issue and an aspect that has been often overlooked in the initial democratization literature (Domingo 1996; Shirk and Ríos Cázares 2007). The rule of law consists of at least three components: (1) the maintenance of order in providing personal security, regulating of social conduct, and dealing with grievances according to a previously devised legal code; (2) the State itself is committed to be responsive to its citizens, protecting citizens’ rights and to abiding by the legal order; crucial are accountability mechanisms that allow groups and individuals within society safeguards against arbitrary and improper conduct by state actors; (3) access to justice, i.e., requiring that the enforcement of the law be efficient and predictable and that people have equal access to justice and equal treatment before the law itself (David Shirk and Ríos Cázares 2007, see further Kleinfield Belton 2005). To establish the rule of law, Ungar (2001) notes, is essential for consolidating of democratic institution and practices. At the same time, the rule of law is never a given and “must be understood as a slowly attained and constantly evolving quality” (Shirk and Ríos Cázares 2007: 5). Indeed the social dynamic generated by democratic transitions far from assures a gradual but inevitable accompanying transition to the rule of law. Regime

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change tends to be inherently destabilizing, with new rules and procedures that must be developed and internalized. For societies to live by democratic values thus clearly requires more than a formal legal system that lays down and attempts to enforce the rights and obligations of the citizens. Yet endemic poverty and lack of education limits the ability of citizens to exercise their rights, and social inequalities may effectively invalidate some citizens’ political rights (Borón, 1998; Diamond, 1996; Godoy, 2006; Przeworski, 1998). Indeed, Angelina Godoy questions whether Latin American liberal democratization that emphasizes formal electoral and other civil and political rights is compatible with the socioeconomic exclusion of the poorer masses—exacerbated by recent economic trends and policies—from a share in power. What is clear at any rate is that these conditions have been accompanied by the genesis of a type of “uncivil society” that turns away from formal democratic politics, a process referred to as desencanto (disenchantment), reflected in low voter turnout and lower participation as citizens generally. These developments have contributed directly to the rise of frustration and a drive towards various mano dura responses, with lynchings as an extreme manifestation (Godoy 2006: 128 ff). Uncivil Democracy and Society The rise of democracy in Latin America has been accompanied, in the words of Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings (1999), by a “democratization of violence.” Instead of violence coming primarily from the state and the power-holders of the old authoritarian regimes, it has been replaced by increases in ordinary criminal violence. Events throughout Latin America have demonstrated the consequences of the authorities’ inability to provide basic security. Indeed, as Tulchin and Ruthenburgh (2006a: 11) argue, increasing levels of crime and insecurity pose real threats to the success of fledgling democracies in Latin America. High levels of violence in Latin America have resulted in vocal demands within civil society for a return to authoritarian policing methods based on a punitive and repressive policing philosophy (mano dura), if that is what it takes to increase security. An analysis of the significance of broad public demands and support for mano dura in much of Latin America is central to Angelina Godoy’s impressive study, Popular Injustice: Violence, Community and Law in Latin America (2006). The broad support for mano dura, with its accompanying denial of due process and other civil rights in Latin America’s former dictatorships, can be viewed as an attempt to import elements of dictatorial control into an ostensibly democratic structure; its widespread appeal is “a reflection of democracy’s broken promises” (Godoy 2006: 7).

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The demand for mano dura can lead to “hyperpunitive” criminal justice practices, including a greater use of capital and corporal punishment, as well as harsher sentences. It is also reflected in public demands for retribution through “just-desserts” measures against criminals rather than rehabilitative programs, and for a crackdown on crime and petty criminals. Demands for mano dura have also been considered a justification for arbitrary police violence, “social cleansing,” and even summary executions on the part of state actors. In the grip of deep institutional and interpersonal distrust civil society may itself resort to forms of “popular injustice,” as Godoy (2006) terms the brutal mob treatment of alleged perpetrators. Thus, lynching, and most notoriously setting alleged perpetrators of violence afire, are common in the whole of Latin America (Fuentes Diaz 2005; Goldstein 2003, 2004, 2005; Huggins 1991; Vilas 2001, 2005). In fact, lynchings throughout Latin America appear to have been on the increase since the mid-1990s (Godoy 2006: 5). This rise, Godoy argues in her study of Guatemala, should be seen as a kind of “zero-tolerance” policy carried out by civil society itself. Lynchings are indicative of a breakdown in the social ties within the communities where they occur, reflecting at the same time the incompleteness of the democratization process and the lack of the rule of law in Latin America. Godoy concludes that lynching serves as a sort of “lowest common denominator” of social control for communities that are in neo-liberal crisis and lack the social capital to construct an alternative form of justice. The lack of effective state response increases the incidence of lynchings. In his study of lynchings in Bolivia, Daniel Goldstein (2005: 394) specifically links them to the contemporary political economy, with the population becoming poorer and “increasingly frustrated with a privatizing state whose promises of greater prosperity for all had clearly failed to materialize.” The core of Goldstein’s argument is that, rather than regarding lynching as a barbaric remnant of the past (as many commentators do), they should be understood in the context of neo-liberal structural reforms. These reforms have created economic insecurity, accompanied by the physical threat from rising crime rates. Lynchings, Goldstein argues, represent the privatization of justice—as an extension, as it were, of the rise of private policing that fills the gap left by the withdrawal of the state from delivering official justice: Citizens themselves take on the responsibility of creating their own security when the state does not. How does the Mexican democratic experience fit in Gordoy’s and Goldstein’s perspectives in the face of the country’s gradual transition from “democratic dictatorship” to “low-quality democracy” since the mid1990s? It is an issue that will elucidate the state of policing in Mexico City, first addressed at the end of chapter 2 after discussing the lynching of three police officers as a case study.

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Human Rights How can human rights be integrated as part of the democratization of policing against the kind of background set above? A crucial issue to address is how the police can provide security in a manner compatible with other human rights.2 During this millennium increasing emphasis has been placed on the importance of incorporating the value of both human rights and security in the police reform debate. (Neild 2003: 278; Varenik 2003: 9) These values should not be treated as intrinsically incompatible. Security is in itself a human right, and equally important, the relevance attributed to both due process and human rights in general by civil society in Latin America’s post-authoritarian era clearly hinges on the degree to which personal security is maintained, as previously discussed. As human rights groups throughout Latin America have discovered, public sympathy for the cause of human rights dwindled rapidly when applied to the due process rights of real or perceived delinquents, rather than to the political rights of dissidents. “Organizations have had to reflect on what it means to be perceived as protecting the due process rights of accused criminals more diligently than supporting the right of law-abiding citizens to live in basic security” (Neild 2003: 278). Godoy similarly notes a dangerous disconnect throughout Latin America between concerns that most citizens consider paramount and issues traditionally advocated by human rights groups. “Politicians have stepped into this breach promising a platform of mano dura that has paved the way for the rollback of many hard-won democratic rights” (2005: 600). In Guatemala many citizens actually argued for increased state violence, and some proponents of mano dura favor a return to strongman leadership in express disregard for human rights (2005: 614). Indeed, in Latin America problems of insecurity are often such that a large segment of the population professes willingness to accept human rights violations to a lesser or greater extent, if this is thought to improve security (Chevigny 2003; Godoy 2006; Ungar 2002). Therefore, one important issue is whether achieving institutional integrity and providing effective security are inherently conflicting aims. For some it is self-evident that to provide both security and adherence to human rights principles puts conflicting demands upon the police. Besides, for many police officers, taking human rights into consideration and playing by the rules amounts to being “soft”on crime and security.3 A supposed conflict between police offering the fundamental human right to security, while acting in accordance with individuals’ human rights presupposes that “effective” policing capable of providing security requires tough measures, quite possibly violating human rights (in its most extreme form, using torture to extract confessions). One of the challenges of the democratization of policing is for the police themselves to develop methods that allow them to become effective in controlling crime,

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without resorting to the more brutal practices that emanated from an authoritarian era of policing. Trust: The Impact of Crime and Ineffective Institutions Trust is a crucial issue that surfaces in studies on democratization, the rule of law, civil society, and social capital alike, but is equally relevant when considering the effects of high levels of crime and violence. As Kruijt and Koonings have noted, the long-term effect of public violence is persistent fear among communities’ inhabitants. This affects the level of social trust in society. Victims of crime and violence, Putman (2000: 138) concludes in his study of American communities, express reduced social trust, irrespective of the social environment in which they live. These findings were broadly replicated elsewhere. Research done in major cities in Ecuador, the Philippines and Zambia found that increasing levels of violence erodes social capital and participation in community-based organizations (Ayres 1998, as discussed by Nield 2003: 283). Based on a representative survey of over 1,000 residents of Mexico’s Federal District, Pablo Parás (2007) concluded that, because it produces feelings of unsafety, crime undermines people’s trust in others. High crime levels thus have a negative impact on the amount of social capital4 in a society and can therefore significantly undermine its development. If public trust in public institutions is a desired component of a democracy, Parás notes, then one important consequence of crime—its contribution to fear among the public—is that it adversely impacts democracy: Victims feel less safe and become less trusting of others, and so avoid certain social activities, further undermining institutional trust and increasing a preference for authoritarian alternatives.5 The higher the level of trust, the better a society functions in a wide range of areas. Francis Fukuyama (1995) maintains that high levels of trust among citizens account for superior performance of all institutions, economic and other. Various studies suggest that higher levels of trust between people are associated with greater cooperation. One important implication is that trust is more essential to ensuring cooperation between strangers or people who meet irregularly than to people who interact frequently. Trust is thus particularly crucial in large organizations and public spaces where members and participants only interact infrequently. Improved performance of large institutions such as state bureaucracies is therefore dependent on the level of trust among their members, which enables functionaries to cooperate better with each other and with private citizens and organizations. Ineffective institutions are one of the causes of mistrust; the degree of mistrust conversely affects the quality of democratic institutions, as Putman’s study (1993) found and Armony’s statistical analysis of data from twenty-

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eight countries confirmed (2004). Trust, according to Putman in his standard-setting study on civic traditions in modern Italy, is a habit formed during a centuries-long history of “horizontal networks of association” among people, involving both commercial and civic activity. He found that the former independent city-states of Northern Italy encouraged the formation of such horizontal networks, in contrast to the more authoritarian regimes of the Italian South, where by imposing a hierarchical structure on society, Putman argued, the Catholic Church, often in symbiosis with the state, discouraged the formation of trust. A statistical comparison of trust in different types of societies confirmed the conclusion that countries with hierarchical religions (Catholic, Muslim, or Orthodox Christians) have lower levels of trust than societies with a history of “horizontal networks of association” (Lopez de Silanes et al. 1997). The absence of trust negatively affects the functioning of state institutions, such as the judicial system and the police. The importance of trust, particularly for strangers to be able to cooperate, therefore suggests that it is equally important for civil groups and associations, where participation is largely voluntary and success depends on many people collaborating (Knack and Keefer 1997). A lack of social trust thus has considerable negative consequences for society in general and for its democratic institutions.

REFORMING THE POLICE UNDER VARYING INSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS Rising violence and crime that has accompanied the democratic transition of authoritarian regimes in Latin America has been an important impetus for criminal justice reforms throughout Latin America, and created pressure for reforms that are based on democratic notions of professional policing, but, as discussed, also increased social pressure for hard-line “war on crime” policing. In the case of Mexico, Bailey and Cornelius have pointed out (2007: 490), reform of criminal justice is an urgent necessity for “the regime’s legitimacy stemming from government effectiveness (as opposed to legitimacy derived from democratic procedures).” One particularly important issue in this respect is whether formal democratization creates a social dynamic favorable for justice reforms, as well as for their effectiveness.6 An essential requirement, Bailey and Cornelius note, is that at minimum an issue coalition for justice reform is required for the duration required to formulate and implement significant programs: “Significant, integral reform of justice administration requires decades . . . and in optimal terms reforms implemented in one sexenio should be ratified and extended into the succeeding presidential term in order to lay the foundation for a positive reform dynamic” (2007: 493).

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Any study of police reforms in Latin America that focuses on democratic transition, human rights, and the rule of law will inevitably be confronted with the arbitrary nature of policing in the region, or, to put it differently, the fact that crime fighting is heavily politicized. Authors like Martha Huggins (1998) and Godoy (2006) remind us that policing in Latin America is deeply politicized, and highly arbitrary as to who will suffer the full or partial brunt of prosecution, conviction, and punishment. Huggins uses the term “political policing” to characterize policing in the region, at the same time considering, that: “All policing is political, ranging on a continuum from police being very visible handmaids of organized power, as historically in much of Latin America, to their relationship to power being obscured by ideologies of democracy and social control that claim to make police mere extensions of a class-neutral state and the people” (1998: 9). Policing arguably is always political, but it is more clearly political in some societies than in others. Throughout Latin America it is a manifest characteristic of policing, reflecting the economic and social inequality and polarization throughout the region. As Godoy (2006: 11) notes, in deeply unequal societies that are governed by the political economy of neoliberalism, criminal justice becomes increasingly prominent as a mechanism for sanitizing socio-economic exclusion and supporting the status quo. The concept of “political policing” is also important for understanding the nature of policing in Mexico and the problems involved in reforming the situation, and is therefore one of the elements informing any agenda of relevant reform in the future. For David Bayley, one of the conditions for successfully implementing reforms and changing police behavior is the presence of sustained and committed top leadership, which he considers one of the most important lessons of reform management. As he puts it, “Significant reforms cannot be brought about by stealth from below against the indifference or hostility of senior managers” (2001: 20). Yet in many societies—especially where corruption is deeply ingrained—senior management that is indifferent or hostile to reform is simply a fact of life. Does this mean that any type of meaningful reform under these circumstances is an illusion from the start? There are even more fundamental issues at stake. In democratic societies— that, unlike authoritarian regimes, are not oriented towards enforcing security and tranquillity on the basis of instilling fear and exacting citizen collaboration by means of brute and unchecked force—the police can only hope to provide security in cooperation with the public and with its broad consent. For this the police require legitimacy, whereby people by and large consider them capable of providing a meaningful public service. Only under such circumstances can the public be expected to cooperate by providing information, evidence, testimony, or even such basics as one’s own and others’ true names and addresses. On the basis of democratic policing principles, the police can-

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not ensure security in the absence of voluntary, nonrepressive forms of policepublic interaction. This is perhaps to state the obvious, but it is nevertheless an important point to make: Positive police-public interactions on all levels are essential for providing information, which is a basis for the police to act, be it in a service-rendering, preventive, or repressive capacity. After all, a key characteristic of policing in democratic societies is that the police largely rely upon the public’s consent and cooperation to be able to fulfil such basic policing functions. In the face of pervasive mistrust of state and police institutions throughout Latin America, policing on the basis of democratic principles is highly problematic, and the issue of “trust” is therefore a crucial one for any reform agenda to address. We return to this point later. Police Reform and Accountability In the literature relevant for understanding the origins and impact of police reform and the control of police abuse in Latin America, the issue of accountability has become increasingly prominent. It constitutes a central issue for understanding the apparent failings of the new democracies and for setting the agenda for future action. Vertical and horizontal accountability have been key concepts, whereas social accountability has been introduced more recently (Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2000, 2003, 2006). Vertical Accountability “Vertical accountability” refers to control exercised by the electorate over government by judging its past performance and setting this against expectations of future performance by contending parties. As a form of institutionalized control exercised through the election process, in a Latin American context it has been largely found to function unsatisfactorily, constituting at best a blunt instrument of control (Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes 1999; Maravall 1996). Social Accountability “Social or societal accountability” on the other hand refers to the capacity of nonstate actors such as social movements and nongovernmental organizations to monitor and respond to state actions, including the role of the media in exposing scandals. As a sanctioning mechanism it relies mostly on public disapproval. As such it largely lacks mandatory effects, but its consequences can be very real. Through social mobilization and media denunciation it can have reputational costs, both for public officials and state institutions (Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2003: 312). The importance of social accountability lies in exposing and denouncing, especially through

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the public media, the wrongdoings of public officials, illustrating the shortcomings of state agencies and putting specific issues on the public and political agenda; for example, public insecurity or police abuse and torture. Social accountability may provide an alternative or complementary means of exercising control over state action and compensate for the weaknesses of electoral and institutional or “horizontal accountability.” Its influence on the electoral process is obvious. But it may also shape internal institutional accountability, when civil society organizations and the media demand legal, as a form of horizontal, accountability, “oriented towards guaranteeing that the actions of public functionaries are within the limits of the law and the constitution” (Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2003: 26). Indeed, one of the novel aspects of social accountability is its emphasis on legality and due process (O’Donnell 2002: 95). It can be a driving force behind police reform, as was the case with the Mexican federal police reforms under President Fox. But social accountability may also work in the opposite direction, calls for mano dura, repressive state policies that run contrary to the values of the rule of law and due process. Horizontal Accountability The emphasis in this book will not be on these forms of accountability, however, but rather on the impact of various types of mostly horizontal forms of institutional controls and reforms that aim to diminish police corruption, torture, and other abuse of power. These include legal and organizational changes, a greater emphasis on training and education, and internal and external accountability systems, which are the most obvious and frequently proposed to achieve progress. In criminal justice systems founded on a tradition of democratic institutions there is a separation of legislative and executive powers and the administration of justice, originally based on Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des Lois (1748). “Horizontal accountability”—sometimes also referred to as “intrastate accountability” (Mainwaring 2003)—refers to the ability and willingness of state agencies to respond to illegal activities by other state agencies. Perhaps most control over the police is exerted through a system of checks and balances, carried out by other criminal justice agents (prosecutors, judges), a system that may also be characterized as “horizontal accountability” (O’Donnell 2003). Traditionally, however, such a system of horizontal accountability has been poorly developed in Latin American democratic institutions, a point most prominently made by O’Donnell (2003). On the whole, horizontal accountability in Latin America has been found wanting, due to a lack of will on the part of state agencies to take corrective action (Mainwaring

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and Welna 2003; O’Donnell, 2003, 1999; Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2003; Schedler, Diamond and Plattner 1999; Stanley 2005). External Accountability The function, relevance and effectiveness of democratic accountability systems depend on the thoroughness and political independence with which they operate. Democratic societies all have, in one form or other, external control systems—that is to say involving institutions that are formally independent from the institution under scrutiny—to deal with allegations of police misconduct. But under a broad variety of societal circumstances their impact is disputed. On the whole, they appear to have only a limited moderating influence on police behavior (Uildriks 1997; Uildriks and van Mastrigt 1991). In Latin America, there are indications that a lower level of serious human rights violations is likely when external control mechanisms are in place, irrespective of their quality. But in countries like Brazil their impact may be negligible (Ahnen 2003; Lemgruber, Musumeci and Cano 2003, 1997; Lemgruber 2003; Macaulay 2002). Symbolically, however, external control mechanisms are of considerable importance. Indeed, their absence can be a sign that there is a lack of political will for effective control. In a report on police reform and human rights in Central America and Haiti, WOLA (1995) considers the most important indicator of political will to be a government’s record on punishing police abuse, resolving key cases, and establishing accountability mechanisms. Chevigny (1995) concludes that external institutions of control are especially effective in the transition from a repressive to a more democratic regime, a conclusion also drawn in a study of policing in transition in different post-communist societies (Uildriks and Van Reenen 2003). Internal Accountability Supervision, disciplining, and training can all be considered internal horizontal control. While their relevance in different societies varies, on the whole they appear to constitute an important means for diminishing police excesses in countries such as the United States, whereas comparable research in three countries in the Caribbean has found no such impact (Bennett 1997). Variations seem partly related to differences in police culture and the extent to which police management does or does not endorse particular facets of the informal police culture; for example, James Fyfe and Jerome Skolnick (1993) conclude that in police forces in which top management endorses a siege mentality and an “us versus them” attitude a relatively high level of police violence can be found.

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Nevertheless, although internal institutional police control can take different forms, in modern police forces its importance appears to be unequivocal. Several studies have concluded that its absence in certain police departments has contributed to corruption and violent police tactics.7 Conversely, initiatives to introduce stringent internal mechanisms of control may significantly reduce such practices, especially in response to a scandal, as was the case in New York City during the 1970s. Richard Bennett’s study (1997) suggests that sanctions have the greatest effect on the nature of the organizational culture and thus supports the conclusion of Fyfe and Skolnick (1993) that organizational policy forms the key to controlling police corruption and violent use of their powers.

DEALING WITH CORRUPTION Many authors consider political corruption an important factor undermining confidence in public institutions, by reducing interpersonal trust, regime legitimacy, and civic involvement (Caiden 2001; Doig and Theobald 2000; Pharr 2002; Seligson 2002). On the basis of a cross-country comparison—involving a survey of forty countries—Knack and Keefer (1997) found a statistically significant correlation between increases in interpersonal trust and in anticorruption scores. Comparing Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, and El Salvador, Seligson (2000) found that participation in and perception of corruption erodes regime legitimacy and a sense of interpersonal trust. One important issue—relevant in terms of both accountability and professionalization—is how police corruption can be reduced.8 How to address police corruption is a crucial issue, as (non)integrity—arbitrary use, or abuse of formal powers by functionaries of a particular institution—in a country’s state institutions inevitably affects levels of social and institutional trust. This makes initiatives to reduce corruption of paramount importance in countries like Mexico where corruption for so long has remained so allpervasive and institutionalized. Corruption theoretically can be expected to flourish more readily under authoritarian than democratic conditions, both in terms of institutional arrangements (accountability systems) and political and ideological values like equality and justice, citizenship, openness, and accountability (Morris 2009: 6). Indeed, a number of cross-national studies indicate that nondemocratic countries show higher levels of corruption than democratic societies; corruption is less prevalent in countries with such democratic characteristics as a merit-based civil service system, a free press, the rule of law, federalism, economic development, and openness.9 But within newly established democracies the picture is less clear-cut, a number of studies suggesting that only a longer exposure to democratic

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governance tend to lower the level of corruption; in various Latin American countries following their return to democracy, corruption in fact appeared to increase (Morris 2009: 8). Within a new democracy political and institutional practices are in a state of flux, facilitating what Morris refers to as “new corruption.” In the short-term this facilitates people taking advantage of unclear rules, muddled lines of authority, and only tentative accountability mechanisms (Andvig 2006). As part of the democratization process, institutions start operating under new rules and means for acquiring power and wealth, opening up new opportunities for corruption. While expected to lower corruption on the long-term, in the short run corruption may thus increase during democratic transition due to such factors as the lack of constraints on governmental power, elites dominating the economic system, a lack of independent prosecutors and administrative oversight (Colazingari and Rose-Ackerman 1998). Morris speaks of the dialectical nature of the early struggle to forge effective democratic institutions to control corruption. On the one hand the democratization process heightens societal attention and condemnation of corruption—often needed to channel state resources to fight it—and on the other hand the persistence of corruption undermines the legitimacy of and public satisfaction with the new democratic order and precisely those institutions needed to establish the rule of law and strengthen the mechanisms of accountability (Morris 2009: 10). So far the experience of Latin America overall in reducing corruption has not been encouraging, and indeed state anti-corruption drives have tended to be fundamentally flawed and ineffective. Not only may the impetus for anti-corruption campaigns actually be largely derived from corrupt motives and designed to further partisan goals, but the intractable nature of the problem may also propel reform in an anti-democratic direction. Barbados, for example, saw the introduction of informal spies, personally chosen by and loyal to the police commissioner. As Anthony Harriott contends, for the disciplinary approach to gain acceptance and to work, it must be democratic and consistent with a wider program of reform, which “cannot be democratic in some aspects and yet authoritarian, counterproductive in their treatment of corruption” (Harriott 2000: 71). In any case, specific campaigns against institutionalized corruption can be futile in the light of the entrepreneurial character of corruption, which provides the social and financial resources for police to resist sanctions effectively.

PROFESSIONALIZING THE POLICE Introducing a democratic order based on the rule of law requires an independent and professional police force, accountable to the rule of law,

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rather than subservient to the discretionary powers of its political masters is essential. Professionalization of the police thus is an important issue when considering how to institutionalize the rule of law as part of the democratization process. Police professionalization is a wide-ranging concept, which has different meanings within the police literature depending on the views as to what “good policing” actually entails. Inevitably police professionalization means one thing to those who want the police to be an effective instrument of ruling elites, capable of efficiently controlling specific groups of the population (and violent crime), but something completely different to those who see democratic- or human-rights-oriented policing as their ideal. Both Mercedes Hinton (2006) and Harriott (2000) specifically emphasize the fundamental importance of addressing honesty and accountability in any effort to professionalize and increase the legitimacy and quality of the police. As we conclude in chapter 7, their argument is also highly relevant in setting the agenda of reform for Mexico. Historically, police professionalization in the Americas, Martha Huggins (1998) points out, has meant the development of an identity among the rank and file setting them apart from their original class and ethnic roots, including regular salaries and long-term contracts. It also has meant the bureaucratic restructuring of police organizations, the setting up of internal hierarchies, clear chains of command, and standards for recruitment, training, promotion, and termination, as well as the development of bureaucratic regulation and internal control systems. Professionalized bureaucratization of the police gives higher state officials greater control over the police organization, making officers more accountable to the officials who control the hierarchy. Professionalization molds police organizations into complex legal-rational bureaucratic institutions. The merit of professionalization is often assumed to lie in an elimination of the source and rationale for excessive police violence (Huggins 1998). But the experiences of countries like Jamaica and Brazil in particular, with their reliance on shoot-to-kill policies as a supposed ultimate and inevitable means to control specific groups of the population, illustrate that bureaucratic professionalization of the police far from ensures a reduction of violent policing methods. In fact, professionalization transforms violators of local rule into outsiders to be managed through heavy and generalized police repression (Huggins 1998). Indeed, Paul Chevigny (1995: chapter 4) cautions that a strong crimecontrol ideology further alienates a professionalized police from local communities, diminishing personal police identification with others of similar class and ethnic backgrounds. This is because much police reform in the Americas, certainly including Mexico, is carried out from the perspective of a supposed apolitical professionalization of the police by means of

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technological and organizational changes. Various authors have criticized such a perspective. In her study of Latin American policing and U.S. police assistance during the twentieth century, Huggins (1998) argues that this type of “professionalization” has allowed policing to perpetuate the power and privileges of the few through an ideological reorientation of the police towards their work: Police carry out their work in support of socio-structural inequality while seeming to do no such thing. Police professionalization, she contends, has in the Americas been the primary mechanism for transforming the modern police from visible servants of personalistic economic and political interests into an institution perceived to be apolitical and class-neutral institution attached to a class-neutral state. In fact, however, the police have remained heavily politicized. Does this also apply to Mexico? In fact, in her study of police reform in Brazil and Argentina, Hinton (2006) argues against an emphasis on impersonal high-technology initiatives as crime-fighting tools, particularly in countries that can ill afford them. They often precede the more basic elements of efficient statistical systems, adequate education, enhanced training, and standardized systems of monitoring and evaluation (Hinton 2006: 199). But none of these, she recognizes implicitly, will be of any avail in the absence of improvements in the integrity and accountability of the police and the criminal justice system, as well as in the government as a whole. Unfortunately, Hinton has little to say as to how such increased integrity and accountability can be established in the face of informal realities in Latin America. Democratic Policing, Human Rights and Impunity One dimension of democratic policing is the adherence to human rights standards and the rule of law, which are intrinsically linked. In the absence of the rule of law human rights are likely to be violated on a massive scale, if only in terms of people being arbitrarily arrested and detained. The issue of police impunity is equally linked to the maintenance of human rights and the rule of law: One constant emerging from relevant studies is the suggestion that the higher the degree of police impunity the more serious human rights violations are committed by the police (Uildriks and van Reenen 2001). Especially in societies in transition from authoritarian and repressive regimes to greater democracy, conviction of officers for human rights offenses can be of considerable symbolic significance, indicating to the public that the police are not above the law but are instead part of society and subject to the rule of law like everybody else: The rule of law applies to citizens and police alike. Such a state of affairs is important during the transition to institutions that function in accordance with democratic principles and

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the rule of law, a situation in which citizens no longer feel powerless in the face of a state that was formerly omnipotent, where citizens having no real redress for police abuse (Uildriks and Van Reenen 2003). Often the nexus between criminal prosecutions/convictions and the prevention of abuses is more complex, however, than usually suggested in human rights thinking about the ending of impunity as the panacea for all human rights violations by police. Current insights into the functioning of complaints against police in contemporary Western societies point to the limited impact of criminal prosecution threats in curbing police human rights violations. Furthermore, curbing police human rights violations solely or predominantly by invoking the criminal justice system is inherently perceived by rank-and-file police as unsympathetic and threatening, and will likely result in unintended negative consequences. Officers may develop avoidance strategies and become overly afraid of using force in circumstances that require its use. Or they may develop specific countervailing methods, such as falsely charging a suspect with assaulting the police, in order to minimize the risk of criminal liability, instead of trying to reduce their human rights violations (Uildriks and van Mastrigt 1991). Officers tend to regard complaints not so much as a legitimate expression on the part of people whose rights have been violated, but instead as part of a strategic game of charge and counter-charge.10 It is almost inevitable that many officers will seek to develop strategies—lawful or not—to avoid risk of punishment. If such practices become institutionalized, this poses a serious threat to the effectiveness of complaints and of any broader system of accountability. Over-reliance on formal external repressive systems of accountability may well turn out in the long-term ineffective and even counterproductive by encouraging police strategies to neutralize complaints, rather than constituting a norm-setting mechanism and being conducive to police adherence to human rights standards. The limitations of repressive police review systems, irrespective of professional standards and the degree of operational independence involved, become apparent if we look at the standard procedure entailed in dealing with the average complaint. Characteristically most investigations—irrespective of the seriousness of the alleged incident—will entail taking and comparing the statements of the complainant and the implicated police. Sometimes independent and reliable witnesses will be present, but often not. Only in the more serious instances, at best, will there be medical or other independent evidence that can be used to support or negate specific allegations of physical abuse by police. In most cases therefore, investigators will be confined to comparing the different and contradictory statements given, weighing their relative reliability, and, if need be, requesting additional statements. When there are conflicting accounts of an incident—as so often is the case—even the most experienced and skilled investigators are

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likely to find it difficult to establish the precise facts of the case, let alone establish sufficient proof to serve as a basis for formal proceedings against an officer. Just as people may have other motives for filing complaints than legitimate grievances against wrongful, abusive police behavior, they will also have varying expectations and wishes concerning the outcome of a complaint. In the more serious instances, complainants may well seek criminal conviction of an officer. But other outcomes are also sought: monetary compensation, assurances that the matter or officer will be dealt with or even simple recognition of and apology for police misbehavior (Uildriks 1997: 195–196). This means that the success or failure of police accountability systems should not be measured by the degree of impunity as indicated merely by conviction rates of police officers. From a human rights point of view, accountability systems may still be legitimate and effective if proper procedures are followed to investigate, address, and redress instances of police impropriety in other ways. Institutionalizing more informal or less repressive approaches may therefore be equally appropriate and effective for dealing with allegations of police abuse. Since officers dissembling about their behavior is in part a logical strategic response to avoid personal disaster, less repressive institutional systems do less to encourage such forms of police malfeasance. Examples of institutionalized informal approaches can be found in the Netherlands and Great Britain, where efforts have been made to use complaints and instances of police misconduct as potential learning opportunities for individual police officers and for police agencies (Uildriks 1997). Their suitability will vary, and depend on the willingness and ability of police and other government agencies and institutions in these societies to address and cope with complaints and complainants in an appropriate and respectful manner. What is clear, in any case, is that in the middle and long-term, a heavy reliance on repressive criminal justice approaches are likely to yield diminishing returns and may become counterproductive from a human rights point of view.

BUILDING TRUST AND DEMOCRACY IN JUSTICE AND POLICE REFORMS Worldwide there has been considerable effort to establish greater rapport and involvement of the population with the police and policing. Reforms may seek such varying goals as increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of police and the wider criminal justice system in reducing crime, increasing police adherence to human rights standards and the rule of law. But police

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reforms in Latin America have generally placed a strong emphasis on improving efficiency, with very little done to improve accountability (Beato 2006; Smulovitz 2006; Ward 2006). In terms of their overall social relevance and contribution toward the democratization process many police and criminal justice reforms can ultimately perhaps best be judged on two fronts: their ability to generate the public’s trust in their society in general and in its state institutions, but also in functionaries of the police and the wider criminal justice system. The ability of reforms to generate trust may in fact be a measure of their success or failure in improving security and institutional integrity. It is, however, also an important goal in its own right, since trust is an important prerequisite for the rule of law and adherence to democratic and human rights principles. The trust-building capacity of different reforms will inevitably vary, both in nature and in scope. In examining reforms that can be expected to facilitate the creation of trust, one should not, of course, naïvely assume they would unequivocally do so as a matter of course. In a society marred by all-pervasive lack of trust, they cannot. But the introduction of some forms of community policing clearly has the potential to increase levels of trust, and setting examples of “best practices” may inspire others to follow suit.

CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL POLICE REFORMS Without a doubt many countries require comprehensive police and justice reforms for achieving the long-term democratization of police and judicial institutions (Glebbeek 2009; de Mesquita Neto 2006). In Mesquita Neto’s view, police and judicial reforms can only be effectively consolidated and produce significant results when they simultaneously and successfully address several dimensions, namely, police accessibility and responsiveness to the public, police independence, accountability, effectiveness, and efficiency. Even so, federal state structures may generally offer more scope for local and regional reform and differences than a centralized state. In Argentina this point is illustrated by the province of La Rioja, which has adopted comprehensive structural police reform on the principle of problem-oriented policing (Ungar 2009). One issue at stake when considering what makes reforms likely to succeed lies in the varying opportunities for consolidation. Police reform in some Brazilian cities has included attempts to abolish the Military Police, to strip it of its military character and change its hierarchical nature, or to integrate civil and military police forces, but to little avail. From his involvement in a more incremental long-term reform of the Military Police in Brazil’s state of Minas Gerais, Beato of the Belo Horizonte’s Federal University concluded that, “The best way not to change anything is to change

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everything” (quoted in Ward 2006: 180). There are no Latin American reform experiences known to us that negate extending such a conclusion beyond the Brazilian experience (Uildriks 2009). Furthermore, the failure of most police reform initiatives especially involves comprehensive “top-down” initiatives that introduce new bureaucratic structures and even the creation of totally new police forces. Such police reform, as a number of Latin American studies have found, often reinforces more centralized or authoritarian forms of policing, for example, in the case of Argentina (Ungar 2002), or they work only temporarily until the bureaucratic infighting they produce leads to paralysis (Call 2003). One of the resulting problems of “grand design” reforms in countries like Jamaica (Harriott 2000) and Argentina (Hinton 2006; Ungar 2002) is the development of powerful internal police opposition that is able to stop reforms in their tracks. Major politically inspired reforms are also likely to engender political opposition when they go against vested interests, as was the case in Jamaica (Harriott 2000), Argentina (Hinton 2006; Ungar 2002) and Brazil (Hinton 2006; Lawson 2004). As Hinton points out, during the 1990s selective police accountability allowed Argentine and Brazilian elected officials considerable latitude to pursue their personal agendas: Political initiatives to open up clearer channels of accountability “risked opening a can of worms, since dismantling networks of corruption might easily unleash the ire not only of police hierarchies but of the powerful vested interests across government that thrived on corruption” (Hinton 2006: 193). In Argentina, Hinton cynically concludes, for politicians and senior police alike, maintaining the status quo has the added advantage that an inefficient, poorly paid, and demoralized police force can more easily be co-opted by bribery, enticed into illegal acts or manipulated into silence (2006: 193). Similarly, after the initial enthusiasm with which grand design reforms are announced, the political will or power to carry through such reforms can easily disappear, with politicians opportunistically dropping initial plans in the face of a dip in popularity or persistent political opposition. The reform process in Argentina and Brazil during the 1990s was both politicized and inconsistent, and later during the 2002 Brazilian election President Lula’s 100-page blueprint for reform of the security sector was to be equally ill-fated.11 These experiences point to the difficulties of successfully implementing any type of comprehensive police and criminal justice reform in the face of Latin America’s social and political characteristics. Sources of Reform Sources and leadership for reforms in Latin America come from various directions and can be categorized in three groups: civil society, state institutions, and police organizations themselves (de Mesquita Neto 2006; Stone

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and Ward 2000; Ward 2006). In a study of police and judicial police reform in Latin American, de Mesquita Neto (2006) concludes that the quality of leadership in the reform process influences the relative success of new democratic police and judicial institutions throughout the continent. When international organizations are involved in the reform as in Haiti and Guatemala, the political independence and accountability of institutions and agents tend to be key objectives for judicial and police reforms; when the government itself is the driving force (Colombia, Peru, Chile), the efficiency and effectiveness of criminal justice institutions are the paramount goals. There are no examples in Latin America of civil society leading police and criminal justice reforms. Nevertheless in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and certainly also Mexico, pressures from civil society are strong and lie at the heart of many government initiatives to reform the police and justice system. De Mesquita Neto (2006: 154) optimistically concludes that as a result of such pressures, the accessibility of police and justice systems and their responsiveness to citizens are likely to increase, and that strengthening societal control of police and judicial institutions tends to be emphasized as important goals of reform. But the involvement of civil society in initiating reform is in itself, insufficient to guarantee success. Civil society is commonly involved in defining objectives and outcomes of the reform process, but governmental, external, and societal control mechanisms are often difficult to establish. Additionally, human rights groups have, what Neild refers to as, a serious knowledge gap. They know what the police should not be doing, “but have few insights into alternative models of policing that can improve crime prevention and law enforcement and respect for rights.” (2003: 278) At any rate, as discussed, pressure from civil society in general may well take an opposite direction, namely, toward demands for mano dura, the kind of repressive policies that popular sentiment believes will help increase security. This seems to be because under adverse social and political conditions the failure of civic engagement breeds the kind of generalized mistrust that undermines development of democratic institutions. Indeed, Godoy’s (2006) scepticism as to whether the values of liberal democracy can prosper, under the present conditions of socio-economic exclusion of large masses of people in Latin American societies, adds to the pessimism about the scope for improvement possible under the kind of neoliberal conditions widely present today. Reflecting the fundamental problems of securing any progress in the short and medium term, the hope of Davis (2006: 82)—as one established authority on Mexican police reform—for improvement in Mexico rests upon a revival and renewal of modernizing ideals and an attendant commitment to the rule of law. The intriguing question remains how such a revival may

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be achieved under existing social conditions. Perhaps the answer partly lies with community policing, as a more “personalized” form of policing.

COMMUNITY POLICING Community policing is a term sometimes loosely used to describe any type of police activity involving greater commitment to personal contact with the citizens than the ordinary reactive car-patrol model of policing. It involves a democratic model of policing in that it emphasizes the community’s involvement in dealing with crime—sometimes even setting policing priorities and methods—in order to achieve the goals of crime prevention and detection by establishing a closer relationship with the community. A social environment of anonymous and largely hostile police-public contacts decreases the likelihood that members of the public will assist the police voluntarily in criminal investigations. In the United States community policing model of ongoing consultation with the community has had three main functions: increasing police awareness of local interests and needs, offering police an opportunity to educate citizens about behaviors that help prevent crime, and providing channels for citizens to directly express complaints (Bayley 1994: 105–120). Community policing in the U.S. has been strongly encouraged by marginalized groups who perceive excessive and discriminatory police use of force against them. Community policing thus presents itself as a strategy that emphasizes proper treatment of the public and can result in a reduction in police violence (Frühling 2006: 23). The mode of patrolling on the ground can theoretically be expected to contribute to reducing a decrease in police abuse and violence. It typically makes use of foot or bicycle patrols, in contrast to car patrols, which characterizes most traditional uniformed policing. Car patrolling is a policing style that risks public-police contacts becoming basically incidental, ad hoc, and anonymous in character. This adds more room for mutual negative stereotypes and animosity (Chevigny 1995; Uildriks and van Reenen 2001; Uildriks 1996; Uildriks and van Mastrigt 1991). Under these circumstances police are more likely to experience situations as dangerous and react with pre-emptive force or violence, whether legal or illegal. Officers have more scope for changing the dynamics of a potentially violent or volatile situation when police and public know each other on a first-name basis (Uildriks 1996: 100–102). The personal relations between police and public are important for policing, especially in the absence of more sophisticated investigation techniques, as they may form a strong incentive for suspects’ cooperation (Uildriks and van Reenen 2001, 2003; Harriott 2000).

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The introduction of community policing throughout Latin America could thus in principle be of considerable importance for democratizing police forces through policing by broad popular consent rather than onesidedly enforcing specific rules against certain parts of the population. It is a type of reform particularly relevant for institutionalizing more democratic practices in Latin American police forces, which characteristically have remained very hierarchical, centralized, and militarized. Most police in Latin America still use an organizational model that emphasizes obedience and discipline, following orders rather than making informed decisions based on the exigencies of the situation with which they are confronted. In contrast to such hierarchical policing styles, the community policing model emphasizes the role and responsibility of the street officer who, in the words of Hugo Frühling, “gains a sense of accountability for the results of his work from his identification with the force and its objectives” (2006: 24). North American community policing in essence involves four characteristics: (i) emphasis on preventive police activity focusing on small geographical areas; (ii) encouragement of close community relations to ensure that the police take account of local perceptions of police; (iii) mobilizing the community to take preventive action; and (iv) a consensus-based strategy, in which the police study the conditions and the circumstances leading to crime and violations that significantly affect people’s life (Frühling 2006: 23). The success of these programs is dependent on the continued participation of residents. With these characteristics in mind, it is easy to see the potential relevance of community policing within the overall democratization process that has taken place in Latin America. As part of the democratization process during the 1980s and 1990s it became apparent that the functioning of police forces in many Latin American countries were incompatible with democratic norms and human rights principles. In addition, the idea of community policing was also propelled by the urgent public demands for increased police presence and government solutions in the wake of the sharp increase in crime throughout the region. Its development in Latin America has further been linked to the devolution of the state, involving a general reduction in size of the state apparatus and privatization of many public enterprises, including a boom in private security firms. Central government functions also have been decentralized to local and regional levels, often with accountability mechanisms installed to ensure government effectiveness and efficiency. In recent years community policing has been on the increase throughout Latin America in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti (Smulovitz 2006; Uildriks 2009a). A number of Latin American cities has particularly demonstrated that community policing can be of considerable relevance as a police reform strategy for reducing police human rights abuses and increased police

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provision of security (Frühling 2005, 2006). Equally relevant is that citizen participation in community policing, even if not actually reducing crime rates, widely appears to reduce feelings of insecurity among those involved (Smulovitz 2006). Successful Community Policing Frühling (2006) identifies three models structuring the relationship between police and citizens. One model emphasizes the role of a central commission collectively responsible for creating security in a given area. The members of this commission come from different sectors, usually representing governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations, and the police. Its role is usually deliberative or advisory. A second model involves a central commission complemented by the work of neighborhood committees. A third model distinguishes itself by being thoroughly decentralized, with the police encouraging the creation of prevention committees in the jurisdictional areas of each police station. Frühling tentatively concludes that the second, mixed, model is most conducive to a real impact through participatory programs, pointing out that the members of these central commissions usually have substantial social influence that can affect the police planning process and contribute to the execution of joint programs between the police and other government agencies. Differences in social environment affect the success of community policing. Frühling (2006) concludes that the crime rate in a particular area is one of the most important factors affecting the functioning of the local committee as the liaison between police and community. In high crime areas, public willingness to cooperate with the police is lower. Furthermore, officers themselves tend to be more supportive of community policing if crime rates are low, but are more in favor of traditional coercive policing methods in more violent areas. The organizational context of community policing also affects its success, as different authors have pointed out. It should not be organized as specialized units within the police force, but instead all police should act in accordance with the principles of community policing (Frühling 2006: 23), or, at least those police working in specialized community-policing units must maintain communication and relations with their colleagues in order to respond adequately to problems that arise in a neighborhood (Schafer 2001: 23–24). Waddington (1999) and Smulowitz (2006: 233) argue that the introduction of community policing should be accompanied by line officers being given greater autonomy, and, by increasing the role of the public, thus altering the strict division of tasks between citizens and police, on which traditional policing is based. Unless such changes occur, Smulovitz concludes, community policing in countries such as Argentina, Brazil

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and Chile will for the police merely amount to a campaign to improve public relations, and for residents a mere self-managed and uncoordinated exercise of security functions (2006: 233). There has been extensive evaluation of four major community policing initiatives started between 1998 and 2000 in four Latin American cities: São Paulo and Belo Horizonte in Brazil, Bogotá in Colombia, and Villa Nueva in Guatemala. All of these experiments were positively evaluated on the whole, with closer ties established between police and communities (Frühling 2005). In the early 1990s Bogotá’s police had a notorious reputation, with corruption and links to drug trafficking evident at all levels. Particularly in Bogotá the results have also been impressive in reducing local crime. As Charo Quesado (2005) points out, in Bogotá the number of violent deaths fell from 7,144 in 1993 to 3,194 in 2002. With the aid of U.S. funds, training was given to 2,200 officers in conflict resolution, sexual abuse, human rights, and adult education, part of a drive to shift the police role from reactive toward prevention. Community policing grew out of this initiative, and in 2005 some 1,000 specially selected and trained police officers began patrolling in pairs on bicycles. As part of a separate training course, officers were taught how to gradually infiltrate communities that pose serious security problems to surrounding neighborhoods, and how to gain an understanding of their dynamics. Within the police, community officers have sometimes been proclaimed as agents of social change, performing an active role on a number of fronts. They help to set up Security Fronts, or community-based crime-monitoring committees that run alarm systems and share information with the police and initiate a variety of other community-based security initiatives. Assigned to a particular area for a number of years, these police visit local residents on a day-to-day basis, attend meetings, talk to people on street corners, and respond to calls they receive on their radios. With prevention a key orientation, they are expected to keep an eye on danger spots in their area—such as abandoned houses—that could be used for drug dealing, and to share information relevant to people’s health and security with senior police and local authorities for planning their response. Discussing Bogotá’s community police program, Mayra Buvinic (2004) identifies several factors that appear crucial for its success. For more than a decade and spanning three municipal administrations, there has been the kind of long-term political commitment required to instigate complex institutional and social changes. The successive mayors have given priority to improving the performance and professionalism of the police, considerable funds being devoted to the police and their integration with other municipal services by means of incentives (such as offering funds for training) and fostering a public climate of trust and cooperation.

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Obstacles to Community Policing Notwithstanding success stories, particularly in Bogotá, the introduction of community policing overall is rife with problems. Given the troubled history of police-public relations throughout Latin America, problems have generally arisen in those circumstances where citizen participation has not succeeded in defining police priorities and citizens have been ill-prepared to interact with the police. Although local committees often constitute the backbone of such initiatives, their introduction generally has not been accompanied by necessary training. Such training can be considered crucial if citizen participation, beyond voicing complaints about police inaction, is to go contribute to solutions to local security problems (Frühling 2006: 40). The development of trust is a long-term process, particularly in societies making the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. In view of the urgency of obtaining results and the high level of mutual police-public mistrust, an only sporadic introduction of community policing will not produce the trust-building required, and is likely to bring into question the overall validity of the community policing approach (Smulovitz 2006: 233). Furthermore, as Davis (2006: 77) maintains, a certain degree of police reform must already be in place for grassroots citizen participation to make any serious difference. In other words, basic public trust in institutional integrity is required before citizens will enter an open dialogue on how neighborhood problems should be tackled, a point also specifically raised by Smulovitz (2006). In the long-term the success of community policing initiatives is highly dependent on continued citizen engagement. Such continuing involvement, however, as Smulovitz points out, is often in doubt, thus affecting the sustainability of many initiatives (2006: 234). Internal police organizational factors can equally endanger a successful introduction of community policing. Harriott (2009) and Schafer (2001) point to internal police resistance to community policing programs, given their preference for traditional modes of reactive policing. The introduction of community policing may be hampered by inadequate training for changing attitudes of the police rank and file from one of obedience and following orders to using their own initiative and being creatively involved in institutional changes. Moreover, the rank and file may in fact resist being given more autonomy, since this would mean facing more personal accountability for results, preferring instead to simply carry out orders. In a survey of São Paulo police, Tulio Kahn (2003) found that the concept of community policing is appreciated by sergeant and higher ranks, but the lower ranks evince resistance. Community policing programs are thus often affected by the general police culture, which tends to be skeptical of their ability to deal with crime effectively. Internal police opposition to community policing programs will be greater in centralized and very hierarchical institutions where democratic beliefs are weak: Under such circumstances

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the idea that strict enforcement of the law alone suffices to control society can easily prevail (Frühling 2006: 36). In short, a successful introduction of community policing requires major organizational changes (Frühling 2006; Schafer 2001). Organizing it as specialized units, as is often done, will achieve little because all aspects of policing must be carried out in accordance with the principles of community policing, and officers of specialized units have to relate to ordinary officers in the field if they are to be able to respond adequately to problems that arise locally. Reforming the police in this direction also requires budgetary reallocations and new social attitudes toward the police, which the police need to secure to succeed (Ricardo Sandoval Quappe 2002, as quoted by Frühling 2006). The potential relevance of community policing is clear, both in lowering crime rates as well as reducing police abuse. As illustrated by approval ratings of the police in public opinion polls in Bogotá, success on these fronts may have considerable impact on the level of police legitimacy, while simultaneously undermining public clamor for mano dura. In this book the question to be specifically addressed is whether community policing is feasible in Mexico, and if so what it should involve to be relevant in that particular country. In chapter 7 it will be concluded that more “personalized policing” might be one practical solution to the problem of Mexican policing, building on Luis Roniger’s notion (1990) that trust in Latin America is focalized.

SETUP AND BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY The research to be reported here constitutes part of a wider four-year comparative research program in four major cities in the Latin American/Caribbean region—Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Kingston (Jamaica), San José (Costa Rica), and Mexico City—funded by the Netherlands Scientific Research Council (NWO) and launched in 2002. In short, the program sought to discover the kinds of initiatives in different localities deemed most relevant for augmenting police adherence to human rights standards and most effective under different political, socio-economic and cultural circumstances. What could be learned in terms of predicting their relative success in key areas of institutional police and criminal justice systems in Latin America: police selection, training, and policing style, management and promotion systems, internal and external accountability and abuse monitoring systems? What works, if only a little, and when? In light of what we knew of Mexico beforehand, there appeared on the whole to have been at least some reduction of police torture and corruption in the previous ten years. Was this true and could this be attributed to

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specific reforms and relevant initiatives? Could any improvements in part be related to police professionalization? In particular, the setting up of the National Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) in 2001 with newly recruited and screened officers with a high educational background appeared as a model of the “new Mexican police,” with much less corruption and use of torture. AFI had started from scratch, and a mixture of thorough screening, and training, together with the high educational background of its members seemed to have changed matters. Being a study of Mexico City police, however, the focus here was not primarily on AFI. What were the relevant reforms and initiatives within the Mexico City Preventive and Judicial police? Based on Nelia Tello Peón’s decades-long involvement with the Mexico City Preventive Police, we assumed any advances to be rather marginal, particularly in the light of Mexico’s notoriously intransigent institutional realities. Against this background and with a restricted time frame for research (half a year), rather than formulating precise hypotheses that would be put to the test, the goals would have to fit the time available within which the research tools—a survey and interview model—had to be developed and administered and the results analyzed. We constructed a survey (see appendix A and B) and an open interview protocol (see appendix C) that would allow us to obtain police opinions concerning trends in police corruption and abuse during the past five years, as well as the influence of specific reforms and institutional characteristics on these developments. The research results would then be compared with data from other quarters (see especially chapters 5, 6, and 7). Within the time span available this would allow the best possible understanding of the relative significance of different reforms and initiatives to reduce police abuse. In other words, the primary concern was to develop theoretically relevant ideas in this domain, rather than to put any particular reform to a rigorous test on the basis of a set of hypotheses and instruments.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY As the principle method for this study a survey was developed (see Appendix B) and administered to 1,100 officers from Mexico City’s Preventive and Judicial Police (see Appendix A). The survey was complemented by sixty open interviews with officers from both forces (see appendix C) for the purpose of providing additional understanding and depth to the data provided by the survey. Considerable time and effort went into developing the survey, and four pilots were administered to test its viability and reliability. The eventual outcome was a survey in the form of “multiple choice” questions. Based on

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our previous knowledge of the way officers think—in part drawing on the group interviews with preventive and judicial police carried out by Elena Azaola in 2003 and 2004—questions and answers were formulated in a straightforward way to ensure that they could be understood by all respondents. This allowed us to quantify already existing insights more precisely. An unconventional approach was adopted to carry out the research. Rather than seeking formal permission from the police for the study—which was very unlikely to be granted—individual officers were approached on the street (in the case of preventive police) or at the Public Prosecutor’s Office (in the case of judicial police). This worked out well. Invariably when approached and the purpose of the research was explained they would assist. In order to achieve a representative selection of respondents a wide variety of neighborhoods in Mexico City was selected, focusing in particular on the periphery, the areas where ordinary police work takes place.

CONCLUSION Whereas different theoretical concepts of police accountability have an extensive literature, empirical studies on the impact of diverse forms of accountability in reducing police human rights abuses are in scarce supply, in Mexico as elsewhere. This is not surprising in view of the many hurdles that any serious attempt at serious evaluation has to overcome—both theoretically and empirically. An assessment of the trends in human rights violations may seem a useful starting point, but questions remain. How can such an assessment be carried out in a precise manner? How can any changes be attributed to specific reforms or initiatives? What is the most appropriate theoretical perspective to approach the issue, and what kinds of data are needed to make a solid analysis? All such problems are compounded by the fact that acquiring the necessary access for carrying out research is likely to be especially troublesome in police forces with a poor human rights record. Many of these questions will be discussed in the course of this book, but it is clear that study in this area cannot be an exact science. In assessing the impact of different reforms, much of the relevant empirical data collected can only be taken as indicators, as “facts” that gain their meaning in conjunction with other data and as part of the theoretical perspective adopted. Desmond Arias and Daniel Goldstein (2006) have argued that “Only by effectively contextualizing the experience of formal democratic institutions and the democratization project in the context of the institutional and noninstitutional factors that frustrate the fulfillment of those formal institutions’ promises can we understand the weakness of the current regimes in Latin America.” This book has been written very much from such a per-

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spective. An important axiom for us has been that assessing the influence of different reforms and approaches requires a thorough understanding of the organizational and political realities of policing. The book differs from most other studies of police reform and human rights in that it integrates legal with social science perspectives. It also includes a historical dimension, placing its detailed case study in the wider perspective of the longterm transition from an authoritarian regime to democratic governance.

NOTES 1. A discussion of the concept of “social capital” is beyond the scope of this book. In the context of “democratization” it probably has been discussed most saliently by Putman (1993, 2000). For a discussion of the main treatments of the concept and how to measure it, see Grootaert and van Bastelaer 2002, Krishna 2002; Portes 1998; Woolcock and Narayan 2000. Woolcock argues “social capital” is specifically characterized by the elements “bonding, bridges and linkages,” which Woolcock (2001: 13) points out constitute the most common sources of social capital. Healey and Côte (2001: 42) offer the following definition of these terms: “‘Bonding’ refers typically to relations among members of families and ethnic groups. ‘Bridging’ social capital refers to relations with distant friends, associates and colleagues. ‘Linking’ refers to relations between different social strata in a hierarchy where power, social status and wealth are accessed by different groups.” 2. On the basis of international law standards, Amnesty International formulated 10 Basic Human Rights Standards for Law Enforcement Officials (December 1998). These involve both international legal human rights standards and acts that are either specifically proscribed or forbidden. The most important standards are: (i) Adherence to the rule of law: the rights and the freedoms of individual persons may only be restricted in cases determined by the law or where those of others are at issue, and taking into account the demands of morality, civil order and public welfare in a democratic society (Article 29.2 Universal Declaration of Human Rights); (ii) The prohibition of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 7 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1966); Article 1 and 16 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984); The obligation to treat all detainees humanely (UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials 1979); (iii) The prohibition of arbitrarily taking someone’s life. Lethal force should only be used when strictly unavoidable to protect life (Article 6 ICCPR; ECOSOC resolution Principles Concerning the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, 1989); (iv) the proper use of force: force should only be used when strictly necessary and to the minimum extent required under the circumstances (UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials 1979; UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms 1990) (v) The Prohibition to discriminate (ICCPR. Art. 2, 9, 24, 26, 27, ICERD, CEFDW. Article 2, 10). 3. A number of movies made in the United States in the 1970s featuring a “hard cop” (for example, “Dirty Harry,” played by Clint Eastwood) epitomized such a view.

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4 Parás specifically builds on the definition of social capital by Woodstock (2001) as discussed in note 1. 5. Parás uses a Confirmatory Factor Analysis for his constructs: bridging, change in behavior (stop doing activities, unsafe (proxy for fear), formal networks (membership), health (well-being), indirect victim experience, (lack of) institutional trust, preference for democracy, trustworthiness. 6. Bailey and Cornelius (2007) have postulated an “optimistic” and a “pessimistic” model to hypothesize the possible effects of democratization on reforms in general. The optimistic model sees positive effects stemming primarily deriving from the dynamic generated from periodic free election, with elites in competition for public approval and thus in search of effective strategies and reforms to make the justice system more effective, creating the conditions for electorates and interest groups to reward those elites that can deliver better-quality administration of justice. The pessimistic model suggests that democratic consolidation occurs at a different pace in different areas, and at a much more rapid pace in some than in others. The pessimistic approach also acknowledges that criminality is embedded in structural features of the economy, together with the sheer volume of criminality exceeding the capacity of the state to have much of an impact. For Bailey and Cornelius the greatest weakness impairing in Mexico in 2007 was the failure to construct a stable working political coalition and consequently the failure to formulate an effective justice reform initiative (2007: 491–493). 7. For an overview of the relevant literature on this point, see Uildriks and van Reenen 2001. 8. Police corruption can be looked at in terms of forms of corruption (Alpert and Dunham 1988: 100–104), the degree of corruption and its intensity (Goldstein 1977: 193), opportunity structures for corruption, and motives (Goldstein 1977: 94–97). 9. For an overview of the literature, see Morris, 2009: 10. 10. This ties in with a widespread police conviction that complaints against police are usually filed for strategic reasons, as attempts to undermine criminal charges against the citizen concerned. A firm police belief throughout the world appears to be that people complain as acts of vengeance and spite to get back at officers arresting or fining them (Uildriks 1991, 1996, 1997). 11. Responsibility for police reform was entrusted to Luis Eduardo Soares, the Brazilian National Security Secretary. Proclaiming his independence from Lula’s ruling party, Soares called for reform of the penal code and the unification of police forces. He found himself isolated and vilified after he announced that states that did not elaborate detailed multiyear plans to reform their police forces would be cut off from federal support for reforms, and he resigned just ten months after entering office (Hinton 2006: 198).

2 A Lynching of Police: A Case Study of Mexican Policing

On November 23, 2004, in San Juan Ixtayopan, Tláhuac—a little village within Mexico City DF—at the end of a three-hour mob-lynching ordeal, two police officers from the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) were set alight and burned alive. Another officer was rescued just in time, having already been tied up and dowsed in gasoline. The events were broadcast live for many hours on local television. In the weeks following, it became increasingly clear that the incident and its aftermath were illustrative of the deeply rooted problems connected to policing in Mexico today: the distrust of the police within Mexican society, the prevalence of corruption, incompetent police management, police involvement in kidnappings, administrative internal chaos, mistrust among the different police agencies and between local and federal police forces, and last but not least the problematic place of the police within larger political structures. Subsequent arguments about the police failure to rescue two of their own from their horrible fate brought into the open the many failings and underlying realities of policing in today’s Mexico. It thus offered an important insight into the (lack of) impact of many of the reforms that have been initiated in recent years. In the face of the realities of everyday policing, it also offers a view of the nature of the problems any reforms will be up against in upgrading the quality of democratic and human rights-based policing in the future. It is for this reason that we shall start out by describing and analyzing this incident and its aftermath.

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THE INCIDENT There is no definitive official version of what happened that day in Tláhuac. With this qualification in mind, we offer here a tentative reconstruction based primarily on newspaper reports and statements by the one surviving police officer, as well as those of various witnesses. These sources of information suggest the following sequence of events. A Chronology of Events Pupils from a primary school were released from classes at 6 P.M. A car with two plain clothes police officers was reportedly posted outside the school, when suddenly several mothers began to scream that the officers had kidnapped two children. The officers were dragged out of their car and beaten; about the same time the informal local alarm system was set in motion, with church bells ringing (Mongo 2004: 16). Immediately the PFP received the first call for help, referring to people’s fury (El Universal, November 24, 2004). The first report of physical abuse of the policemen was around 6:20 P.M., just after the children had left the school.1 The only surviving officer, Édgar Moreno Nolasco, on the instruction of his superior, Victor Mireles, had been asked to check the name of the school. Approaching the school he was addressed by a group of women who asked him about the reason for his presence, which, he responded, was to buy some juice. Shortly afterwards, according to his own testimony, a number of men addressed him when he walked through a nearby alleyway, telling him they were fathers of the primary school children. Two men subsequently started abusing him verbally and physically, dragging him back to the officers’ car, which was already surrounded by a crowd of people.2 At that point, according to one witness, the other two officers were attacked for around fifteen minutes by men with sticks and clubs, who eventually dragged them out of the car. Later a second group arrived who overturned the car, getting access to its gasoline (Mongo 2004: 16). The crowd consisted of some eighty people, who stripped the three officers of their weapons and started viciously kicking and beating them. By around 6:30 P.M. the crowd had grown to some 200. According to the Chief Commissioner of the Federal District Public Security Secretariat (SSP DF), Marcello Ebrard, it was to grow to 2,000, which he gave as the main reason why the police were unable to intervene in time, being so massively outnumbered. At 7 P.M., the federal SSP issued its first bulletin announcing the officers’ capture and their lives were probably at risk (El Universal November 30, 2004). At 7:40 P.M. a radio report said that the three officers continued to be beaten but were still conscious.

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According to several witnesses, during their ordeal the three officers were explicitly implicated in the kidnapping of two children, at one point being accused of having taken them away by taxi, according to the one surviving police officer.3 They were also repeatedly told that they were going to be burned alive.4 Some two hours into the lynching, one participant gave surviving officer Moreno Nolasco a cell phone enabling him call his chief to ask for help: “Do not despair, we shall come immediately,” he was told.5 After the telephone conversation the crowd became restless, however, and there were increasing demands that the policemen be lynched, that they too should suffer like the mothers of the three kidnapped children. No help arrived, and half an hour after the telephone call, the lynching entered its final deadly phase (El Universal December 4, 2004). Toward the end the officers were dragged in front of a television reporter covering the incident. With battered, bruised faces, and blood streaming out of their nose, mouth, and ears, both officers repeated over and over again that they were federal police, begging people to seek confirmation from their chiefs that they were from the PFP. Suddenly the crowd ended the interview, with youths, some drunk and laughing, punching and kicking two of the officers into unconsciousness. Well over three hours after the start of the melee, at around 9:30 P.M. Mireles and Cristóbal Bonilla were set alight. Minutes afterwards, city police arrived and started putting out the flames. After the torching of his colleagues, the third officer was pulled by members of the crowd to a newspaper kiosk a few meters away, next to the local churchyard, where people initially tried to tie him up. Having already had a burning pole stuck into his mouth, he was told he was going to be burned alive as well, a fate he was trying to avoid by making a big effort not to fall unconscious (El Universal December 4a, 4b, 2004). By now dowsed in gasoline, at 9:45 P.M. Moreno Nolasco was finally rescued by the Direct Reaction Group (GERI) of the Capital’s Judicial Police. Failed Interventions There were several attempts to stop the lynching. The surviving police officer recounted the arrival of a patrol car, with a male and a female officer getting out and trying to calm the crowd, promising to talk to Fátima Mena, the head of the local community council (delegación). Mena had in fact arrived on the scene at 7:00 P.M.6 She entered into some kind of negotiation with the crowd, and in a bid to save the men’s lives she proposed that the three men would be allowed to be beaten up as alleged kidnappers, in exchange for which she sought assurances that they would not be killed. Her intervention made little impression, however. The crowd responded to her with verbal abuse, reproached her for the lack of help from the council,

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and threatened to turn on her. At 8:30 P.M. she left the scene, not knowing what more to do. The Zone Coordinator of the village, Mario Garcés, also tried to intervene. He got a similar reception; people paid no attention. On the contrary, he was told not to get mixed up in this as, they said, he had never done anything to help them before (Mongo 2004: 16). The intervention and role of Miguel Bárcenas Garcés during the lynching is of considerable interest.7 He was one of two officers from SSP who was to be charged by the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) for being involved in the killing. After being informed that the crowd had captured alleged kidnappers, Garcés found around a hundred people beating up the two men. In the crowd he saw someone trying to take the cartridge from a gun. Identifying himself as a preventive police officer, he asked for the gun “in order to prevent any accidents,” and it was handed over to him. A second gun was also given to him by one of the inhabitants, who declared it came from one of the “PFP officers” being beaten. Realizing that the victims were from the PFP, he sought to intervene and stop the violence, seeking in vain to persuade the mob to hand them over to the Prosecutor: He received only insults in response. After his failed intervention, he reported what was happening to his superiors and retreated to a safe distance, waiting for reinforcements. The next day, Garcés was arrested by the Federal Judicial Police (AFI), apparently for the simple reason that he appeared on numerous videos and pictures taken during the lynching. Garcés denied being in any way involved in the incitement to or aggression against the two police.8 Minutes after his unsuccessful attempt to intervene, two officers arrived in a police jeep, intending to take the two reported kidnappers.9 The crowd, however, prevented this, shouting that they would only hand them over to a police chief or senior officer. Soon afterwards a high-ranking official arrived on the scene announcing that he would take them, producing a signed paper (and reportedly requested reinforcements on the radio, as well). The mob refused to hand over the two officers to these senior police. Perhaps the most striking failed intervention was that of Gloria Hernández, chief of the GAMA (a specialized SSP elite group) of the Mixquic sector. This attempt to rescue the three officers apparently occurred toward the end of the lynching, although the accounts are not specific on this point (El Universal December 1a, 1b, 2004). She and her group were reportedly the only police in the vicinity immediately prior to the officers being killed. At one point they were in fact involved in the melee. Trying in vain to wrestle the men out of the crowd, they were physically beaten back by the crowd, just after Barrera had thrown himself at her feet, begging her not to abandon him. This failed intervention is remarkable in that Hernández was not asked later to provide testimony about her group’s role. Nor did this rescue at-

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tempt receive mention in the subsequent debate on the role and responsibility of the different PFP and SSP units in failing to rescue the officers. It is unclear, for example, why the officers of this elite group, subject to a hail of insults and threats and even physically accosted, did not in one way or another make use of their firearms as part of their rescue attempt.

BACKGROUND On November 7, 2004, sixteen days prior to the lynching, the inhabitants of Tláhuac organized a meeting in response to the kidnapping of two children from a school in the neighborhood (El Universal December 5, 2004). The kidnapping was supposedly carried out by three men in a white car (the three lynched officers, like most police, also used a white car) and it was agreed in the meeting, that an effort should be made to trace this car and its passengers. Anyone seeing the car should write down the license plates number and model, and alert the neighborhood so that people could seize its occupants. The central issue discussed at the meeting was what then to do with the men. Opinion fluctuated, but in the end large majorities of both the younger and older generation were in agreement. If the suspects were simply handed over to the police, they would just be freed a little later. Nothing could be expected from the authorities: The local council never paid any attention to the inhabitants’ needs and there were never any patrol cars to safeguard the neighborhood. In short, for those present only one solution remained: If caught, lynch the three men in the white car. They should serve as an example to all thieves and kidnappers that this was not the place to conduct their business. If everybody in the neighborhood came out and took part, it was argued, the lynching could be carried out without repercussions for anybody involved (El Universal December 5, 2004). The Federal Preventive Police (PFP) Tláhuac Mission As is invariably the case in Mexico, finding out exactly what has happened, and why, is virtually impossible. According to the PFP, the lynched officers were investigating twenty-seven criminal complaints of drug trafficking, kidnappings, and car thefts in various neighborhoods in the area (El Universal November 30c, 2004).10 PFP reported that they had been taking pictures of the school, where not long before the three children had been abducted. According to both the official PFP account and the statement given to PGR by the one surviving officer, they had gone to the area for the first time on the instruction of the PFP office in connection with a drugs investigation (El Universal December 4a, 2004).

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The official version of the mission of the three officers, however, seems dubious for a number of reasons. Exactly where the drug-selling business in Tláhuac occurs and who is involved was reportedly common knowledge in Mexico City. The matter would therefore hardly require an extensive investigation. Also at odds with the official account, a few weeks later the senior officer in charge of the three officers was dismissed for having allowed them to be sent to Tláhuac without their superiors giving them an explanation of the purpose of their mission (El Universal December 7a, 2004). Even more significantly, on December 1, the Prosecutor of the Federal District justice department, Bernardo Bátiz Vázquez, provided a public statement stressing that it was unlikely that the three officers were in fact carrying out such an investigation. He pointed out that his department had no official information about any drugs investigation, and if there had been any it would have been illegal, as it would fall under the authority of PGR, and he insisted there had been no previous criminal charges in this matter. Since the three lynched officers were members of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP)’s anti-terrorist branch, their likely mission was in fact of a completely different nature: an intelligence-gathering operation against the People’s Revolutionary Army (EPR, its members referred to as “Eperristas”), one of Mexico’s most organized and structured guerilla movements. More specifically, it seems that the three officers were involved in an operation to collect information about the movement’s highest leader, whose house was photographed during their mission (See also El Universal December 3a, 2004). The journalist Jorge Torres sets this background to the lynching, providing also an extensive picture of the modus operandi of this guerilla movement in the area (Torres 2004).11 Along the same lines, Raymundo Riva Palacio in El Universal concluded that it was a strategic decision on the part of PFP to follow the movements of the EPR chief by positioning themselves deliberately in front of the school. From there they were to take pictures of the residence of the EPR chief, inadvertently contributing greatly to people’s susceptibility to any rumors about there being kidnappers of school children (Torres 2004).12 During a seminar organized just before the lynching, EPR reported that they had discovered a PFP undercover operation against the movement. In response, it announced that a “counter-intelligence” action would be undertaken. It is not quite clear to what extent this ties in with the warning given by the SSP DF Deputy Chief Gabriel Regino thirteen days before the lynching. Regino declared that he had warned the PFP leadership that the presence of members of the PFP had been “uncovered” by the population and that their presence had resulted in unrest among the people in the Peña Alta and Torres neighborhoods, but that this warning had gone by unheeded by PFP leaders (El Universal December 3b, 2004).

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Inciting the Lynching From the start reports suggested that the lynching did not happen spontaneously but was deliberately incited. Against the background of the recent kidnapping of school children and the community decisions made in response, it is clear that any suggestion that the three officers were kidnappers would find receptive ears from whatever direction it came. Although the initial investigation on the part of PGR pointed specifically to a PFP anti-drug operation, the PGR Prosecutor in an interview left open the possibility of a counter-guerilla action as well, commenting that “other lines of investigation” were being pursued. One of those involved in the incitement to the lynching—for which she was later charged—was a woman known as the “Fat” or “Blond One” (La Güera). According to Hernández, chief of the Gama group of the Mixquic sector in charge of one of the rescue attempts, La Güerra had been a key instigator going around accusing the policemen of being kidnappers, even after they had identified themselves as PFP officers. She was also the person who allegedly had set off the informal alarm system of church bells, and her permission had been required for anybody entering the area from outside (the entry to the neighborhood had been reportedly sealed off by some of the crowd) (El Universal December 1b, 2004). In addition, some youngsters seen on television in the lynching scene were also known to be involved in the local narco-business (El Universal December 3b, 2004). These facts suggest a drug-related link at the root of the incitement against the three officers. It is possible that this drug link is directly connected to any incitement by EPR. On December 9 the PGR announced that on the basis of their investigation so far, the attacks had been premeditated and were the result of deliberate instigation (El Universal December 9, 2004). The Deputy Prosecutor explained that those presumed responsible had already detected the presence of the three officers during the morning of the lynching. Most likely, he concluded, they called upon the inhabitants to act against the “suspect element” in the village. In short, there are strong indications that the attacks on the policemen were planned. The fact that they started simultaneously in two separate locations is too coincidental for them to have originated spontaneously, especially the initially separate attack on the one surviving officer. Compelling evidence in support of an EPR link to the incitement was provided to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal by one PFP officer who testified that in the raids after the lynching an EPR video was found with footage of the three officers before their seizure by the crowd (El Universal December 3c, 2004). Combined with other reports about EPR members’ involvement in the incident itself (Torres 2004: 11; El Universal December 1c and December 10a, 2004), and in view of the apparent real mission of the three PFP officers

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in the area, we consider the most likely source of the incitement to lie with EPR. Most probably, EPR members deliberately and falsely spread the rumor of the three officers’ alleged involvement in the kidnapping of children, setting off an internal community alarm system, with church bells sounding the alarm to mobilize the neighborhood’s population.13

FAILURE OF OTHER POLICE TO INTERVENE The outrage in the media and on the political front following the lynching focused on the failure of the police to intervene. This failure is revealing in several respects. Several units of the Mexico City SSP DF are stationed in Tláhuac. The SSP Special Task Force is in fact located no more than ten minutes from where the lynching took place. This anti-terrorist unit is composed of 400 officers. According to Ebrard, it was not asked to intervene, because that day only a few officers were present (Cordova and Cisneros 2005). But there were in fact police at or near the scene of the lynching who could have intervened. According to the statements made by Garcés—the officer later (wrongly) arrested on suspicion of involvement in the lynching—three patrol cars of the local Preventive Police arrived at a very early stage; other reports in fact speak of six cars arriving on the scene between 6:35 and 6:40 P.M. (El Universal December 7b, 2004), including the sector chief. Instead of acting, this official simply waited, virtually at the spot where officers were being kicked and beaten. When some lawyers joined the same group of police, they were told that the reason for not rescuing them was that they had not received any orders from SSP DF Deputy Chief Regino (El Universal December 14a, 2004). The sector chief simply waited some forty-five minutes later, soon after the officers’ deaths, until someone from the Prosecutors’ Office arrived, to whom he handed over the two confiscated weapons (Mongo 2004: 16). Officers from the city’s Judicial Police were also present at a very early stage, although it is unclear how many. At 6:33 P.M. they received a call for help on the emergency line 061 and went to the scene, where their chief, Jurado Laurrabaquio, noted in his report that “three subjects had been detained.” Rather than organizing an intervention in response, his subsequent narrative is made as a mere observer of the events. “They were beaten on different parts of their body. We succeeded in finding out their names and that the crowd accused them of being kidnappers of minors.” The report also describes the two bodies being dowsed with gasoline, and the rescue of the one surviving officer. At no point was any explanation offered as to why the Judicial Police group did not seek to intervene (El Universal December 7b, 2004).

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Equally remarkable is the failure of the chiefs of the Judicial and the Preventive Police in Tláhuac to coordinate and order a rescue attempt.14 In their reports both chiefs failed to mention or suggest any intention to coordinate a rescue attempt. Neither were the officers engaged in any deliberations with their superiors on how to proceed. In response to the two direct calls for help by Moreno Nolasco, his chief had reassured him that help would be forthcoming immediately. Yet in spite of the presence of some 300 officers of PFP in the vicinity, neither he nor the other commanding officer present organized any rescue operation or even discussed this possibility. In their report to PGR during the investigation on possible neglect of duty on their part, both chiefs spoke of receiving no instruction to act from their superiors, nor of having any communication at all with them (El Universal December 7b, 2004). In fact, police officers watching the lynching on television at the police station attempted to organize a rescue operation—well over a hundred officers were present—but were, however, forbidden by the two senior officers present to leave the police station. It was not until 9:00 P.M. that the local SSP called for reinforcements, after it finally concluded the situation was out of control (El Universal November 30e, 2004). At the top of the agency, the SPP response was characterized by considerable deliberation in some quarters but the total absence of decisive action by any and all. During the events, lasting well over three hours, leading up to the setting alight of the two officers, the authorities were well aware of the ominous development, but in spite of this no organized action to rescue them was forthcoming. Indeed, Federal Preventive Police (PFP) also failed to come into action to save the men’s life, even at a late stage. As Commissioner of PFP, sacked by President Fox on December 7, Figueroa Cuevas—who later admitted to PGR that he had informed the media about the events at an early stage—reportedly received orders at 8:00 P.M. from the Chief of SSP to embark on a rescue operation and prepare PFP personnel for an incursion into Tláhuac (El Universal November 28a, 2004). Cuevas subsequently did so. Before giving the marching orders, however, he made a call to the authorities of SSP DF to enquire about ongoing police actions and to coordinate the police response.15 During this conversation he was informed that local police were involved in an operation in the vicinity of the area, together with the capital’s Judicial Police. In a second call, however, Cuevas was told that matters had gotten out of control. In spite of the second call, PFP saw these conversations as a vindication of its position and confirmation that it was not to blame for its inaction, sending a transcript of the calls to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (El Universal November 28a, 2004). In an apparent reference to the first call to SSP DF, in defense of his decision not to take any action Cuevas noted that he

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had been informed that SSP DF had matters under control, which, he said, was why PFP did not press for a rescue operation (El Universal December 3b, 2004). A spokesman for SSP DF dismissed this claim as ridiculous, contending that the lynching did not fall under its jurisdiction. As chief of SSP DF, Ebrard gave two main justifications for the absence of a response on its part. One was the size of the crowd (2,000) that was out of control and simply impossible to restrain. This argument may have some validity in the later stages of the lynching but does not explain the failure to organize any earlier rescue. It also fails to explain why no helicopters were used to fly in a special rescue team or why tear gas available to the police was not used (El Universal December 7b, 2004). In fact, in an interview with Adela Micha, Channel 4, September 9, 2005, Ebrard came up with a different and even contradictory version of events. He contended that the first information from the SSP DF led him to believe that they had everything under control. On the arrival of a group of youths, however, he maintained during the interview, matters had gotten out of control. Ebrard also argued that it had been impossible to ask for help in Tláhuac on account of the supposed impossibility of getting radio contact; a curious argument in the light of the various calls for help that had in fact come from Tláhuac. Moreover, in a statement by the director of the Metropolitan Group to PGR, Marco Antonio del Prado declared that Ebrard and Figuera Cuevas could in fact have communicated directly with each other because they had the same radio frequency. Any suggestion of “failed communications” explaining or justifying police inaction in fact seems to lack credibility. A member of the PFP Anti-Terrorism Branch declared that all the police chiefs had been aware of the on-going incident (Gutiérrez 2004: 17). Having interviewed both higher- and lower-ranking senior officers, PGR concluded in general terms that lower-ranking police had provided adequate information to police chiefs: Within both SSP DF and PFP those in charge had become aware of the seriousness of the situation between 7 and 7:30 P.M. and SSP DF chiefs as early as 7 o’clock—but no one acted until 9 P.M. (El Universal December 3d, 4c, 4d).

THE AFTERMATH The following day, on the authority of PGR, raids were carried out by more than 1,000 federal and city police in search of those involved in the lynching. With PFP providing assistance to the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), officers carried out raids in groups of fifty, going from street to street and bursting into houses. Aided by film footage of the lynching, this resulted on the first day in the arrest of thirty-five people—twenty-two

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being immediately charged, one of whom was a sixteen-year-old boy accused of dowsing the two officers with gasoline—followed a few days later by twenty more arrests.16 Reports of extensive police violence accompanied the first day’s police operation: kicking in of doors, destruction of people’s property, and violence against the inhabitants themselves (Azaola 2005).17 The most far-reaching ramifications, however, centered on the question as to who was to blame for the inadequate police response. Apportioning Blame Among Police Agencies The controversy over who was responsible for the failure to rescue the officers raged at the political level (President Fox versus Mayor López Obrador), as well as in and among the different police forces. One issue was who within the SSP leadership knew what and when. As the most senior officer involved, Chief Ebrard was participating in a radio broadcast between 6:30 and 8:20 P.M. Most of those present insisted that at no time during that event was he notified about the occurrences in Tláhuac. Instead, all information about the lynching passed through Deputy Chief Regino, who was reportedly adequately informed about the events, but who did not inform Ebrard (El Universal December 5, 2004). Having been de facto in charge at SSP headquarters, Regino came under considerable attack from PFP and the Chief of the Seguridad Pública Federal (SSP), Ramón Martín Huerta. PFP accused Regino of being the official responsible for the confusion from the telephone conversations with PFP Commissioner Cuevas at the time of the lynching (Gutiérrez 2004: 17).18 Cuevas had justified his inaction by his having been informed by Regino that matters were under control. Regino did not deny this, but sought to exonerate himself by countercharging that the SSP Secretary had warned the PFP thirteen days prior to the lynching that their presence had generated “disquiet” after the inhabitants had uncovered the ongoing PFP intelligence operation: To save face, Regino claimed, PFP chiefs had failed to intervene in the operation (El Universal December 3b, 2004; Gutiérrez 2004). This line of argument hardly justifies or explains the failure on the part of the SSP DF to intervene, but Cuevas in fact denied that PFP had been informed on this point or that there had been any proposition on his part for a joint PFP/SSP operation, as Regino claimed (El Universal December 4e, 2004). Both the local and the federal police chiefs sought to justify and to exonerate themselves and their forces from responsibility for lack of action. In a statement to the DF legislative chambers, Ebrard presented a version of events suggesting that, from 7:42 P.M. onwards, different groups of local police had been gathering. The distance to Tláhuac, he claimed, had prevented a speedier arrival. SSP DF had sought to address this problem by Regino’s

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second call suggesting a joint SSP DF/PFP operation to enter the area (El Universal December 7c, 2004). For his part, the chief of the federal SSP, Ramón Martin Huerta, denied all responsibility for failure to prevent the lynching, pointing to the presence of local police during its early stages. With some justification he argued that their presence had afforded the best opportunity to save the officers; they should have intervened with force to stop the lynching. He expressed similar criticism of the head of the local council, Fátima Mena, who should have taken responsibility, being in a position to do so with the aid of the police presence (El Universal 14b, 2004). Apportioning Blame: Federal versus Local Authorities The investigations were carried out by the federal authorities as an apparent rebuff to Mayor López Obrador, signalling that this lynching was not to go unpunished as others had in the past. PGR was to investigate who were directly involved in the lynching, but also to establish whether there was any neglect of duty on the part of the authorities. Within three days of the lynching, Federal SSP Chief Huerta relieved four higher officers working in the intelligence unit of PFP of their duties and put them at the disposal of PGR investigation. On December 7 they were among eight senior PFP officers to be fired by Huerta, for reasons varying from failure to adequately supervise the investigation carried out by the three lynched officers and falsification of information (three of the officers), to agreeing to send the three officers to the location in question without explaining to them the purpose of their mission, and to failure to offer the officers under attack the required help and reinforcements, as well as failure to provide information to their superiors about the problems with the people of Tláhuac on November 11 (El Universal December 7a, 2004). More controversially, on December 7, President Fox fired the head of SSP DF, Ebrard, and PFP Commissioner Cuevas, the latter only fifty-one days after he had been appointed.19 The firing of Ebrard was especially surrounded by controversy in that it occurred before the outcome of the PGR investigation concerning his possible neglect of duty. His firing was also contentious given that the Chief of the Federal SSP was not also dismissed. Ebrard’s dismissal fits in a tradition by which police chiefs are sacked in rapid succession, his being the seventh dismissal of a Mexico City Chief since 1994. Normally it is the Capital’s mayor, to whom the Chief is directly accountable, who can order his removal. In this instance, however, the President himself ordered it. On a local level, opposition parties (PAN, PRI, and PVEM) in the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District (ALDF) took initiatives to oust Fátima Mena, the head of the local neighborhood council of Tláhuac who had left the scene of the lynching after unsuccessfully trying

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to negotiate the release of the three officers, as responsible for the neighborhoods “ungovernability” (El Universal December 3f, 2004). Tensions between federal and local authorities also surfaced in the PGR investigation into neglect of duty on the part of the authorities. On December 9, 2004, the PGR Chief announced the imminent arrest of at least twelve local and federal functionaries. Among those implicated were the chief of the district Judicial Police, Damián Canales Mena, and Gabriel Regino García, who was in charge of the district SSP. SSP Deputy Chief Regino García was not charged. In the end all were released and no further charges were brought against them, except for Regino García, who in September 2005 was still under investigation in connection with eighty criminal charges against him, not all of which were related to the lynching. Ebrard directly accused PGR of partiality, following five hours of testimony to PGR on December 13 during which he gave precise details of SSP reinforcements sent to Tláhuac. He complained of a tendency on the part of the federal government to blame the capital’s authorities for what happened. In his view, the investigation was political, and he pointed out that the Chief Prosecutor, Rafael Macedo, had already told him the previous week that he would be held responsible. This comment, he argued, demonstrated that there had been orders to that effect (El Universal December 14c, 2004). If indeed the prosecutor had already informed Ebrard a week earlier that he was going to be held responsible, this would suggest some bias on the part of PGR, to say the least. Apportioning Blame: Politics The aftermath of the lynching brought to the surface tensions between the Federal government and Mexico City’s local authorities, each functioning under a different political party. The controversy over who could and who should be fired also should be seen against the background of the bitter political rivalry between President Fox (PAN) and López Obrador (PRD), to whom Marcelo Ebrard was directly responsible. The fact that Huerta was not removed as chief of the federal SSP was widely attributed to his being a member of President Fox’s party, PAN (El Universal December 10b, 2004). The fact that the SSP DF Deputy Chief Regino also was not dismissed did not receive any public comment, and illustrates the arbitrary and politicized manner in which people have been dismissed, or not, in times of crisis or scandal. Regino continued as Deputy Chief while under investigation by PGR concerning the eighty criminal charges against him. In many ways Regino’s removal would have been a logical and reasonable outcome of his culpability in the matter, rather than the dismissal of Ebrard who was unaware and uninformed of events until a very late stage.

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But at that time, the relations between President Vincente Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN), and Mayor López Obrador, head of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and already a likely presidential candidate in the 2006 elections, were characterized by bitter rivalry. This later culminated in a desafuera against López Obrador, withdrawing the legal protection he enjoyed as sitting mayor and opening the possibility of prosecution for allegedly disobeying a judge’s decision to halt the construction of a road to a hospital over private property.20 In the aftermath of the lynching Fox and López Obrador blamed each other for what happened. In an apparent reference to apologetic remarks made by López Obrador about lynchings in Mexico, Fox accused the Mexico City administration of tolerating the people meting out justice at their own hands, and stated that this was unacceptable.21 President Fox made a number of statements condemning the lack of action against the lynching by the police. He emphasized the right of the people to enjoy security, and the need to carry out a full investigation to determine who was responsible for the police inaction. He insisted that the obligation had lain with the local authorities to maintain a presence through the Preventive Police, formally responsible for crime prevention. The federal government, he contended, only had a “subsidiary obligation,” which in the case of Tláhuac would apply to PGR and PFP (El Universal November 28c, 2004). López Obrador defended Ebrard, arguing that the police “had done everything they could under the circumstances.” He also stated he would not accept President Fox’s dismissal of Ebrard, although he did just that and appointed a new chief of police, Joel Ortega, a few days after Ebrard was sacked (El Universal November 27, 2004).

THE CONTEXT Explaining the Police Failure to Act There was a failure to act on two levels: senior police and their lowerranking subordinates. In the first place, there were local judicial police and a local Preventive Police group on the scene, involving six police cars according to some reports. Rather than acting, they took on the role of observers who took note of what was going on, or simply awaiting orders.22 No justification or explanation was offered. There appears little reason why the police on the scene should not have tried some sort of intervention, for instance by using their firearms, if only to shoot into the air. For any police not to intervene in a killing is astounding. It is even more remarkable not to do so when aware that the victims are police colleagues. This transgresses a worldwide police norm that if officers are under direct threat, police will come to their rescue no matter what. One theory to ex-

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plain their nonintervention is that the officers present were from a rival local police force. Such a possibility has some plausibility against the background of allegations about the Capital SSP’s extensive protection of drug trafficking in the area, which PFP claimed its three officers were investigating.23 The most likely explanation, however, is more mundane and indicative of Mexico City’s quality of policing, or lack thereof. On an individual level it reflects the hierarchical mentality of street officers; they are unaccustomed to taking any initiative on their own in responding to the exigencies of a situation. They fear trouble if they do so and therefore await instructions as they are trained to do even under the most extreme and pressing of circumstances. On a social level, their lack of personal interest in saving their colleagues indicates the absence of any sense of an independent identity as police officers. They perceive themselves primarily as an “instrument of power” for others. Similarly, during our interviews with police, officers would adamantly—and quite contrary to the legal rules concerning the use of force—argue that they are only allowed to use their firearms when personally attacked. Such a view indicates their failure to internalize the fundamental police responsibility to safeguard the security of the citizenry, when necessary by the use of force. The second level of inaction concerns that of the responsible police chiefs. In stark contrast to the lack of attention paid to the failure to act of the police on location, it was inaction on this level that drew so much political and media outrage. The background of senior police failure to act on their own initiative very much lies in the traditional Mexican formal and hierarchical culture. People will invariably look to their boss to decide what to do. It is also related to Mexico’s colonial heritage and the mentality connected to seventy-one years of domination by PRI, the latter in itself only possible as a manifestation of such a colonial past. As part of this heritage, the decision-maker is always more important than any prescribed response to specific circumstances. The lack of decisive action demonstrated by senior police relates to their seeking approval from both political quarters and their own chiefs for fear of repercussions later on. One’s bosses (whether in the police or the political domain), after all, have the power and authority to shape one’s career. As for the politicians the issue involved was primarily how it might affect their own power position. Concern with the political ramifications of the lynching most unashamedly underlay Mayor López Obrador’s only public comment regarding the lynching: “Let’s not make this political.” Both police inaction and the bickering between local and federal police forces regarding the responsibility for not stopping the lynching can at least in part be related to the political antagonism between local authorities (PRD) and the federal government (PAN).24 This antagonism on occasion even

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leads to physical fights between local and federal police. It is conceivable that the commissioner of PFP, Cuevas, may well have been influenced by concerns about the possible repercussion should he simply have “invaded” SSP DF territory without extensive deliberations with the Capital SSP. And the latter’s hesitations may have been related to doubts as to whether such operations would in fact fall under the authority of the Preventive Police, as in fact contended by their spokesman. For those with an appetite for conspiracy theories, the Tláhuac Massacre offers ample occasion. For example, it has been proposed that nonintervention on the part of some might have been chosen as a deliberate policy to discredit the mayor of Mexico City, López Obrador, who had political aspirations for the next presidential election. The failure to provide adequate and timely assistance could then not only be seen against the background of an intense rivalry between the Mexico City SSP and the federal PFP, but has also been explained by local police involvement in the local drug trade, possibly under investigation by PFP (El Universal November 28a, 2004). One accusation leveled against SSP DF was that its members impeded PFP officers’ access to the area for a rescue operation. This accusation was refuted by Ebrard, who attributed the problems of PFP entry into the area to transportation problems (Gutiérrez 2004: 17). Finally, one of our own police informants explained the inaction on the part of SSP DF by alleging that Ebrard forbade his police to intervene for fear of more police deaths. The validity of any of these theories is almost impossible to ascertain. Lynchings in Mexico Never before in Mexico’s history have police officers suffered as gruesome a death as on November 23, 2004, in Tláhuac. The killing of police officers in itself, however, is far from uncommon. In fact, just two days after the Tláhuac lynching, three officers of the State Judicial Police (PJE) in Juliantla, a village near Taxco, a famous tourist city some 125 miles outside Mexico City, almost suffered a similar fate.25 The same day also saw the summary execution, apparently drugs-related, of three federal judicial police (AFI) (El Universal November 26b, 2004).26 Mob lynchings in Mexico are not uncommon, as illustrated by the study of Carlos Vilas (2001) of 103 lynchings between 1987 and 1998: 73 percent occurred in rural areas. The host of incidents discussed in Mexican newspapers since Tláhuac suggest they are on the increase.27 Examples are plentiful, not necessarily always ending in the death of the victims. For instance, on August 2, 2000, in Tecamachalco Puebla the mayor was dowsed with gasoline, and threatened with being burned alive. On August 7, 2001, for several hours inhabitants of Magdalena Petlacalco threatened to lynch a woman accused of stealing church art before the police rescued her. Such

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a rescue was not, however, forthcoming during a mob assault on December 6, 2002, in which inhabitants of the village of San Pablo Oztotepec attacked and eventually beat to death three people accused of assaulting a taxi driver. The lynching of a high school student by fellow students two weeks after the events in Tláhuac is particularly worth mentioning; some of the student perpetrators involved were held to be part of the guerrilla movement EPR that had been implicated in the Tláhuac police killings. The individual was taken from a group of students and set on fire by another group on the premises of the high school of the Matoma; campus of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Somehow he survived, but he suffered burns to 85 percent of his body. The incident was successfully kept quiet, and officials persuaded the father not to press charges. The precise background and circumstances of this lynching is unknown, but among those present were students affiliated with the EPR guerilla movement. A substantial number of those present were arrested. Most were released within weeks; only two students with EPR connections were kept in continued detention. The lynching in Tláhuac and at UNAM are distinct from the normal pattern for lynchings—characteristically arising spontaneously in response to a particular incident—in that they were planned: The burning of the student at UNAM involved deliberately obtaining gasoline.

THE TLÁHUAC LYNCHING: A SURVEY OF POLICE ON CAUSES AND RESPONSIBILITIES How did the police interpret the Tláhuac Lynching? In January 2005, Nelia Tello Peón carried out a survey among 145 SSP DF preventive police to discover how they perceived the occurrences in Tláhuac (Tello Peón 2005). The survey was carried out among police officers of various ranks, of which 55 percent were rank and file. They were not necessarily a representative cross-section of the police. Nevertheless, the results shed an interesting insider’s perspective on events. Twenty-one percent of the surveyed police blamed the people carrying out the lynching itself, a rather low figure, which highlights the alternative negative view held by 74 percent not only about to the role of the police themselves, but also the wider political authorities in question.28 Respondents were most critical of the role of the lynched officers’ police agency. Fifty-two percent thought the responsibility for events in Tláhuac lay primarily with senior police. Surprisingly, some held other state institutions responsible, 5 percent the federal government and 13 percent the Mexico City’s administration. The rancor felt towards senior police as those primarily responsible for the death of the two officers by their failure to

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react adequately, is also reflected in the extent to which officers agreed with the firing of the Chief of the SSP of Ebrard. Forty-seven percent considered this to have been an “adequate decision” on the part of President Fox, 42 percent disagreeing with the move. As to the causes of the lynching, police officers attributed them to either specific organizational or general societal characteristics. Three organizational aspects were mentioned: 36 percent of the police blamed a lack of coordination among the authorities for their failure to act in time, 9 percent pointed to inadequate planning of the investigation in which the lynched officers themselves were involved, and 2 percent cited a lack of any help at all from senior police. The rest of the officers identified more societal factors. For 22 percent the main reason for the events lay in ordinary people’s desire to mete out justice against presumed kidnappers. Six percent alluded to the (alleged) involvement of the “narco mafia” as instigators of the event, whereas troubled police-public relations were seen as the cause by others: Six percent mentioned a lack of confidence in the police, while 7 percent saw matters precipitated by “confusion between society and the police.” Asked whether better preparation for their investigation on the part of the lynched officers would have helped to save them, only 17 percent thought it would have, as opposed to 83 percent who did not.

TLÁHUAC: SOME EMERGING THEMES The role of the different elements at Tláhuac is in many ways illustrative of Mexico’s current social ills: two mutually opposing government authorities; various police bodies without capacity for autonomous action; a population antagonistic to police and authorities generally, and not accepting their decisions; the presence of the media relaying the lynching as a reality show. Before discussing the themes emerging from the events, let us first briefly summarize some of the main facts pertaining to the lynching itself. An excited group of people decides to take justice into their own hands by deliberately setting out to lynch three policemen, dowsing them with gasoline and eventually burning two of them alive. Even the presence of TV cameras does nothing to prevent the violence. Apart from one failed attempt on the part of an elite police group, other police present do not intervene, but simply await orders. But authorities of various police agencies do not order any rescue intervention, although, through TV and radio reports, they know the serious nature of what is happening. In the aftermath of the lynching, the main dispute between politicians centers on the responsibilities of the opposing political parties in charge of the city and federal governments, rather than on the lynching itself or police responsibility.

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Mob lynchings during the past decade appear to be on the increase in a number of Latin America countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Peru, as well as Mexico (Godoy 2006; Goldstein 2005). Both Godoy and Goldstein broadly attribute the increase of lynchings to neoliberal policies. Indeed, the increase in lynchings in Guatemala and Bolivia may be an effect of various neoliberal policies introduced during the 1990s. In Mexico29 the increased lynchings could be attributed to the neoliberal inspired socio-economic and institutional restructuring of Mexican society (Vilas 2005). But Venezuela also stands out as a country with rising levels of lynchings, although its development has been modeled after a Cubaninspired socialist state rather than neoliberal policies. Carlos Vilas draws on the concepts of “public security” and “multiculturalism” as a theoretical perspective to explain why lynchings take place, which could explain its rise in countries with very different political and economic policies. “Public security” describes lynchings as a response on the part of the population to supposed perpetrators of crime against the background of corrupt and inefficient state institutions. The “multicultural” explanation emphasizes the impact of multicultural pluralism that is characteristic of a multiethnic and multicultural society. Lynchings are then seen as a way to consolidate the unity and identity of a differentiated society or community in the face of the lack of legitimacy of state institutions (Vilas 2005: 21). The failure of the state is central to both the “public security” and “multiculturalism” perspectives. The state failed to create public safety, either by inadequate or absent response to the vast majority of crimes, which go unpunished, or by creating social conditions for insecurity through its passivity and the absence of a police presence in the public domain. Events in Tláhuac clearly fit this picture. They explicitly revealed the loss of faith in the authorities’ ability to provide security. As such, lynchings in Mexico relate to and reflect the degree of mistrust of state institutions in general, which are considered incapable of providing any real security (notably the prevention of kidnappings) or any sense of justice. In addition, the police are widely held to constitute part of the problem, because of police corruption and extortion, as well as the involvement of the police themselves in kidnappings. At the same time, lynchings may not only be indicative of state institutions’ lack of legitimacy, but also the result even more of a lack of a tradition of trust among citizens themselves, without which a functioning civil society is not possible (Godoy 2006: 35). The Tláhuac lynching suggests that Godoy’s conclusion that lynchings in Guatemala serve as the public’s resort in the context of deep institutional and interpersonal distrust also has considerable validity in the Mexican context (Godoy 2006: 118–119).

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In regions that suffer from the combined effects of physical insecurity (particularly kidnappings) and a lack of state protection, otherwise neutral behavior such as men standing close to a school, can then quickly become subject to negative interpretations, with people easily responding to rumor.30 Rumors about “men acting suspiciously” and accusations of their involvement in kidnappings are thus likely to fall on receptive ears, and in Tláhuac served as the catalyst for the mobilization of a large crowd which become directly or indirectly involved in the lynching. Undoubtedly, the Tláhuac lynching reflects a sense of community solidarity motivated by the inefficiency of the authorities and police with respect to corruption and criminality as well as the degree of police brutalization of parts of the population. In San Juan Ixtayopan, those involved in the Tláhuac lynching expressed an attitude that “we know you are police, but we do not care and are going to burn you up anyway.” Some of the young, well-dressed segment of the mob, believed to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol, even carried it out in a party atmosphere. In any case, the lynching can be seen as a manifestation of increasing ungovernability and societal disintegration. Politicized Policing: Organizational Rivalries and Internal Tensions During the events themselves and in their aftermath the lynchings brought to the surface all kinds of existing institutional conflicts and rivalries. The political and personal rivalry of the Mexico City government and its mayor, López Obrador and the federal government under President Fox, was manifest, illustrated visibly by López Obrard’s putting Ebrard in charge of the city’s important Social Development Secretariat shortly after being fired by Fox. One commentator in fact concluded that, “What is certain is that the ‘war’ between the federal and the capital’s local government has resulted in conflict among all levels of government, and that this is the origin of the lack of authority that culminated in the lynching of the two federal police” (El Universal December 5, 2004). In its wake, and as part of the rivalry between their respective federal and local governments, the suspicions and conflicts between federal and local police forces emerged in the full light of media publicity. Each force blamed the inefficiency of the other as the cause of the tragedy. Each opted for what they called a “democratic solution”: not using force, expecting that the other police organization would take responsibility for any forceful rescue. Both agencies were more concerned for the political implications of their actions than in solving an immediate emergency and saving people’s lives. Hence their main concern was to avoid political problems rather than maintain law and order or to save their colleagues’ lives.

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All levels of police organization were exposed as instruments of political decision-makers instead of independent institutions with decision-making powers of their own. Most officers at the lynching manifested a remarkable absence of compassion or solidarity toward their colleagues. On a group level there was a striking lack of urgency to save the lives of their colleagues that tends to be the norm for police worldwide when officers are seriously threatened. Instead, the logic of submission to one’s superiors emerged as the police officers’ guiding principle on how to act under crisis. The aftermath of the lynching also disclosed the internal tensions and strains between senior police and the rank and file. For instance, on November 28, an unheard-of mutiny of PFP officers at their police station demanded the resignation of their police chiefs for failing to take any action and for in fact blocking initiatives undertaken by the rank and file to go to the rescue of the three officers. More than 300 officers protested outside the offices of the Federal Preventive Police, claiming that their commanders had not summoned a corps of riot police that was nearby. Revealingly, the demonstration also illustrated deep resentment over the higher-ups’ treatment of PFP officers, many complaining of unjust punishment. Mexico’s Crisis of Policing The brutality of the lynching of the three police officers, the failure on the part of the police to respond adequately, and the subsequent political and organizational upheaval are illustrative of the nature of the crisis of policing in Mexico today. The Tláhuac lynching can also be seen as manifestation of an increased hardening of distrust in Mexican society, representing the wider crisis of confidence in Mexico’s state institutions and political system. In places such as Tláhuac, inhabitants share a common experience of state indifference to their expressed needs. People, not unreasonably, have come to define their relations with the state and police as not expecting anything positive from either. They feel left out in the cold, having to rely on their own resources to survive, including providing for their own security. In many of the poorer areas, the public regard the police as a potential enemy, as predators rather than protectors. At the request of the Federal District Human Rights Commission, Elena Azaola in February 2005 interviewed some fifty inhabitants from Tláhuac about their views regarding the lynching. As already noted, the mass mobilization and uproar expressed was based on the firm belief that the officers were in fact kidnappers. Particularly disturbing in the interviews was—even more than two months after the lynching—the absence of remorse or even regret at what had happened. It was clear that as such the lynching of the police was not condemned. Older women said that under similar circumstances, if police

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were deemed kidnappers, it could happen again and they themselves might participate. One of the interviewees reported having gone to the local council for advice as to how to deal with grievances concerning the police in the area: In response he had been told that lynching would be one possibility, a comment perhaps intended ironically, but interpreted by the locals as a serious view held by local authorities. The degree to which lynching throughout Mexico in general is considered an appropriate response under certain circumstances is reflected in government surveys on the issue. In 1998, for example, no less than 67 percent of respondents approved of the statement, “Where authorities cannot protect citizens, they have the right to take the law into their own hands and make justice for themselves” (López-Ayllón and Fix-Fierro 2003: 285, 318). Lynching, these days, is more than a remote possibility in Mexico, and this includes the lynching of police (Rodríguez and Mora Heredia 2005). In fact, during the two months following the events at Tláhuac, five incidents were reported that had the makings of lynchings, this time of “common criminals.” There are many Tláhuacs in Mexico, that is to say, localities where locals suffer the same sense of being left to their own devices and may well hold comparable views on lynching. Particularly in such places the public is not likely to accept the authority of the police or feel that the police have a legitimate presence or role to fill. Under current circumstances, this makes these neighborhoods basically unpoliceable in any conventional sense of the term “policing.” Mexican society is deeply fragmented and suffers from serious social disintegration, a society where neither individuals nor institutions respond in terms of the logic of the rule of law. This encourages communities to make their own decisions and for social groups to look for security outside the boundaries of either the rule of law or an explicit or implicit social contract with outsiders.

IMPACT AND IMPLICATION FOR POLICE REFORM In Mexico, for most police and the public at large, events such as those in Tláhuac quickly become part of the past. People think, “Luckily it has not happened to me,” and the police may be expected to return quickly to the demands and woes of everyday life, as indeed demonstrated by the indifference shown by some police interviews to Tello Peón when asked their views about what happened. Nevertheless, Tláhuac is illustrative of the nature of Mexico’s present policing troubles. But it is more than that. It may well have served as a catalyst for even further police-public violence. As a number of police-public confrontations throughout Mexico City since then have suggested, when a

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crisis looms, officers are now more likely to make use of their firearms if they suspect there is any risk of being lynched themselves.31 After all, just as for much of the population, the inevitable lesson police learned from Tláhuac will be that no matter how extreme the circumstances, help is not assured, exacerbating a lack of police confidence in their own institutions: So you had better take your fate into your own hands, with excessive force, if need be. The Tláhuac incident offers an important first point of reference for understanding the societal, political, and organizational realities shaping the nature of policing in Mexico. These underlying realities need to be taken into account when evaluating police and criminal justice reforms in later chapters. The Tláhuac lynching also provides an insight into the kind of organizational and political realities obstructing the development of professional, democratic, and human-rights-oriented policing, a state of affairs analyzed in more depth later on in this book on the basis of our police survey and interviews. Insights into the kind of policing realities discussed in this chapter further suggest the nature of the reforms that are required if there is to be any hope of real progress in the quality of Mexican policing.

NOTES 1. There is some confusion as to when the events actually started, with some reports referring to the PFP receiving calls about the attack on the three police as early as 6:00 P.M.; media bulletins issued by the PFP are contradictory on this point (El Universal November 30a, 2004). 2. Statement from Moreno Nolasco, the officer who survived the lynching (El Universal December 4a, 2004). 3. Some reports mention two kidnapped children, in others three. There are also conflicting reports as to whether the inhabitants thought that the three officers were involved in an earlier kidnapping or were on that day on a kidnapping mission. It seems likely that both stories circulated among the people. 4. Daniel Cayetano Ulloa Lobaco to the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) (1420/d/2004) (Gutierez 2004: 17). 5. According to his own statement, Moreno Nolasco was able to make two calls to his chief (El Universal December 4a, 2004). 6. The Federal District of Mexico City is divided into sixteen delegaciones. 7. His declaration concerning his role in the events was drawn from the statements included in dossier AP/1420/D/2004 of the ministerial files (Mongo 2004: 16). 8. Garcés was eventually released September 11, 2005 (Mongo 2004: 16). 9. As reported by one of those who handed in one of the two seized guns (Mongo 2004: 16). 10. ONCE television spoke of the investigation of twenty-four allegations of drug sales at a school in the neighborhood.

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11. In his article he refers extensively to an EPR instruction manual of 151 pages. The document includes a Curso de Inteligencia, which according to Torres is in part a manual on how to mislead Mexican intelligence sources (Torres 2004: 6–11). 12. On the basis of consulted sources, the magazine Proceso in fact attributes the cause of the mass aggression against the three officers to “mistakes committed in the PFP intelligence operation,” undoubtedly implicitly referring to this aspect of the mission (Torres 2004: 7). 13. Other accounts offered by “witnesses” spoke of police officers pointing their firearms at the pupils in an alleged attempt to rob two of them and of subsequent attempts to escape by taxi (El Universal November 24b, 2004). 14. Testimonies from dossier 176/04 2004 (El Universal December 7b, 2004). 15. The sequence of events emerging from a report by SSP to the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) (El Universal November 28a, 2004). 16. Later reports spoke of twenty-nine people charged, subsequent investigations revealed the identity of at least ten more instigators of the lynching (El Universal December 4d, 2004). 17. Group interview held by Elena Azaola with representatives of the neighborhood in January 2005. 18. There were in fact five telephone conversations between Cuevas and Regino. The two men gave differing accounts as to when these took place and their content (El Universal December 3e, 2004). 19. The president’s power to do so is based on Article 122 of the Constitution and article 34 of the Government Statute of the Federal District (Estatuto de Gobierno del Distrito Federal). 20. The desafuero decision was taken by the Cámara de Diputados, a four-member congressional panel in which three congressmen from PAN and PRI decided in favor of desafuero. In Mexico, the process was widely seen as occurring at the instigation of President Fox. As a result the mayor was temporarily ousted from power in April 2005, with criminal proceedings against him, but he was reinstated a few weeks later after massive public demonstrations on his behalf in Mexico City. 21. López Obrador was quoted as having commented: “You should not interfere with the public . . . we should respect their methods and customs” in justification for Ebrard’s not seeking the culprits of the Tlalpan (a neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital) lynchings in 2001 (El Universal November 28b, c and December 10c, 2004). 22. According to Article 22, section 2 of the Federal Law Coordinating Public Security (LFCS) police are obliged to offer help to anyone threatened or in danger or who have been victims of crime, as well as to offer protection to their goods and rights. 23. In an extensive report on the background of events in Tláhuac, El Universal stops just short of suggesting a link between this source of tension and the failure of the SSP to intervene, but clearly implies such a possible link (El Universal December 10d, 2004). 24. Traditionally strong rivalry has existed between different police forces in Mexico City, especially between Preventive and Judicial Police, and particularly concerns rivalries related to involvement in the drug business. However, it is unclear whether such a connection exists in this instance.

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25. According to the statement offered by the local commissioner, the three officers entered the cab of a red van at 7 o’clock in the morning, refusing to identify themselves. Alarmed locals set off the local security system. The bells of a nearby parish church started to chime and some 300 villagers soon surrounded the van, dragging the officers into the village, where others awaited them with nooses for hanging them. Two hours of discussions with local authorities followed, in which the villagers expressed their frustration at being constantly subject to attacks and brutal treatment received from the judicial police. Eventually, the three officers were released after assurances had been given that there would be no retaliations against the villagers. Nevertheless, the newspaper picture of one of the officers, at that stage on the point of being hanged, was eerily reminiscent of the events two days prior (El Universal November 26a, 2004). 26. These killings brought the number of AFI officers killed to fifty-four in the just over two and a half years since the agency replaced the old Federal Judicial Police. 27. To what extent an increase in media reporting in fact reflects an actual increase in lynchings is, of course, difficult to ascertain. It is at any rate beyond doubt that since Tláhuac there has been increased sensitivity about lynchings, possibly making them more readily reported. 28. Only two lower-rank respondents considered the direct perpetrators and senior officers jointly responsible. Two respondents attributed responsibility to the lynched officers themselves. 29. An electronic survey of the newspapers Reforma and El Norte revealed at least thirty-eight attempted lynchings between July 2002 and July 2003 in the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Estado de Mexico, and Chiapas, several of which resulted in deaths (Kossick 2004: 718). 30. On the same day as the police lynching in Tláhuac, an incident in Toluca illustrates the point: An eighty-year-old architect had an assignment to produce a series of pictures of buildings of architectural interest in that area. While doing so, a woman started screaming that he was a child pornographer/kidnapper. Within a short while, the man was surrounded by an angry mob and facing the prospect of being lynched. Some local authorities, however, were able to convince the people that he should be handed over to the police who would investigate the matter. This was in fact what happened. The man was locked up until 4 A.M., enabling police to develop the film and substantiate his version of events, after which he was picked up by his son (Azaola 2005, to whom the son narrated this event). 31. Soon after the lynching, an impending police lynching of two officers of the SSP DF was reported in Lomas de Chamizal, a neighborhood in Mexico City. Reportedly fearing the same fate as their colleagues in Tláhuac, the officers started to shoot at the crowd, injuring two as a result, before being able to retreat from the furious crowd, alongside two colleagues who had come to their rescue (El Universal November 30f, 2004).

3 Mexico’s Criminal Justice System: Organized Chaos

Any foreign visitor walking through the center of Mexico City for the first time will inevitably be baffled by the colorful array of different police uniforms. The disparate variety of shields and badges demonstrates that “the” Mexican police does not exist, but instead consists of a kaleidoscope of different police forces. For an outside observer this confusing picture becomes even more puzzling when confronted with police officers standing on guard in supermarkets’ entrances and inside. At the same time, plainclothes officers in cars marked “Policía Judicial” (judicial police) can be observed apparently carrying out routine patrol duties or even gathered en masse at an ordinary traffic accident. Any speculation about the formal responsibilities and powers of these different types of police will receive additional poignancy on learning that people considered important in Mexican society—including for example journalists or artists—can at the discretion of the chief of the Preventive Police be assigned guaruyas, officers assigned for an individual’s personal well-being, expected to do anything requested in the way of personal assistance, from providing personal security to fetching children from school, to cleaning the house, and shopping. The number of guaruyas is an indicator of one’s status in society and may range from one to as many as ten. The Mexican policing system, in other words, serves a variety of functions, which in turn reflect the basic structure and formal powers of the different police organizations. What does this system look like, what have been its main developments, and where is it going? Furthermore, understanding the wider Mexican criminal justice system is also of importance to understand the ways in which the current system discourages or implicitly even tolerates or encourages police abuses. Thus, this chapter lays the 61

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foundation for a discussion in the following chapters of the relevance of the legal and organizational reforms proposed in 2004 in the Legal Reform Bill by President Vicente Fox, and the ones implemented under President Felipe Calderón in 2008. Mexico is a federal state comprising thirty-one separate states and the Federal District (DF), which is Mexico City’s inner concentration of some nine million people, subdivided in sixteen districts (delegaciones), each headed by a delegado. Surrounding the Federal District are thirty-five municipalities, which constitute part of Mexico State, each with its own elected mayor. Mexico City and the State of Mexico each have their own judicial and police system. As a federal republic, Mexico has separate federal and state criminal codes, in addition to which the federal DF has its own distinct criminal code. In Mexico City’s DF in fact no fewer than fourteen laws and codes regulating responses towards crime including the Federal and State Constitutions; the Statute of Government and Organic Law of the Federal District; civil, criminal, and procedural state and federal codes; and some municipal codes (Alvarado Mendoza 2006: 280). State judiciaries have jurisdiction over murders, robberies, kidnappings, and other common criminal offenses. But most criminal offenses can in principle be prosecuted under either federal or state jurisdiction. Matters relating to organized crime, drug trafficking, and violations of human rights fall exclusively under federal jurisdiction. The federal judiciary is also responsible for reviewing requests for injunctions (amparo proceedings): The federal courts of appeal review the decisions of state-level superior courts. In this way the federal judiciary examine and judge on state criminal cases. Most crimes are covered by both federal and state codes, but some fall exclusively within the realm of state codes: Of all reported crimes in 2003, some 95 percent were classified with the fuero común (under the jurisdiction of the states), the remainder under fuero federal (federal jurisdiction) (Moloeznik 2006: 171). Some crimes fall solely under the federal code, particularly drugrelated crime. This does not, however, include first-time possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use, which is not punishable by law but results in an offender being sent for treatment. Most street crime and other basic criminal offenses are tried in the states’ court systems, but the federal government has the authority to trump regional jurisdiction in cases it considers important.

THE MEXICAN POLICE: A CONGERY OF SEPARATE FORCES The structure of Mexican policing reflects Mexico’s federal structure, and consists of a conglomeration of different police forces, each functioning un-

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der federal, state, or municipal jurisdictions as federal, state, and municipal police departments. There are around 2,400 municipal governments (municipios) in Mexico, varying greatly in size. As a result there are significant differences among local police forces. The vast majority—some 2,000—have fewer than 100 officers; 335 municipios have no local police at all. The big cities tend to have larger more organizationally complex municipal police forces (Reames 2007: 121). Different Powers for Different Forces Before the Calderón Reforms Police forces on the different levels all have different formal responsibilities. At the state and federal level there are both investigative Judicial and uniformed Preventive Police forces. Municipal police are not permitted to carry out investigative work, which is reserved for state and federal Judicial Police. Only Judicial Police are entitled to investigate crimes, on the basis of authorized warrants or in “urgent” cases ordered directly by the Public Security Office. The state and federal Judicial Police have investigating responsibility for crimes falling under federal, state or local municipal jurisdiction, and are also called “ministerial police.” Federal Judicial Police operate under the formal authority and command of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) under the federal Attorney General, while state Judicial Police Public Security Offices, including that of the Federal District, are central organs under the state public prosecutor’s offices. The investigative function of Judicial Police is laid down in the Federal Constitution (Article 21). This is not the case for Preventive Police, a gap not filled by adequate legislation or regulations in many jurisdictions. But in any case the mandate of the Preventive Police is to uphold public security and maintain order in municipalities throughout the country by vigilance, patrol, and administrative operations. Preventive Police outside the capital but inside Mexico State are generally speaking municipal police, whereas those in the Federal District are state police operating under the authority of the governor. Preventive Police are by law not authorized to investigate crimes, but on request they may assist the state of DF Office of the public prosecutor or the public security officials of the Federal Attorney General Office in such investigations. As uniformed-police they are entitled only to arrest a suspect if “caught in the act” (en flagrante delito). However, in the Code of Criminal Procedure for the Federal District, detention by Preventive Police has been stretched up to seventy-two hours after a crime has been committed, as will be elaborated below. Mexican Preventive Police are in fact not “police” in the sense of a force that has been given specific powers by law: Formally they do not have any powers beyond those of an ordinary citizen.

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Mexico’s different police forces vary in size. Based on an average of the available figures concerned—different agencies produce different figures on the number of their police officers—in 2008 the total number of Federal Police was around 45,000 officers; the total number of State Police was around 188,000 officers (of which over 31,000 were investigative police),1 and Municipal (exclusively preventive) Police numbered some 140,000. Mexico City Federal District employed about 77,500 police within its jurisdiction: 31,000 Preventive Police, 28,000 Auxiliary Police, 15,000 Banking and Industrial Police, and some 3,500 Investigative Police working within the Federal District Public Prosecutor’s Office (Olson 2008).2 Federal Police: Continuous Flux By 2008 the structure outlined above was in flux, due to police and judicial reforms: Both the preventive and judicial police in 2008 were granted the power to investigate crimes. In addition, in April 2008 the Secretary of Public Security concluded the design for a new Policía Federal, thus amalgamating the federal judicial police (AFI) and preventive forces (PFP) into the federal police. AFI: A New Force Against Illegal Drugs and Organized Crime In 2001 the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) replaced the old Federal Judicial Police (PJF), functioning like its predecessor under the authority of the Federal Attorney General (PGR). PJF had been Mexico’s most violent and corrupt police force; and setting up AFI was an important indication that social and political pressure for dealing with human rights violations and increasing the rule of law that preceded Fox’s election was beginning to bear fruit. Its foundations were laid with international assistance from various countries, with the United States’ FBI particularly involved in initial AFI training. AFI is mandated to pursue and investigate federal crimes. It comprises nine units, from domestic drug interception and eradication to international affairs and the Interpol office for Mexico. Its main focus is on criminal organizations involved in illegal drugs and other types of related crime. It has a Special Anti-Organized-Crime Unit (UEDO) to deal with “organized crime,” defined in Mexico’s legal codes of February 1994 as “three or more persons organized under rules of discipline and hierarchy who commit legally defined crimes in a violent and repeated way, [for] profit.” This definition was amended in the legal reforms of 2008 to “an organization made up of three or more people to commit crimes in a permanent or repeated manner.” Under the Federal Law Against Organized Crime (LFcDO)

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passed in November 1996, “organized crime” encompasses a broad range of crimes, including drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, trade in arms or infants, and terrorism (Reames 2003). AFI began with approximately 3,500 agents, and by 2008 employed over 8,100 officers (Olson 2008). PFP: Unsuccessful Amalgamation of Different Forces The Federal Preventive Police (PFP) was established in 1999 on the initiative of Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000) under the federal central Government Secretariat (Secretaria de Gobernación), and later brought under the authority of the Federal Public Security Secretariat (SSP) created by the new Fox administration. PFP was set up with components from different police agencies that it was supposed to integrate: a military wing (just under 5,000 officers of the 3rd Military Police Brigade and 600 officers from the Interior Ministry intelligence agency), 4,000 officers of the Federal Highway Police and some 1,500 officers from the Federal Immigration Police. During a personal discussion in October 2004, the federal PFP Chief of Police José Luis Figueroa Cuevas described the coordination of the three new components of the Preventive Police as a failure. The officers from the former Federal Highway Patrol regard themselves as superior to the others, whom they regard with disdain. Although the presence of military personnel within PFP was supposed to be a temporary measure, in 2001 and 2002 the number of soldiers within the force actually increased by more than 800, and in 2002 eight entire army units were transferred to PFP, as well as 1,600 members of several navy battalions (Freeman and Sierra 2005: 281). National Public Security System (SNSP) data indicated that PFPs manpower in January 2006 stood at over 15,300. Its operational ambit mainly involves more risky police operations. The functions and jurisdiction of PFP, set out in the Federal Preventive Police Law (LPFP), are quite extensive. The force is responsible for the prevention of federal crimes and administrative offenses. In cooperation with relevant authorities it is to intervene in matters of public security and to enforce the law. PFP has a legal basis in the Public Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Pública), which outlines its functions as preventing federal crimes, assisting in the maintenance of public order on federal property, assisting on request in the investigation of crimes, assisting state and local authorities, making arrests in cases of flagrante delito, guarding communications centers, airports, ports, and customs areas, and the gathering of intelligence as part of their preventive function. It is responsible for inspection and vigilance in a broad range of locations, such as border zones, custom stations, road blocks, federal highways, river valleys, railroads, airports, and seaports. At the request of federal, state, or local authorities, PFP is also responsible for

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carrying out joint operations with other forces within the framework of the National Public Security System (SNSP) (Bailey and Chabat 2002). Initially, concerns about PFP centered on the risk of its officers being used to repress opposition parties, but subsequently focused on their military training, service background, and militarized ethics (Moloeznik 2006: 178). Specifically, one of the more controversial aspects of PFP is the employment of military personnel. The role of the military in the Mexican system of policing dates back to a law that was introduced following the creation of SNSP in 1995, which allowed the coordination of police and army operations under the supervision of a military Executive Secretary. This resulted in high-ranking military officers replacing a number of federal and state police and prosecution agency chiefs. Although criticized as a violation of constitutional provisions, such practices appear to have been institutionalized in a 1996 Supreme Court decision and subsequent legislation and constitutional amendments. While PFP soldiers remain under operational control of the civilian-headed PFP, the military also continues to play an important role outside such a policing structure in anti-narcotics operations, in loose association with the Federal Attorney General and AFI, but effectively independently from them. Prior to his dismissal in December 2004 in the fallout of the Tlahúac lynching, Cuevas had devised a plan by which all military personnel were to be withdrawn from PFP in 2006 (as provided for in President Fox’s initial plans in 2000) and/or transferred to a new and separate traffic police force. The organization has been generally held to suffer from much corruption: In 2003, 2,800 officers left the force, 2,200 as a result of criminal proceedings against them. Mexico City Federal District Police: Amalgamation of Forces and Functions According to estimates in 2002, the Federal District (DF) comprises some 8,700,000 residents. There are some eighteen million more people in the whole of Mexico City’s metropolitan region. The DF has its own separate Preventive and Judicial Police. The responsibilities of the Federal District Preventive Police (SSP DF) are laid down in the Organic Law of the Public Security Secretariat of the Federal District (LOSDF). Similar to its federal counterpart, SSP DF comprises three separate police forces—a Preventive Police force of 30,800 in 2009, the Auxiliary Police of 44,950, and 15,320 officers of the Bank and Industrial Police (PBI).3 The Auxiliary Police guard official buildings and strategic locations such as airports; PBI guards businesses, financial institutions, and banks. Both provide a variety of public and private security services in Mexico City. The Auxiliary Police characteristically charge for their services, which can also include almost any of the usual police roles.

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In practice, it is regarded simply as an extension and backup of the regular preventive police. The DF Preventive Police itself consists of six separate divisions. About half of its personnel, some 17,000 officers, form the Sectoral Police. These are distributed geographically within the DF, covering six main DF districts that each include two or three precincts (totaling sixteen). These in turn are each comprised of a number of sectors (for a total of seventy). The other five divisions of SSP DF are distinguished functionally. The Metropolitan Police Division comprises six units: the Transport Police; the Feminine Police, which works in schools, with juveniles, at public events, and in public parks and gardens; the Tourist Police; the Grenadiers protecting the historic district; the Mounted Police; and the Emergency Rescue Squad. Special Forces constitutes another separate division, which includes four main groups: the Helicopter Squad; the Special Motorcycle Unit; the Task Force that deals with terrorist and bomb threats, and the secret ad hoc force, Alpha Group, which works with the Special Unit on drug trafficking. The Roadway Security Division is a separate unit of brown-uniformed police. The traditionally understaffed Internal Affairs Division is also separate, as is the Tiger Unit, established in May 2005, a heavily armed rapid response force, set up to deal with organized crime, specifically robbery gangs and narcotics. Of course, Mexico City also has its own separate Judicial Police of the Federal District (PJDF) police for investigation and prosecution of crime. This force falls under the authority of the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the DF (PGDF). It is divided into sixteen precincts (delegaciones) with approximately 3,500 investigative police, about 1,100 investigative agents serving the public prosecutor’s prosecuting attorneys, and over 900 legal specialists (Reames 2003). The Mexican Prosecutorial System The structure of Mexico’s prosecution system reflects Mexico’s federal political system. On the federal level prosecutions are carried out by the Office of the Federal Attorney General (PGR), which is under the charge of the Attorney General (Procurador General de la República). The Federal Attorney General is appointed by the President subject to ratification by Congress. Pending reforms to render it independent, the prosecution system currently still constitutes part of the executive branch of the government. Article 102a of the Constitution entitles it to prosecute all criminal offenses. PGR, akin to the office to the U.S Attorny General’s Office, is a huge organization in 2004 comprising just under 22,000 staff (Reames, 207: 123–124). Its mandate includes both the investigation and prosecution of federal crimes like drug and arm trafficking, and environmental and health

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crimes. But PGR further oversees the Office of the Public Prosecutor, which also comprises AFI. There are also special offices for deputy prosecutors responsible for specific types of crime (see chapter 4). Each of Mexico’s thirty-one states has an Office of the Public Prosecutor of the State (PGE), and the Federal District has its own Office of the Public Prosecutor (PGDF). Each of these is headed by a separate public prosecutor assisted by the state or DF Judicial Police. One problem with this two-tier federal justice system is that many states’ justice systems have lagged far behind the federal level, suffering from low salaries, lack of resources, absence of computers and other equipment, and an excessive workload for judges. A 1994 Mexican lawyers’ book of essays (cited by Fix-Fierro 2003: 59) pointed to the double system of jurisdictions as sharpening the deficiencies of the justice system. Local and state jurisdictions are independent of the federal level in theory only, whereas de facto the autonomy of local justice system leaves them heterogenous in quality, efficiency, and the way they function in general.

MEXICO’S ARCHAIC INQUISITORIAL SYSTEM AND THE 2008 JUDICIAL REFORMS After having passed both houses of Congress in April 2008, on June 18 President Felipe Calderón signed legislation designed to fundamentally change Mexico’s justice system by introducing U.S.-style oral trials and establishing a presumption of innocence for criminal defendants. The reforms are designed not only to restore the presumption of innocence, but to cut down the number of people held in preventive detention and reduce the weight of confessions in judicial proceedings. Prosecutors and defense lawyers in the future are to argue their cases in court orally, and judges must explain their decisions to the defendants. The law begins a long process of changes mandated to be fully in place by 2016. This will include training thousands of lawyers and judges across the country on the logistics of holding oral trials. Courthouses are to be modified to make room for Mexican citizens, who will be able to attend trials for the first time. Trials will be open to the public unless a judge decides a case must be closed for national security reasons or to protect a witness or a minor. Other key reforms involve the role of the judiciary, with a specific judge to be named to follow each case in its entire legal process all the way through to the sentencing stage. Furthermore, judges are required to be present at every hearing. Victims will be given more opportunity to present evidence, and protection will be provided for witnesses who testify in trials of suspected members of drug-trafficking gangs. Defendants who cooperate will be eligible for sentence reduction and other benefits.

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The reforms are to take place both on the federal and state levels, the vast majority of states having approved Calderón’s reform package by the middle of 2008.4 The states then have eight years to fully implement the reforms, which will include reforming state laws to adhere to the new constitutional changes. While some states are in the advanced stages of implementing the reforms—such as Chihuahua, which was expected to apply oral trial proceedings statewide beginning in July 2008—by mid-2008 the legislatures of other states, such as Baja California, Guerrero, the state of Mexico, and Chiapas had yet to approve them. These reforms will be discussed further in the later chapters. The System’s Current Characteristics: Inquisitorial Principles The new system intends to gradually replace Mexico’s hybrid institutional criminal justice system, combining traditional authoritarianism with modern democratic practices. By its own internal logic, the current system is conducive, in the words of Schmidt (2005: 65), to “schizophrenic patterns of conduct, creating a scenario with different normative orientations, styles of conduct, and heterogenic values which are in permanent internal conflict.” The problems have been visible and manifold, setting off a first wave of reforms in the 1980s. Whereas some of the issues had been addressed over time (such as increasing formal judicial independence), many of the issues have remained. Criminal justice systems can be based more on accusatorial or more on inquisitorial principles. That is to say, the evidence to convict someone on a specific criminal charge will in principle either be presented by the prosecutor and challenged in court in front of a judge and perhaps a jury (the accusatorial system) or else presented on the basis of the evidence gathered and organized by the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation (the inquisitorial system). In Legalized Injustice (2001), the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights provides an in-depth analysis of the Mexican criminal justice system to explain the prevalence of human rights abuses in Mexico. It blames them particularly on some of the system’s characteristics: the inquisitorial nature of the criminal proceedings, as well as the serious power imbalances between the different actors in the system and a lack of effective investigative techniques. In this chapter we shall consider some of the main defining characteristics of this system in order to provide the context for the different reforms and institutional controls discussed in the remaining chapters. The Mexican criminal justice system uses an extreme version of the inquisitorial process, and detention during the pre-trial and trial period—in contrast to accusatorial systems—is the norm. The prosecutor is responsible for collecting the evidence that, with little or no intervention from defense

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lawyers on behalf of their clients, constitutes the core of the criminal record on which a judge bases his decision. Generally speaking there is little participation by judges in the proceedings. Lacking transparency, there are only limited opportunities for anybody except the parties concerned to hear the witnesses’ testimony. Most proceedings are thus barely public, and the confidential nature of the verdict (accessible only to the parties involved) further contributes to their being hidden. Characteristically the verdict and the reasons given for the judgment are very cursory. This is justified as maintaining the privacy of the accused. As a result, the Mexican system has been devoid of any substantive jurisprudence. In effect, verdicts are not open to any public scrutiny or criticism, fuelling the widespread suspicion of underlying corruption. In Mexico’s inquisitorial system, a criminal investigation does not in principle result in a trial as this is commonly understood. In fact, the process can be characterized as simply an ever-extending dossier of evidence gathered against a suspect. A defendant’s lawyer has, in principle, access to this file and is allowed to counter the evidence presented by the prosecutor by including statements from his own witnesses a décharge to offer evidence that exonerates the accused. In the majority of cases, however, especially those presented by public prosecutors, the defense fails to present any kind of witness testimony or forensic evidence. Therefore, a usual dossier simply comprises evidence accumulated by the state’s agents working within the public prosecutors’ office, and judges base their rulings largely on the prosecutor’s claims. Thus, up to 2008 in the Mexican system prosecutors have had the power not only to search for evidence, but also to decide on the judicial weight to accord it. Prosecutors not only played a central role during the criminal proceedings but can actually be described as all-powerful. Judges have traditionally not been expected to serve any real supervisory role over the handling of cases. Mexican experts consider that, “Prosecutors act as de facto judges . . . since their findings are considered as evidence without further evaluation” (International Commission of Jurists 2003). The eventual judgment on a suspect’s guilt is thus crucially shaped by and dependent on the activities undertaken by the Public Security Secretariat. In fact, within the Secretariat the judge’s role is widely seen as one of merely ratifying its work and conclusions (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001: 15). Characteristic of Mexico’s criminal justice process is that very few crime allegations that reach a prosecutor’s office actually end in a judicial verdict. A study carried out in 2000 showed that only just over 18 percent of crime reported to a public prosecutor resulted in a completed investigation: The public prosecutor declined to investigate 39 percent of reported crimes; 25 percent of cases were closed for lack of evidence, 5 percent because the likely perpetrator was never captured, and 13 percent because the statute of

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limitations had run out; Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona (2007: 145) attributes this lack of effectiveness primarily to the case overload inundating the public prosecutors’ offices. But even when “completed satisfactorily,” only about a third of the total number of cases resulted in criminal proceedings being initiated, in total amounting to only 6.4 percent of the number of cases reported to the prosecutor’s office. The very few suspects who appeared before a court, Magaloni and Zepeda Lecuona point out (2004: 176), are those caught en flagrante (in 2004 meaning: within three days of the act) and “those who were unable to bribe authorities in prosecutors’ offices to secure their release.” A 2006 survey by the Citizens Institute for the Study of Insecurity (ICESI) found that only two out of ten reported crimes in Mexico result in a preliminary investigation. Of these investigations 49 percent did not come up with any results, 26 percent got stuck within the system, and 17 percent resulted in the arrest of a suspect; 10 percent of the cases in which a suspect was found, however, the suspect remained at liberty. A verdict is reached in about two-thirds of the adjudicated cases. Thus, of the total number of crimes reported, only just over 4 percent result in a sentence. (Zepeda Lecuona 2007: 142). Even killings do not usually result in a conviction. Between 1996 and 2000 the average conviction rate was 18 percent in all murder investigations, although with great variation between the different states. In the State of Mexico, for example, only 6 percent of all murder investigations resulted in a criminal conviction, compared to 31 percent in Tabasco (Magaloni and Zepeda 2004: 184). As discussed, very few cases end up being prosecuted, but if prosecuted, 90 percent result in a criminal conviction (International Commission of Jurists 2003). This affects the accused’s attitude once a decision has been made to prosecute: Under such circumstances most will try to secure both as rapid and as lenient a conviction as possible. This at least partly results from the attitude of “taking one’s losses” in the face of high odds of conviction in a system, that is, at that stage, heavily stacked against the defendant. Most emphasis in a defense will be on providing mitigating circumstances rather than refuting criminal charges or scoring legal points. There appears to be a general public awareness that informal realities even at this stage carry considerably more weight than the formal realities of the procedure. The Judiciary: Traditionally Weak The judge assumes responsibility for criminal proceedings when a suspect has been charged and placed under the authority of the courts. On the basis of the evidence presented, in the evidentiary proceedings (instrucción) phase, the judge has a maximum of seventy-two hours to decide whether there are sufficient grounds to proceed. If a judge decides not to proceed, he orders the suspect released.

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The overload of cases that do proceed to judgment (juicio) means that judges characteristically make decisions on up to twenty cases over a three-day period. This severely limits the extent to which they can assess the evidence presented (Zepeda Lecuona 2004: 250). In the absence of an effective defense the judge’s decision may indeed be a mere formality, the prosecutor’s evidentiary conclusions being transferred directly to the court record. As a result of excessive caseloads in many criminal courts, judges are often not even present during the pre-trial and trial stages. Instead, the responsibility of documenting the public hearings is routinely delegated to court officials, and the role of the judge is restricted to signing the official document attached to the case file (Bergman, 2003: 47). A study in the late 1990s found the judges’ role was wanting, especially with respect to their responsibility to certify the validity of arrests. The importance of this relates particularly to the fact that incidents of torture at that time were found to be accompanied by falsification of police records related to the arrest. Human Rights Watch (1999) concluded that judges in such cases often failed to question suspects or obviously false police testimony as to how detainees came to be arrested. This situation was made worse by the ruling of higher courts that even if lower courts improperly certified arrest, a defendant can still be tried.5 In fact, most judges appear to be influenced by the prosecutors’ offices, either because of a close working relationship—sometimes they even share offices—or because of threats and intimidation (Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers 2002: 19). Also affecting the perception of judges as not impartial is the practice of judges meeting informally with the prosecutor or the defense lawyer in the judge’s office. The judicial corruption that is particularly associated with the lower district courts, is especially associated with the related “buying an opportunity to be heard” rather than connected with “buying justice” (Fix Feirro 2003: 15). Mexico’s inquisitorial system of dossier building has in fact fostered such an informal system of so-called ex parte communication, that is, communication between one party and a judge without the presence of the other party. In Mexico’s criminal justice system, any effective defense counsel seeks, usually successfully, an interview with the presiding judge (Fix-Fierro 2003: 14; 2007: 267).6 Even though widely abhorred within the legal professions, depending as they do on the discretion of the judge such communications are considered by lawyers an important means to influence the outcome of a case. These personal interviews with the judge allows lawyers to find out who they are dealing with, how familiar a judge is with a case, and the line of thinking of the judge on the case, thus giving lawyers additional opportunity to adjust their case (Fix-Fierro, 2007: 267). On the state level the governor normally recommends whom to appoint as state court judges, subject to approval by the state legislature. A governor

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traditionally considers the judiciary as subordinate. State judges are appointed for a period of six years, which coincides with the governor’s term in office. The governor appoints the president of the High Court of Justice (TSJ), who is still mainly responsible for the political and administrative course of action of the judicial branch (Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, 2002: 19) As a result, the judiciary are still widely held to partial toward the executive and links between members of TSJ and the executive reportedly are close, in spite of many legal reforms since 1995 initiating more democratic ways of appointing magistrates. The extent to which federal courts are corrupt is uncertain. During a mission to Mexico in 2001, the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (2002: 18) was given estimates that 50 to 70 percent of all federal judges are involved in acts of corruption; some reports suggest that corruption is spreading under the influence of drug traffickers. However, no federal judges have ever been sanctioned by the Judicial Council for corruption, which is hard to prove. But some have been dismissed for inexplicable “errors of judgment.” Some observers, however, consider federal courts virtually corruption-free (Fix-Feirro 2003). That the powers of the Supreme Court and the judiciary as a whole are still limited is best illustrated by the prevalence of the so-called Otero Principle (pioneered in 1847 by Mariano Otero, an eminent constitutional lawyer), by which laws ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court nevertheless remain in force for all citizens except for those who filed the legal challenge. Therefore, only a handful of wealthy litigants are in a position to challenge the constitutionality of a specific law, and the Supreme Court is continually requested to review in different circumstances the legality of specific laws it has already reviewed before. Mexico’s All-Powerful Prosecution Given the ancillary position of Mexican judges, all states’ public prosecutors’ offices constitute the central organ responsible for investigation (mostly involving interrogations), prosecution, and disposition of criminal cases. As already indicated, public prosecutors conduct the pre-trial investigations of a reported crime with the assistance of their Judicial Police. As part of this they collect evidence, interviewing suspects, witnesses, and victims. The purpose of this preliminary investigation (averugación) is to determine whether a crime has actually taken place and to identify a probable suspect. To expand the rights of victims, Article 20 of the Constitution in 2001 was amended to allow victims to name a lawyer as co-counsel with the prosecutor, aimed at assuring adequate investigation and prosecution of crimes and a victim’s right to have an offender punished and to receive reparations.

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If a prosecutor considers from the investigation that there is sufficient evidence, the suspect can be formally charged. If already in custody, the person will be brought before a judge; if not in custody, a judge may be asked to issue a judicial arrest warrant. In “urgent cases” a prosecutor may authorize the arrest of someone suspected of a serious crime if a judge is not available to issue a warrant. In December 2008 Congress introduced a judicial amendment easing the means to obtain search warrants. Rather than obtaining warrants exclusively in writing, federal police are now allowed to request a search warrant by e-mail or telephone. According to basic principle of Mexico’s criminal procedures laid out in Article 16 of the Constitution, a person may not be detained before a judicial arrest warrant has been obtained. These warrants are granted only by a judge with respect to a legally recognized criminal offense that carries a prison sentence. The preliminary investigation therefore must convince the judge that a crime has been committed for which the probable responsibility lies with the suspect against whom the arrest warrant is to be granted. Anyone detained on the basis of a judicial warrant should be brought before the same judge “without delay,” to prevent arbitrary detentions. During this hearing before the judge the suspect will be informed “of the name of his accuser and the nature and cause of the accusation” to which he may make his first statement in response (Article 20 of the Constitution). Nevertheless, despite some formal guarantees, the absence of judicial checks on the legality of the detention and treatment of detainees by police and prosecutors has characterized the system’s initial criminal proceedings. Prosecutors’ enormous discretionary powers promotes arbitrariness (Magaloni and Zepeda 2004: 175) and creates room for impunity and opportunities for corruption (Zepeda Lecuona 2007: 145). According to the Committee Against Torture (2003: paragraph 186), “The lack of such checks inclines the police and public prosecutors to favor a procedure that frees them for a considerable time from outside interference and restrictions that might hinder their accumulation of evidence to support committal for trial.” Article 16 of the Constitution empowers the Public Prosecutor’s Office to detain a suspect in its own or police premises for up to forty-eight hours, as exceptions to the general rule that an individual should be put “forthwith” at the disposal of the judge who gave the order to arrest. Those extra hours are crucial for the investigation, inasmuch as a suspect may be interrogated by judicial investigative police without any outside interference. Until the judicial reforms approved by Congress in December 2008, a person suspected of committing an organized-crime offense could be detained for up to ninety-six hours. Under the new law, an organized-crime suspect can be held by the prosecutor without charge up to eighty days.

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As a protective measure, the CFPP stipulates that if the length of time a suspect has been held in custody by the Public Prosecutor’s Office exceeds the legal time limits, the judge should rule that a suspect has been held incommunicado and that the suspect’s first statement before the courts is inadmissible as a result. But there are indications that custody time limits are routinely broken with impunity. A survey carried out in the Federal District in 2002 found that 50 percent of suspects had been detained longer than forty-eight hours in Public Prosecutor custody, yet 94 percent of such cases were still ruled to be legal (Magaloni and Negrete 2002). Another study showed that in half the cases the judge failed to determine the legal status of the suspect within the required limit of 72 or 144 hours (Bergman et al. 2003). An overall lack of outside scrutiny has characterized the first stages of an arrest. It is also manifested in that lawyers are denied access to the suspect while held on police premises, and that the right to defense counsel can only be exercised once a suspect makes a statement to the public prosecutor. The International Commission of Jurists (2003) considered that the wide-ranging powers of prosecutors leave suspects prone to human rights violations committed to obtain evidence by police and prosecutors, as we shall see below. The judicial reforms adopted by Congress in December 2008 sought to address this issue by requiring police to register all detentions quickly. Police Arrests without Judicial Warrant: “Urgent Cases” As noted earlier, arbitrary arrests constitute a major human rights concern in Mexico. The broad exceptions to the judicial warrant requirement provided by Article 16 of the Constitution give the police and public prosecutor considerable discretionary power to arrest suspects, and since 1993 has allowed the SSP in “urgent cases” to order an arrest without a judicial warrant. In both the Federal and the Mexico City Code of Criminal Procedure, “urgent” has been defined very broadly to include the perpetration of crimes defined in law as “serious,” and situations that involve a risk that a suspect may evade justice. But as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights has pointed out (2001: 30), in “urgent” cases the criminal codes do not specify the concept of “suspicion” that is required to execute such an arrest. Formally, authorization by the public prosecutor to waive or delay a court order in “urgent” cases also requires that time, place, or circumstances make it impossible to apply to the judicial authorities for an arrest warrant. But the requirement does little to provide an objective measure of a claim. Besides, the Committee Against Torture found that this requirement is easily evaded

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by recording the detention as having occurred after the courts have closed for the day (CAT 2003: paragraph 179). Since its inception in 1917, Article 16 of the Constitution has allowed the judicial and preventive police to arrest any person “caught in the act.” When arrested en flagrante, preventive police must hand over a detainee to the Judicial Police: Both in en flagrante and “urgent” cases the suspect must then be immediately handed over to the federal or state public prosecutor’s office. Arrest en flagrante In Mexico City’s metropolitan area arrests en flagrante in fact have amounted to some 60 percent of all arrests (Alverado Mendoza 2006: 280).7 Indeed, until recently, the interpretation of en flagrante had gradually expanded in successive reforms of the criminal procedure codes, under certain circumstances allowing a delay in arrest for the criminal act for up to forty-eight hours: The crime involved would have to be defined as “serious” in Mexican law, the public prosecutor’s office would have to have already started the appropriate preliminary investigation, and the matter would require uninterrupted follow-up. Under such circumstances the judicial police would then be permitted to apprehend the accused identified as the culprit by the victim, a witness, or a fellow perpetrator, or if the object, instrument, or proceeds of a crime are found in the possession of the accused, or other evidence was found indicating the accused person’s involvement in the incident under investigation.8 The broad definition of en flagrante allowed the judicial police itself to decide whether there is sufficient evidence on that basis to arrest a suspect within forty-eight or seventy-two hours after a crime has allegedly been committed: Article 267 of the Mexico City Federal District Code of Criminal Procedure (CPPDF) also allows the period of detention for en flagrante cases based on evidence or witness testimony in the case of serious crimes to be extended to seventy-two hours. If the grounds for detention are for involvement in organized crime, the period within which to arrest en flagrante is doubled to 144 hours, even though the accused may later be charged merely with a common offense. Congressional approval of police reform in December 2008 restricted police powers to arrest en flagrante, tightening it to mean during just a few moments after the commission of a crime. (At the time of this writing, December 2008, there had not yet been a tightening of the concept of en flagrante on the state level.) In contrast, while restricting police powers in this respect, the judicial reforms introduced in 2008 have in fact greatly expanded the public prosecutor’s powers with respect to organized crime suspects, who may now be detained without charge for up to eighty days.

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Properties seized by law enforcement will automatically belong to the state unless the accused proves they were acquired through legitimate means; prior to this, a case could be made in court for confiscated properties to be returned even if they were illicit. Indeed, in the face of organized crime-related killings rising to nearly 5,400 in the first eleven months of 2008—a doubling of the figure for 20079—in December Congress also extended police powers by allowing law enforcement agencies to use undercover agencies and taped conversations as evidence in court. In a further bid to fight the drug cartels more effectively, federal police were granted the right to keep their own identities secret in legal proceedings, to be identified by a numerical code known only to their superiors. Arraigo: Alternative to Normal Detention Arraigo is an administrative form of preventive detention, used as an alternative to a normal arrest. The concept originally developed in Mexico from the system of house arrest of people under criminal investigation. Over the years, the Federal Attorney General’s Office and the states’ Public Prosecutors have turned it into a form of preventive detention by which a suspect is confined to a sort of “safe house.” These are guarded by judicial police and officials of the public prosecutor’s office, to confine suspects while investigations, including interrogations, are being carried out. The prosecutor can request that a judge grants an arraigo for thirty days—a period it can later ask to be extended for up to a total of ninety days—using the argument that the suspect may disappear while the initial inquiries are being completed. However, the prosecutor is often not required to substantiate the likelihood of this (Amnesty International 2005). Arraigo is a controversial form of detention in that it infringes upon the principle of the presumption of innocence. Mexico’s Supreme Court in 2005 ruled that the concept of arraigo in the Criminal Code of Chihuahua State was in fact unconstitutional, a decision with important implications for its use in Mexico as a whole (Amnesty International 2005). It implies that the concept of arraigo is fundamentally flawed, undermining personal freedom and associated rights, as it can allow unfounded detentions. Furthermore, it is also notorious for encouraging bad practices in criminal investigations, by which the person under investigation is subjected to a disguised form of detention by the prosecutor’s office. As the detainee does not need to be taken before a judge, adequate judicial control is lacking. Documented cases illustrate that detainees’ access to their family, lawyers, and medical care have been restricted by the Prosecutor’s Office. Arraigo has also been criticized as creating a situation that fosters the use of intimidation, coercion and torture to pressure the

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detainee into a confession (Amnesty International 2005). In spite of the Supreme Court’s ruling, as Amnesty International noted two years later, it has continued to be widely used (Amnesty International 2007). On File: Cases Extended The power of the public prosecutor is further reinforced through other mechanisms. As already pointed out, a request to a judge for an arrest warrant is made on the basis of a preliminary investigation. This is supposed to ensure that the evidence gathered is carefully scrutinized and to prevent ill-founded charges proceeding further within the system. However, even if a judge rules that there is insufficient evidence, this is not simply the end of a criminal case. Instead, it is then either closed but archived or left on file pending further information. This often happens because of high crime rates coupled with a lack of resources to carry out so many investigations fully. In a report on Mexico’s criminal justice system, Amnesty International (2007) points out that the backlog of cases can encourage prosecutors to keep preliminary investigations on file for considerable periods before bringing charges and seeking an arrest warrant. The arbitrary power this offers prosecutors is procedurally enhanced by the absence of any requirement that they provide substantial justification for delays in filing charges before the courts. The widespread failure to immediately enforce arrest warrants granted by judges also illustrates the de facto power of prosecutors. Indeed, Beatriz Magaloni and Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona (2004: 184) found that over the period 1996–2000 police only enforced 14.4 percent of arrest warrants issued at the state level. Whether caused by a lack of manpower or the flight of an accused, as claimed by public prosecutors’ offices, the result is that arrest warrants are often simply left on file and their enforcement left to the discretion of the Judicial Police or depending on political decisions (Amnesty International 2007). Confession: The Core of Evidence Since the judicial reforms adopted in 2008, Mexico’s justice system is to be transformed into a more oral and adversarial system. An important question to be addressed in chapter 7 is to what extent the 2008 judicial reforms can be expected to affect interrogation practices. Mexico’s current criminal justice system has been very much confession-driven, that is to say, confessions constitute the core of evidence on which convictions are typically based, rather than witness statements or forensic evidence. The circumstances under which confessions are obtained therefore become an issue of paramount importance as to their legality and admissibility in court.

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The current Federal Criminal Procedure Code (CFPP) Article 207 stipulates that a confession is a statement made voluntarily to the public prosecutor, judge, or court that is hearing the case, taking into account the formal requirements of Article 20 of the Constitution. This definition is repeated in Article 287 of the CFPP, which specifies that judicial police may submit findings but not procure confessions. If they nevertheless do so, the statement is not supposed to be given any evidential value.10 Article 20 of the Constitution stipulates that detainees cannot be forced to make a statement, and only confessions made to the Public Prosecutor or a judge are legally permissible as evidence. Article 20 of the Constitution requires that a confession must be made voluntarily and is admissible only if it is offered without coercion or duress. CFPP also prohibits the use of coercion as a means to obtain confessions, and by law a confession is admissible only if given without coercion: Under the current system a number of articles in the Constitution stipulate that confessions cannot serve as the sole basis for the Public Prosecutor to charge a defendant, and that a confession will not be valid if other evidence shows it to be false. Under Mexican City DF criminal procedures too, a confession is not valid if there are indications that it is not truthful. Furthermore, Article 20 of the Constitution states that to serve as evidence, a confession must be made in the presence of defense counsel (discussed below). This principle is also laid down specifically in the Federal Criminal Procedures Code (CFPP) and its Federal District counterpart (CPPDF). Article 9 of the Federal Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Torture (LFPST)—introduced specifically for the purpose of stamping out police abuse of offenders during criminal investigations—partly reiterates Article 20 of the Constitution: a confession or any information provided to police, the public prosecutor’s office, or court authority can only have evidentiary value if made in the presence of the accused’s defense counsel or “trusted individual,” and, if necessary, an interpreter. In fact Article 8 LFPST specifies that no confession or information obtained by torture may be cited in evidence. Yet the rules prohibiting the police from using coercion to secure confessions that could be used in evidence have not been interpreted as prohibiting them from carrying out interrogations. In practice, the judicial police and the public prosecutor’s office work closely together to secure the necessary evidence—normally consisting of confessions—to enable the latter to put a suspect on trial. The Committee Against Torture (CAT) has noted (2003: paragraph 199), “It is not uncommon for a detainee to be shuttled repeatedly between one service and the other.” Indeed, detainees usually remain at the disposal of the police for some time. This allows the police at various stages to interrogate and bully suspects into confessions or providing information for a crime under investigation. Sometimes suspects will be forced to sign confessions that have already been drawn up by police,

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and warned to confirm these statements before the public prosecutor (CAT 2003: paragraph 199). Thus judicial police are in fact able to circumvent the prohibition against securing confessions by submitting them to a public prosecutor as formal statements from the suspects. Holding people incommunicado is known to occur frequently and has been identified as Mexico’s most prevalent human rights violation not only in its own right, but also in facilitating interrogators’ violent methods to secure information and confessions before presenting a suspect to a prosecutor. The reports of torture looked into by CAT suggest that the highest incidence of torture occurs during this period between initial detention and committal for trial (2003: 186). During the possibly extended periods involved, there are still no judicial checks on either the legality of detention or the treatment of detainees. (See chapter 6.) The important point, as noted earlier, is that confessions obtained during such arbitrary detention are not necessarily invalidated. While a presumption of coercion is applied to any confession obtained when a detention by the public prosecutor’s office exceeds the established time limits, no such presumption is made about arbitrary detentions. This was expressly upheld by the Mexican Supreme Court, a decision followed by the circuit courts even after the 1993 reforms.11 To say that Mexican police are not exactly known as upholders of human rights is something of an understatement. Although current Federal Criminal Procedure Code (CFPP) prohibits the use of coercion as a means to obtain confessions and under Mexico City law a confession to a municipal crime is not valid if there are indications that it is not truthful, incidents of torture are reported to occur on a massive scale, as are lesser forms of physical abuse to secure information or confessions. These violations are linked primarily to the judicial police, i.e., both federal and state police forces responsible for criminal investigations. In 2003, CAT reported widespread similarity in the interrogation methods used. To obtain confessions, detainees’ hands are frequently tied behind their back and their arms pulled backwards, their feet tied together, and they are blindfolded. Deprivation of sleep, food, and water are common, as well as preventing detainees from using the bathroom. Other prisoners reported being taken to a riverbank and being threatened with drowning if they did not confess; mock-executions with firearms pointed at the head or fired nearby were also reported and electric-shock treatment, frequently after wetting the victim. There were frequent prisoner reports of police placing plastic bags over the prisoner’s head and tightened around the neck, causing near-asphyxiation. Water or tequila containing irritants such as carbonic acid or chili powder were poured in the victim’s mouth or nose while pressure was applied to the stomach. Detainees also reported being jumped upon when

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lying on the ground and throttled to cause the sensation of asphyxiation (CAT 2003). These all amount to torture. Intensive Interrogation and Torture The Committee Against Torture (CAT) in 2003 concluded that most torture takes place during the initial stages of a judicial investigation in order to obtain information quickly and easily for use in later criminal proceedings; this occurs notably in cases involving homicides, sexual offenses, kidnappings, robberies, and federal offenses such as drug trafficking, violation of the Federal Firearms and Explosive Act, or membership in armed groups (CAT 2003, paragraphs 137, 167, and 185). The motives underlying the use of torture are, however, even more wideranging. Whereas judicial police are those primarily guilty of informationor confession-driven torture, preventive police abuse with respect to public order activities or arrests for delitos flagrantes. CAT concluded that before bringing them before the Public Prosecutor, preventive police frequently threaten and beat detainees, mostly to punish or intimidate them, whether they resist arrest or not. Many of such cases were considered merely “cruel treatment” by the authorities in question, but in the view of the Committee members, however, these often amounted to torture as defined in Article 1 of the Constitution. CAT found that some detainees alleged that they had been tortured on their return to jail from a prosecutor’s office for failing to offer a confession. They would then be brought back to the prosecutor only after being forced by police to sign incriminating statements that they were supposed to confirm before the prosecutor. In fact, in torture cases there often appears to be complicity between officials from the public prosecutor’s office and judicial police, with public ministry officials not only being aware of the torture in question but sometimes even witnessing it, yet rarely taking action against those present (CAT 2003: paragraph 145, 146). Often officers who had tortured a detainee would subsequently be present when the detainee made a statement to the public prosecutor. Following the principle of “procedural immediacy,” courts generally allow such confessions made to prosecutors as evidence, even if retracted at a later stage (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001: 196). In practice, even when retracted, courts lack the means to ascertain whether a confession was in fact made voluntarily. They lay the burden of proof for the alleged torture on the defendants, who also have to prove their initial declaration was false and their later version of events true. For a retraction to nullify an earlier confession, it needs to be backed up by evidence. Sometimes a court may call for further investigation into the matter, but usually the

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burden of proof falls upon the individual concerned (CAT 2003: paragraph 203). The public prosecutor’s office may be asked by the judge to start an initial investigation. But neither the investigation of torture in itself nor the evidence that may emerge as a result of the investigation has any effect on the criminal proceedings against a suspect (CAT 2003: paragraph 202). Thus, Mexican courts have continued on a massive scale to accept confessions resulting from coercion, violence, and torture. As part of any accountability control system specifically dealing with allegations of physical abuse, the existence of a procedure to assess a suspect’s or prisoner’s physical state and injuries is of great importance. It provides a basis for assessing the truthfulness of such allegations and holding the perpetrators involved to account. Thus Mexican criminal procedure are supposed to provide for the presence of forensic doctors who will in principle examine all criminal suspects during the early stages of detention: while detained at the Public Prosecutor’s Office or on arrival at a prison. Medical examinations are usually automatically carried out on suspects, both before and after they give a statement to the Public Prosecutor. In addition, the 1991 Federal Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Torture (LFPST)—which has been duplicated and legally introduced in nearly all Mexican states—stipulates that any detainee requesting it must be medically examined by an official doctor. In 2003 a corps of around 115 federal doctors examined approximately 13,000 detainees in pre-trial detention, an average of one every day per doctor and some 310 state forensic doctors examined 62,000 detainees in less than a week; an additional 120 physicians were assigned to the Federal District (Heisler et al. 2003). Public Defenders: A Marginal Role As noted, since 1993 Article 20 of the Constitution does not allow a confession to be accepted in evidence unless it is made before the public prosecutor or judge with defense counsel present. In theory, the Committee against Torture (2003) concludes, the presence of the defense council or “trusted person” should thus be sufficient to prevent the occurrence of torture. In practice, however, this affords insufficient guarantees. Counsel is not present during police interrogations but only when a defendant provides a statement to the public prosecutor. By that time, many are afraid to say they have been tortured. With lawyers often appointed by the court, detainees commonly do not know or trust them, do not understand their role, nor are they allowed to meet them in private. In many cases they never see them again (CAT 2003: paragraph 155). The absence of an explicit constitutional right to legal counsel during detention and throughout the criminal proceedings was identified as a key factor permitting abuses in criminal investigations (Amnesty International 2004). Many considered this situation was made worse under the system

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by which courts assign “persons of confidence” to suspects without means, criticized as a poor substitute for real lawyers. But public defenders generally are notorious for their corruption and for seeing clients and their families first and foremost as a source of income. According to a 1996 public survey, a majority of the Mexican public consider lawyers dishonest, especially those who had been in contact with the criminal justice system (Covarrubias and Associates 1996, as discussed by Fix-Fierro 2003). The prison study by Marcelo Bergman and his colleagues (2003) confirms the prevalence of widespread corruption among lawyers: About 20 percent of prison inmates said that their lawyer had asked them for money supposedly to be given to the public prosecutor or other person of influence. As Hector Fix-Fierro has pointed out, such money tends to disappear into the pockets of the lawyers themselves.12 Others have noted, however, that since the adoption of the Federal Public Defenders Act (LFDP) in 1998 the numbers and quality of defense lawyers has improved considerably in various settings (CAT 2003: paragraphs 158 and 159).13 On the whole however, the role of legal counsel in the criminal process has remained marginal and poor in quality (Fix-Fierro 2007; Pásara 2003). Until 1993, the Constitution only guaranteed the right to have a public defender named for pre-trial proceedings, but not to have one present during preliminary detention and interrogation. In consequence, legal defense was only guaranteed during the trial itself, but not during pre-trial proceedings, for instance while prosecutors were taking notes during interrogation. The constitutional reforms of 1993 changed this, taking precedence over the Supreme Court’s ruling that it was up to a detainee to get a legal defender and that prosecutors could not be held responsible for their absence during the pre-trial phase. Nevertheless, Mexican public defenders have had only a marginal role in the criminal proceedings. For instance, they have usually not been allowed to meet detainees in private from the beginning of their detention or to provide advice or assistance when their clients make a statement to the public prosecutor. When present during the interrogation, a defender’s role is limited to that of observer, and they are not allowed to intervene. The role of legal counsel is restricted in other respects as well. During the forty-eight- to seventy-two-hour period after a suspect is first brought before a judge the defense has in principle the opportunity to demonstrate that the prosecution evidence does not show the suspect’s “probable responsibility” for alleged involvement in a crime. Yet defendants often do not see their counsel even after their initial statement, hampering the emergence of evidence in their favor. Bureaucratic hurdles often limit any access of public defenders to prosecution evidence in the case files, particularly during the initial proceedings

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(Amnesty International 2007). Files may be unavailable, “being updated,” or simply not contain all prosecution evidence. A lack of funding may prevent public defenders from copying the entire file, thus restricting proper scrutiny of the evidence presented. Within the time-span available, public defenders are commonly unable to gather any relevant evidence other than the testimony provided by their clients that could be added to the dossier of evidence (Fix-Feiro 2007, 266). Amnesty International (2007) concluded that public defenders who represent the poorest defendants frequently do not present any defense evidence at the committal stage, the earliest and most crucial stage of the criminal process, when the suspect can be remanded for trial. The quality of lawyers, both state-appointed and private, is generally low. The profession in Mexican society is widely held in contempt—and the chances of most accused being properly defended are remote. In 2000, the Legal Services Department of the Federal District found that its courtappointed public defenders did not provide minimum required services due to their insufficient numbers. The Department estimated that each public defender is responsible for at least eight of the seventy-four investigation bureaus of the DF Public Defender’s office, defending an average of nine people a day (CAT 2003: paragraph 157). The DF Human Rights Commission (recommendation 3/96, cited by the International Commission of Jurists 2003) that on many occasions the public defender only formally acts as counsel, merely completing procedural requisites such as signing declarations—thus fulfilling the system’s formal requirements—without even being present during the trial. On the basis of the cases it reviewed, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (2001: 196) found that public defenders routinely fail to mount a vigorous defense of their clients. In 45 percent of the cases in which a client appealed the decision of the trial court, the public defender failed to present the grounds for appeal or declare to the appellate court that there were any. The 2003 prison study (Bergman et al. 2003) found that most prisoners considered they had not been competently defended: Forty-six percent said that they had not been defended at all, and 22 percent that they had scarcely been defended; only 13 percent appeared satisfied with their public defenders. In fact, 45 percent of the prisoners had dismissed their public defenders, mostly because they had done nothing. In short, most indigent defendants are unable to offer testimonial or forensic evidence beyond that offered by the prosecution at the outset of the trial, and judgments are thus largely based upon the evidence presented by prosecutors (Magaloni and Zepeda Lecuona 2004: 176). The system of court-appointed defense counsel has been considered among the judiciary as very inadequate. The public defender’s general

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role is deemed “passive”—particularly in the case of those assigned to courts where they represent the very large majority of suspects facing trial. In some cases the judiciary reports that defendant’s lawyers appear more interested in helping prosecutors than their clients (CAT 2003: paragraph 158).

PAST JUDICIAL AND POLICE REFORMS Until the 1990s the judiciary enjoyed low status and little power vis à vis the executive branch and had low commensurate salaries. With little power, pay, and relevance, more qualified and ambitious new lawyers characteristically embarked on careers in private practice. Those joining the federal judiciary tended to have undistinguished professional and institutional records and experience and were from modest socio-economic backgrounds (Taylor 1997: 146–148; Merryman 1985: 34–38; Kossick 2004: 742). These problems were compounded by a lack of effective training available to sitting judges (Kossick 2004: 743). Since the broadening of the Supreme Court’s constitutional powers in 1994, considerable effort has been made to attract better-qualified candidates to the bench. But whether improved or not, generally speaking, the judiciary has remained procedurally and politically a weak force in Mexico. In some states it is still very subservient to politicians, implying a continued absence of de facto separation of powers. Only sometimes, for example in Aguascalientes, can it be said to function well, and independently (Magolini and Zepeda Lecuona 2004: 174). In view of the long history of human rights abuses committed by judicial police, their authority in the investigation of crimes has generally been cut back in legal reforms since 1984. Before 1984, judicial police could themselves initiate investigations, but now they may only work on cases assigned to them by public prosecutors. Before 1993, statements taken by them were admissible as evidence in court, whereas since only the statements made before a prosecutor or judge have evidential value; and since the 2008 reforms only when made before a judge. Thus, even before the Fox reforms, the criminal justice system had seen a variety of reforms aimed at reducing the risk of human rights abuses during the investigation stage. Most notably, in 1990 the CFPP was reformed to exclude from the judicial process prisoners’ statements made during prolonged detention; this reform had been introduced on the premise that under such circumstances it should be assumed that the authorities had coerced the defendant into making a self-incriminating statement.

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Reforms and Human Rights Reforms, however, have still left considerable scope for human rights abuses to continue. The introduction of the 1991 Federal Law to Prevent and Punish Torture (LFcST) illustrates the point. In spite of it having been partly motivated to ensure a ban on coerced confessions, Mexican courts continued to rule that confessions given during arbitrary detention are still valid as long as the victim admits guilt.14 Suspects can no longer be convicted on the basis of confession alone, yet if prosecutors offer other evidence, including police testimony, such confessions are still crucial evidence for securing a conviction. Furthermore, formal human rights protection established by law has also been partly undercut by judges themselves applying the “principle of procedural immediacy,” based on Supreme Court rulings, that attached greater validity to the first statement made by a detainee than to later statements. Following this principle, judges have sometimes been known to reject retractions of early confessions even when torture was evidently involved (Human Rights Watch 1999; Amnesty International 2007: 35). Reforms to both the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure introduced since 1993, as we have seen, have actually strengthened the position of prosecutors and extended their powers to arrest in order to reduce the high levels of criminality: they may now order the arrest of a person without a judicial order in “urgent” and “serious” cases and “to prevent the suspect from escaping justice.” Constitutional changes in 1996 gave prosecutors broader powers, such as phone-tapping, extended authority to request that judges deny bail, and a wider range of circumstances allowing them to confiscate goods. The Law to Fight Organized Crime that came into force later that year also extended the powers of prosecutors, doubling the time from forty-eight to ninety-six hours they can hold suspects before presenting them to a judge; as noted, in December 2008 this period was extended to eighty days. These rules and practices give the public prosecutor’s office and the federal judicial police extensive discretionary powers to order and carry out arrests in a broad spectrum of cases. As a result, many people can be arbitrarily detained, in spite of the recent restrictions put making arrest en flagrancia, a problem compounded by the absence of adequate internal police controls. Cases involving detainees later released without being charged for lack of evidence are not subject to any kind of review, and the system in essence permits arbitrary arrests without any negative consequences for the police or prosecutors. This undermines the relevance of the various procedural and constitutional guarantees that have been introduced in 2008, and specifically the explicit recognition of the “presumption of innocence.”

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CONCLUSION If all goes as planned, the 2008 judicial reforms, discussed more fully in the next chapters, should strengthen the role of the courts and lessen the allpowerful role of the prosecution system in determining the guilt or innocence of the accused. Nevertheless, in many respects the prosecutorial system will keep its central role, with all its inherent threats to human rights. In theory, however, the new system to be in place in 2016 will turn a hybrid and authoritarian-based inquisitorial into a modernized more efficient and effective form of criminal justice based on modern democratic and human rights principles. Added checks and balances will be introduced, which could diminish the likelihood of arbitrary decisions and abuse, thus adding legitimacy to a system which, in its current form, has been thoroughly discredited. But will such a positive outcome indeed be likely to materialize as part of Mexico’s ongoing democratization process? To answer this question in the next chapter we shall look at the wider picture of the kind of democratization and modernization reforms that have taken place within Mexico, and specifically those on an institutional level within the police and wider criminal justice system.

NOTES 1. Reames (2007: 123) refers to a figure of around 25,000 state investigating officers. 2. Mexican figures are notoriously unreliable, with frequent complaints made by those working within the police that some of the officers registered as police are only on the payroll, but not in fact at work. Illustrative of the increase in police over recent years, figures offered by the Federal Public Security Secretariat (September 2006) indicate that, of a total of 338,000 Mexican police officers in 2005, just over 135,000 were municipal Preventive Police, compared to just under 154,000 state and more than 15,000 federal Preventive Police: Of 27,600 Judicial Police, nearly 6,300 belonged to AFI. 3. portal.ssp.df.gob.mx/portal/organizacion/introduccion.htm (last accessed January 29, 2009). Previous figures for 2002 put out by SSP DF put the number of preventive police at around 34,000, 40,000 auxiliary police, and some 15,000 officers of the Bank and Industrial police. For 2009, the figure of 44,950 mentioned on the organization’s website supposedly referred to the Auxiliary and Bank and Industrial Police. But in the light of the previous figures, the number of police invariably expanding, and the number of Bank and Industrial Police specifically put at 15,300 we assume that the figure of 44,950 only refers to the Auxiliary Police. 4. The reforms required a constitutional amendment to take effect, which meant that seventeen out of Mexico’s thirty-one states had to ratify the legislation before it would take effect.

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5. www.hrw.org/reports/1999/mexico/Mexi991-03.htm#P414_91502: 4 (last accessed June 2006). 6. Such ex parte communications are not regulated by law but depend on the discretion of the individual judge, and entail the risk of personal sympathies or aversions affecting the proceedings, or perhaps even of illegal arrangements between judges and lawyers. 7. Unfortunately, Alvarado Mendoza fails to specify the source and date of this information. 8. Compare CAT 2003: paragraphs 177–179. 9. Mark Steven, December 9, 2008, “Mexican Congress approves widening police powers,” wtopnews.com/?nid=105&sid=1539470 (last accessed January 26, 2009). 10. Within the CCPDF Articles 126, 136, and 249 are similar. 11. Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court. “Jurisprudence 71.” In Semanario Judicial de La Federación, 6a época, part 2, appendix, 163, as discussed by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (2001: 31). 12. The general aura of nonintegrity surrounding Mexican solicitors in general also covers the cheating and plagiarism at law schools, known to go unpunished. In addition, many new law graduates upon entering formal practice of law present themselves as attorneys, when in fact they have not fully complied with all the requirements for a license (Kossick 2004: 740). 13. The 1998 Act is connected to wider efforts to improve the quality of the justice system and defendant’s rights, constituting part of the initiatives of the Zedillo administration to improve the rights of defendants within the system. The act, however, failed to address some of the more fundamental defense issues. 14. Seminario Judicial de la Federación, 8a época, Tomo XI, p. 1993, as cited by Human Rights Watch 1999.

4 Reducing Police Abuse: The Democratization Project

On Thursday, November 18, 2004, the Internal Affairs Unit of the Federal District Security Police (SSP DF) had a meal with its chief and a night out at a bar in Mexico City’s Zona Rosa. Trouble started when one of the officers allegedly refused to pay his bill and there was a fight with an employee of the restaurant. Waiters “escorted” him outside, where a number of “armed subjects” appeared (El Universal 20 November 2004). The very next day, SSP DF Chief Marcelo Ebrard informed the media of the dismissal of the chief of Internal Affairs, Manuel Arroyo, “for being the main person in a scandal and acting in a disorderly manner,” instructing him to vacate his office that very day. At the same time Ebrard announced the dismissal not only of the unit’s deputy director, but in fact of all officers present at the restaurant. After announcing the dismissals he stated that the incident would be the subject of an in-depth investigation by the local SSP in Cuauhtémoc where it had occurred. Internally, within the police, due process and the rule of law principles clearly still do not feature as a matter of course in post-PRI Mexico.

FROM AUTHORITARIAN RULE TOWARD DEMOCRACY With democracy, the rule of law and human rights are intrinsically linked. Democratic developments have been of major significance in linking police reform and human rights, in Mexico and elsewhere. Under authoritarian regimes there is no rule of law that protects citizens from state violation of their human rights, such as illegal arrests or torture. By definition, human rights can only be upheld if the rule of law prevails, that is to say, in 89

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democratic societies. Democratization has in principle laid the foundation for this development in Mexico. An important measure of the emergence of the rule of law is what has happened on an institutional level in internal and external administrative controls in reducing police abuse. We examine what institutional control mechanisms at present exist within the Mexico City DF police forces and what relevant external control mechanisms are available. This examination is preceded by a general survey of the most relevant police and criminal justice reforms since the mid-1990s alongside the main federal constitutional and criminal justice reform proposals. The impact of the reforms instigated under President Vicente Fox will be discussed in chapter 6. A discussion of the possible outcomes of the 2008 criminal justice and constitutional reforms follows in chapter 7. The Role of Civil Society One of the driving forces behind judicial and police reforms in Mexico has been the political democratization process. Since the late 1980s Mexico has been involved in a gradual evolution from authoritarian rule towards a system of formal democracy, initially while still under the hegemony of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).1 The role of Mexican civil society in such an evolution has been scrutinized in some detail (Olvera Rivera 2004, 2006), as discussed in chapter 1. Its significance, and its limitations, depend on the nature of the contribution it may make in developing democratic public life. The existence of a strong civil society can be a driving force in creating and stabilizing the rule of law. Democratic public life will also depend on the extent to which civil society develops a dense network of association, thus strengthening society’s social fabric and the construction of a culture of mutual tolerance and respect (Olvera Rivera 2004: 403). Yet Mexican civil society has generally remained weak in all these respects. During the 1990s civil groups—such as the National Accord for Democracy—started to promote the cause of democracy, including the issue of political rights. The growth in importance of civil groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) culminated in 1994 in the creation of the Civic Alliance, a coalition of over 400 NGOs and academics. As the country’s chief pro-democratic movement, this organization served as a major driving force in this respect, mobilizing demands throughout the 1990s for fair, equitable, and legitimate election (Olvera Rivera 2004, 2006; Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2006). “These movements offered telling criticism and point out the contradiction between legitimacy and legality. They also broke the regime’s moral and practical control over social policy” (Olvera Rivera 2004: 435). With their emphasis on resolving social problems by means of popular participation, they demonstrated possible alternatives to the pre-

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vailing populist and clientelist social policies. In 1994 they coordinated a broad scale monitoring of the elections by thousands of national observers, complemented by foreign observers. Their documentation of gross inequality in press coverage and television in favor of the PRI greatly lowered the party and government’s democratic credibility, contributing to a clamor for electoral reform (Morris 2009: 64; Olivera 1997: 115). Although the influence of the Civic Alliance in developing “public consultations” to place important issues on the national agenda have had more symbolic than legal or institutional significance, nevertheless the alliance was not an isolated phenomenon: The late 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence of tens of thousands of civic organization throughout the country. Their emergence was both a result of the economic crisis of the early 1990s and the austerity measures forced upon the government curtailing public spending and embrace neoliberal structural reforms, as well as a response to such factors as increasing electoral competition, opposition victories, signs of PRI’s vulnerability, divided government, and increased social pluralism (Morris 2009). Working generally in local settings and with small groups, and lacking in economic, organizational, and professional resources, the impact of Mexican NGOs on the national level remained limited. However, the pro-democracy movements of the 1990s were more successful in creating alternative public arenas, putting political rights on the top of the national agenda, and making a decisive contribution to reform of election laws and creation of new institutions promoting electoral democracy, as well as introducing the principle of citizen-monitoring of government. The fact that people openly started to speak out against the president and to make demands for effective rule of law symbolized the increased civil involvement in the public political debate, but also reflected increased emphasis on and importance attached to democratic values (López de Nava, et al. 2004 as discussed by Morris, 2009: 65; Fix-Fierro 2003: 241). Jonathan Fox (2007: 334) specifically credits NGOs, in conjunction with social movements and a more independent freely operating media, for keeping democratic issues of transparency and accountability on the public agenda. The growing activities of NGOs have also furthered the public’s consciousness of such issues as the rights of citizenship and proper governance and the fight against corruption, with wrongdoing being exposed, information on the operation of government collected and disseminated, and pressure for change mobilized (Valverda 2002 as discussed by Morris 2009: 65). Reforms were formulated by NGOs for the express purpose of addressing longstanding government corruption, inefficiency, and lack of public trust. Most prominently, in 2004 a twenty-five-year National Program to Obtain Justice (PNPJ) was announced with specific long- and medium-term goals. On the whole, however, the influence of civil society on the development of democratic public life has lain especially in the

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progressive institutionalization of electoral democracy and increasing respect for political rights. In Mexico City, after the election of a local PRD government in 1997 ending the PRI stranglehold on the city, citizen participation was formally encouraged by enactment of a local citizen participation law that created elected neighborhood representatives. This was, however, widely viewed as a futile symbolic exercise, given that these representatives lacked any executive or monitoring powers. Mexico City’s new government sought direct collaboration with NGOs and civic organizations, creating the Platform of Civic Organizations for Democracy which led to a few specific small-scale neighborhood projects. But the overall experiences of NGO collaboration with the PRD Mexico City administration proved a mixed blessing. There was a local loss of experienced leaders who took up government positions, which also diminished their capacity to criticize the city administration. Generally, the increased NGO-government collaboration saw a decline in the public credibility of those NGOs perceived as having lost their autonomy vis-à-vis the government (Olvera Rivera 2004: 422). Democratization, Corruption, and the Media An important manifestation of Mexico’s democratic evolution has been the changed role of the media during the 1980s and 1990s. Traditionally Mexican media served as a pillar of support for PRI rule, an arrangement deriving in part from corporatist and clientelistic control mechanisms—involving direct subsidies and secret payments to journalists—but also related to the long-term legitimacy of the old political system and norms within the journalistic profession itself (Morris 2009: 58; Hughes 2006: 51) Diane Davis (2006) has argued that under formal PRI dominance in past decades informal patronage and patron-client relations kept the whole social and political order functioning, and kept corruption largely out of the public eye. Although the police were widely known to be corrupt, PRI not only sought to keep such corruption as much as possible out of the press, but also to keep its occurrence within “acceptable limits.” PRI had an interest in doing so, as the usefulness of ties between a PRIdominated state and the police were restricted by public problems with police legitimacy. This meant that individual officers were transferred on a regular basis, and police structures and practices occasionally “reformed” to give the impression of containing the problem.2 Spurred on by the political changes, a weakening of the state and a strengthening of civil society journalism developed a new civic-minded professionalism that was more autonomous of government, public officials, and state policies (Morris 2009; Hughes 2006). As official dominance over the public agenda was replaced by attention to the perspectives of civil society, vigorous investigation through the media of previously closed

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topics replaced selective silence, and balanced coverage of opposition parties replaced electoral bias in favor of PRI. This facilitated the development of a political context in which civic mobilization increased, exposure of scandals became commonplace, and opposition parties found a more level playing field (Lawson 2004: 397). Like government officials and politicians, “Most civic activists seem to understand that calling attention to their causes through the media is one of the best ways to influence officials and effect change” (Lawson 2004: 398). In short, Mexico’s democratization process was accompanied by an increase in social accountability through the changed focus and increased scrutiny of public and political affairs by the media, which also facilitated the development and relevance of social movements and NGOs.

EARLIER MEXICAN STATE REFORM Mexico’s political transition from authoritarian to democratic rule has been a gradual one, both on a political and institutional level, and a variety of reforms were introduced well before Mexico’s “democratic transition.” Since the 1970s presidents have sought to modernize the state apparatus. For example, under President José López Portillo a constitutional reform in 1977 granted citizens the right to information, a reform that led to the Transparency Law, later introduced by President Fox (Morris 2009: 85). A wave of reforms were initiated in 1987 and 1988, aimed at modernizing Mexico’s legal system. They were the result of a growing number of internal and external factors pointing to the necessity of reforming Mexico’s federal justice system. These ranged from the ruling PRI party’s steady loss of legitimacy, the structural adjustments demanded by international donors and lenders, and criticism from international and nongovernmental organizations, to increasing public demands for accountability in response to political, electoral, and human rights abuses (Kossick 2004: 725 ff). The pressure for further judicial reforms was reinforced by the growing conviction that a new generation of institutionally-oriented reforms was needed to consolidate the gains derived from economic and political liberalization during the 1980s and 1990s. The presidency of Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) saw the start of a government campaign against corruption, the introduction of specific controls on budgets, the increase of transparency, the regulation of the conduct of public servants, the introduction of the office of comptroller general, and programs to create administrative simplification. President Carlos Salinas (1988–1994) initiated a program of “administrative simplification” involving the decentralization and regulation of government operations, the abolition of unnecessary procedures and increase of bureaucratic response time. Tackling corruption was also an

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issue, and a number of officials of the previous administration were jailed for corruption. With the launching of the Public Administration Modernization Program—based on the ideas of New Public Management Theory—the movement to modernize the state apparatus gained momentum under the Ernesto Zedillo presidency (1994–2000). The program specifically sought to modernize the state apparatus by such measures as a further simplifying of bureaucratic procedures, the promotion of a culture of service, development of a civil service system, and the adoption of performance evaluations, but also the enhancement of citizen involvement in decision-making. Citizen involvement was also encouraged by the creation of a program of social contralorías, which empowered citizens to monitor public work projects. Several initiatives were undertaken to tackle corruption, and developing control institutions like the Secretariat for the Control of Administrative Development (SECODAM)—which replaced the comptroller’s office previously established to tackle corruption.3 But Zedillo also began the National Program for Public Safety 1995–2000, which included targeting of corruption in the criminal justice system, as well as seeking an improvement of the quality of law enforcement by raising salaries, firing hundreds of drug agents for accepting bribes, improving police training and the restructuring of federal uniform police institution into the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), together with the setting up of the National Public Security System. Indeed, the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule signified both continuity and discontinuity—as Morris (2009: 83) aptly coined it—in the types of policies, and institutional and constitutional reform. It did not signal an abrupt change from the past. As part of democratization, the role and power of the different political and judicial institutions significantly shifted during the 1980s and 1990s. Constitutional Democracy One fundamental change concerned the role of the federal Constitution. Mexican rulers traditionally placed heavy emphasis on following correct procedures in formulating laws, and presidents characteristically did not make use of executive decrees to enforce their will. However, as a means for controlling the ruling elites (and in particular the president), the Constitution had limited impact. In the context of one-party rule and the absence of effective political opposition, the president had the ability to shape and reshape the fundamental rules of the game, and the Constitution did not in practice set limits on presidential powers. In fact, during the 71 years of PRI rule the Constitution was amended more than 400 times by successive presidents.

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Authoritarian rule in Mexico signified unconstrained rule by the party in power, but it was also characterized by what is known as presidencialismo, a presidency whose powers exceed the Constitution and overarches other branches of government. Under PRI rule the president had been able to serve as the ultimate autocratic arbiter of political conflict, ruling outside the Constitution, and employing partisan institutions, in particular the threat to expel rebellious politicians from the dominant PRI to induce their compliance. Under PRI supremacy, legislation was always initiated by the presidency and commonly rubberstamped by Congress. Characteristic of the president’s autocratic powers, a considerable part of the federal budget was labelled “secret” and put at his personal disposal. Under the Salinas presidency (1988–1994), but also in 1995, this amounted to some 25 percent of the total federal budget. In 1994 the Civic Alliance revealed that in the previous ten years consecutive presidents had spent over U.S. $1 billion dollars from this part of the budget to routinely pay multi-million dollar bonuses to cabinet level officials; in 1997 Congress eliminated the secret fund (Morris 2009: 98). Presidential powers also included control over the nomination and dismissal of judges, thus jeopardizing judicial independence. In fact, the PRI system provided few incentives to obey the law: Most disputes were resolved by political negotiations rather than in the courts. The contender with the most ties to power was most likely to win (Dillon and Preston 2004: 326). In spite of Mexico’s federal state structure, the central government has constituted the central point of reference for the states, notably in legislative matters. Traditionally, the national government assisted states on numerous issues, bailing them out of trouble when need be. This contributed to a vertical structure of accountability. Both formally and informally, states would answer to the central government, rather than making themselves accountable to different constituencies on a state level (Bergman 2007: 130). At the political level, therefore, democratization within Mexico has been associated with decentralization and federalism, propelled by political changes and the demise of PRI domination of politics (Díaz-Cayeros 2004). Over the years the democratization process also gradually changed the institutional equilibrium, PRI having in 1988 lost its long-term majority in the Chamber of Deputies and thus the ability to unilaterally modify the Constitution. As a result, all constitutional reforms have since been the result of negotiations between different political parties. “Multipartyism” fundamentally changed the dynamics of constitutional reforms, making them harder to achieve and also changing their direction. Reforms are now only possible if they involve changes approved by various political parties and interests. Consequently, during the 1990s PRI found it increasingly

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hard to set the rules of the game unilaterally. Accompanying this development, the presidency has become a relatively weaker institution, with a divided Congress having more effective veto powers. A final major democratic development occurred when, after a long and protracted struggle, electoral reforms were introduced in 1994 and 1996, granting the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) true independence, vesting it with the power to invalidate state and municipal elections and to review the constitutionality of federal and state electoral laws.4 By putting an independent body in charge of organizing and monitoring elections, PRI more or less voluntarily committed itself to the democratic process and honest elections. Judicial Reform In 1994, the Zedillo administration’s package of constitutional reforms was aimed at strengthening the federal judiciary and administration of justice. They were generally deemed a success in redressing the balance between the executive and the judiciary, bringing about what has become known as the Mexican judiciary’s “silent revolution.” The logic of the justice system reforms, in the words of the Supreme Court’s former president Genaro David Góngora, was to “eliminate dysfunctional and obsolete norms and procedures if [the justice system] is to have the capacity to receive and dispose of the controversies, concerns, and struggles which society currently generates” (cited in Kossick 2004: 727–728). In fact, since 1984 the federal government in a variety of ways has been seeking to improve the federal judicial system, notably by increasing salaries. Between 1998 and 2004 the salaries of judges and magistrates increased some 200 percent, and as a result enjoy the highest salaries of all federal government employees, considerably higher even than their U.S. federal counterparts (Kossick 2004: 744). This strategy has been successful in attracting a broader, more qualified range of candidates. It has also increased the proportion of female judges from 7 percent in 1982 to 19 percent in 2003. The second main strategy for raising the competency of the federal judiciary has been a more systematized, demanding, and competitive selection process along with higher standards for promotions. Such tougher requirements, with written and oral tests, together with workplace performance evaluations have been accompanied by development and implementation of training courses by the Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) (Kossick 2004: 747–748). To our knowledge there are as yet no studies that assessed the impact of these reforms on the professional standards at state and federal levels, modernizing equipment, and increasing the number of courts throughout the country.

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An important judicial reform of the Supreme Court, discussed in the next section, involved the creation of the Judicatura as a separate entity charged with administering the courts. The Visitaduría Judicial was created within the Judicatura as an independent monitoring agency for internal oversight. Under the old system the Supreme Court was also responsible for monitoring federal judges, but this seldom resulted in disciplinary measures or dismissals for misconduct because the justices tended to take care of the judges they had originally appointed (Morris 2009: 43). Furthermore, in laying out general principles and requirements within the judiciary, the judicial reforms of 1994 changed the selection of judges, for example, requiring prospective district judges to pass competitive exams (Cossio, 2005: 120). Since 1995 the courts have risen considerably in reputation and significance. Being less “clientelized” to serve the interests of the executive, they have come to perform a more autonomous and public function. Indeed, both civil society and politicians have increasingly turned to the courts to resolve political issues, and they have become an accepted venue for political groups to channel political demands. It reflects increased confidence in the autonomy of the juridical system vis-a-vis the political system, and has allowed court rulings to become part of the political debate (Morris 2009: 64; Fix-Fierro 2003a: 254, 262). Specifically because of the broadening of its powers the Supreme Court has also assumed a greater political role in dealing with conflicts once conducted solely in other arenas. Nevertheless, the performance of the judiciary still varies greatly between states. In some states the judiciary have remained extremely subservient to politicians, in other states poorly financed and understaffed, and in 2004 Beatriz Magaloni and Guilermo Zepeda (2004: 174) concluded that only in very few states there was a well-functioning judiciary. The Supreme Court Under PRI hegemony the Supreme Court was clearly subservient to the executive branch, and it refrained from involvement in any issue that could provoke conflict with those in power. Therefore, a fundamental change heralding Mexico’s move toward democracy was President Zedillo’s delegation in 1994 of more constitutional powers to the Supreme Court.5 This development can be attributed to the rise of multiple parties, creating incentives for President Zedillo to do so (Magaloni 2003: 267). With politicians of various other parties beginning to occupy important elected offices, the president’s authority came increasingly to be challenged and diluted. Delegating the power to rule on constitutional issues to the Supreme Court served as a means to solve the dilemmas raised by a weakened presidency (Magaloni 2003: 268).

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The Supreme Court is also empowered to judge the constitutionality of laws by a form of judicial review known as “unconstitutional actions” (acciones de inconstitucionalidad). This substantially increases the power of the judiciary vis-a-vis the political domain, in effect giving the Supreme Court the right of veto in the legislative process. This enhances the spread of horizontal forms of accountability.6 To strengthen the independence of the judiciary, the Zedillo constitutional reforms included an increase in the number of Congressional votes required for elevation to Supreme Court Judge from a simple one-half-plus-one majority to a two-thirds majority. This made it more difficult for any party to dominate Supreme Court appointments and thereby exert improper influence. Its increased independence was also strengthened by extending the appointment period from six to fifteen years, the only ground for removal now being “bad conduct.” Thus, in conflicts arising between different levels and branches of government occupied by politicians from different political parties, the Supreme Court may now serve more as an arbiter between the positions and actions taken by the opposing parties with respect to their constitutionality. In addition, the responsibility for appointing federal magistrates and district judges was transferred from the Supreme Court to CJF. This change insulates all of Mexico’s federal judges from potentially independence-compromising political influences. The reforms—twenty-seven articles in the Constitution were altered—also involved the resignation of the twenty-six members of the Supreme Court and a reduction of the court to eleven members: As Staton (2007: 280) points out, requiring the resignation of all then-current members paved the way for a new set of judges to revitalize the judiciary. The court’s jurisdiction over constitutional cases was broadened. The Supreme Court also sought to increase the independence of the federal judiciary, most notably through a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the judiciary a fixed yearly percentage of the federal budget (see Staton 2007: 285–287). A procedure for setting up new court facilities was created, a new electoral tribunal was introduced, and provisions were enacted designed to facilitate international procedural cooperation, and a separate entity was created that was charged with creating a judicial civil service (see Morris, 2009: 42; Fix-Feirro 2003a). As a result of the reforms also, Supreme Court legal precedents have become available on CD ROM and the Internet, and the federal government started to compile statistics concerning decisions made by federal courts. All in all, President Zedillo’s main successes in judicial reform were limited to the reforms connected to the Supreme Court, including relieving the Supreme Court of the burden of hearing alleged violation of constitutional rights, the amparo suits. But these reforms have indeed been widely judged a success, giving rise to an unprecedented level of judicial independence in Mexico. The Supreme Court for the first time acquired effective power

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and freedom to rule against the interests of the executive (Morris 2009: 42; Kossick 2004: 754). The court has also extended the reach of federal law to the states and has been able to challenge some of the customary prerogatives state governors enjoyed, including the largely unchallenged capacity to designate their subordinates to the state judiciary and to control it (Schatz, Concha and Magaloni Kerpel 2007: 216).

HUMAN RIGHTS IN MEXICAN LAW In Mexico’s democratization process during the 1990s, human rights issues increasingly appeared center stage on the political agenda. But the 1980s had already seen the emergence of human rights organizations that denounced torture and police excesses. Indeed, the Zedillo administration sought to address the issue of police and judicial abuses by increasing the rights of suspects in the criminal process. However, following the peso crisis in 1994 President Zedillo’s position was severely undermined and he was unable to carry through his overall plans for judicial reform, so his attention shifted to reform of the political process. Furthermore, in the face of rising crime during the mid-1990s, President Zedillo introduced legislation supposed to fight crime more effectively, while arguing that human rights guarantees constituted a straightjacket in the fight against increasingly sophisticated criminals. Among the reforms were changes weakening the requirements for obtaining an arrest warrant and for a judge to jail an indicted suspect on slimmer evidence. The introduction of these “reforms” was criticized by human rights organizations as increasing the risk of abuses, particularly of the innocent being subjected to unjust prosecution (Human Rights Watch 1999). Human rights are indeed imbedded in Mexico’s legal system, and can serve as a vehicle within the present democratic Mexican Constitution to help recreate positive social relationships. In many ways Mexican laws have been progressive in that they have paid much attention to human rights. Congress has adopted most international human rights treaties, and the Mexican Constitution has incorporated individual human rights, such as the right to equal treatment, as well as the principle of equality. There are specific articles guaranteeing the freedom of expression, petition, association and assembly, competition, property, travel, work, residence, and religion. A variety of legal guarantees are ensured, obligating the state to observe certain formalities, requirements, measures, and conditions; the suspension of these individual guarantees is only permitted under extraordinary circumstances such as invasions or serious public disturbances. Since the start of the new millennium a large number of government initiatives have aimed at reducing police human rights violations and increasing

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the rule of law, as well as improving the quality of policing and the criminal justice system in general. On coming into office in 2000, President Fox took a number of general steps to improve the human rights situation. He admitted official responsibility for past human rights abuses, announced a more positive approach to international human rights bodies, and occasionally employed his presidential power to release those wrongfully imprisoned. In 2001, a special prosecutor’s office was set up to investigate political violence in the past and to prosecute its perpetrators. During its first year in office, the Fox government agreed upon a Technical Cooperation Program with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. On the basis of the analysis and recommendations made by the representative of the UN Mexican High Commissioner, in 2004 the government presented a National Human Rights Program (PNDH) outlining ambitious plans to improve the country’s human rights in several respects. Progress has, however, remained limited, and in 2007 Amnesty International concluded that there was a clear lack of implementation mechanisms, and resources, or widespread support from institutions necessary to secure many of the changes proposed (Amnesty International 2007). The Amparo Law The Amparo Law, originally passed in 1936, is a central piece of legislation aimed at ensuring judicial system adherence to human rights standards. It offers a legal remedy against state actions that violate fundamental constitutional rights, thus also covering cases in which confessions have been obtained by violent means. An amparo is a suit by an individual filed in federal court against any Mexican authority (federal, state, or municipal) for an alleged violation of the constitutional rights of an individual. An action for amparo can be taken against decisions made in the course of a criminal procedure or to invalidate the conviction of a defendant. In practice, however, it fails to provide an effective remedy in cases of abuse occurring during the criminal process itself: The courts grant relief for only a small percentage of amparo petitions filed. For example, in the year 2000 reportedly only 20 percent of all amparos brought before the federal First Collegiate Tribunal in Penal Matters were successful (Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers 2004, paragraph 144).7 Nor does the Amparo Law provide adequate protection in instances of disappearances, as the petitioner is required to include details of the location of detention and the authority responsible.8 Legislative amendments to the Amparo Law during the late 1990s have limited its scope even further. A change in a detainee’s legal status, for

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example, a subsequent judicial ratification of a detention, may invalidate an amparo petition. Furthermore, the law was amended so that it now considers violations of the defendant’s rights laid down in Articles 19 and 20 of the Constitution to be irreparable if a first decision has already ruled against a defendant who alleges coercion in making a confession to the public prosecutor. The practical application of the Amparo Law is also rife with problems, and the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (2004) concluded that the amparo procedure is marred by the delays it causes, together with its complexity and high cost, which hinder access to justice. Furthermore, federal courts dismiss amparo suits on very formalistic grounds. In part this explains why most complaints of human rights violation filed against Prosecutors’ Offices and the police are normally filed with human rights commissions rather than the federal judiciary. The way the Amparo Law is applied illustrates the problem of human rights in Mexico. While there is ample formal recognition of their value and relevance in law, difficulties lie especially in their application. Not surprisingly, the issue of impunity has always been and, in spite of some improvements, still continues to be a central issue in the human rights discourse: The perpetrators of serious human rights violations tend to escape justice and formal sanctions. In Mexico the national and state human rights commissions play a central role in addressing human rights issues and allegations of abuses. Their origins as part of the democratic process and their significance will be discussed later in this chapter.

POLICE REFORMS Under authoritarian PRI rule, the objective of police work was fundamentally not to provide for citizens but regime security. As a result there was little planning around law enforcement functions or for such issues as professionalization or accountability. The rise of police reform on various fronts clearly reflects the effects of the democratization process, as part of which these issues had to be addressed. Indeed in the past decade numerous initiatives to change and reform Mexico’s many police forces have taken place, most primarily aimed at professionalizing the police. Only occasionally have they been aimed specifically at reducing police abuse, like the setting-up of AFI in 2001 to replace the notoriously corrupt and violent Federal Judicial Police. But other organizational police reforms, like the amalgamation of the Preventive Police into the Federal Preventive Police in 1999, were carried out to increase their effectiveness and to better integrate the different police forces’ operations (see chapter 3).

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In 2000 President Fox announced the National 2001–2006 Program to Combat Corruption and Promote Administrative Transparency and Development (PNCTDA) simultaneously announcing the formation of the Intersecretarial Commission for Transparency and the Combating of Corruption (CITCC) which made the drive against corruption the responsibility of all agencies of the federal administration, and not merely of SECODAM.9 Incorporating the earlier National Development Plan 2001–2006 which had specifically set out an agenda of good governance as Fox’s broad vision to transform Mexican public administration and his strategy to reduce corruption, the new National Program outlined the government’s intention to carry out reforms in its institutions, reinforce internal control mechanisms, review internal regulations, and examine the salaries of government employees.10 Against the background of the substantial increase in crime and worsened personal security of the 1990s, the proposals addressed the lack of public confidence in public security institutions. The document was of considerable importance, setting out the diagnosis of Mexico’s security and justice situation in 2000 and laying the foundation for the Judicial Reform Bill that the Fox Administration—unsuccessfully—put before Congress in 2004. Integration of Police Force Administration In the midst of increasing public security concerns during the mid-1990s, in 1995 the federal authorities under President Zedillo sought to improve the coordination and functioning of the different police forces. The National Public Security System (SNSP) was created to coordinate public security matters on the federal, state, and local levels, it was placed within the Interior Ministry rather than the Attorney General’s Office and the Office of the Public Prosecutor. The National Public Security Council (CNSP) was created as a coordinating body for SNSP. The Zedillo administration also created a series of coordinating councils at the state and local levels, emphasizing the central government’s role in data collection, coordination, and planning, rather than control. The main functions of SNSP as laid down in the General Law of the National Public Security System (LGSNSP) 1995 include the compilation of a nationwide information system on criminals and police forces, and the allocation of financial and technological resources to police forces in support of crime prevention, investigation, and prosecution. The activities of SNSP have been principally geared toward improving “police effectiveness” in dealing with insecurity and violence. Since its foundation in 1995 SNSP has been particularly involved in coordination of recruitment and training of police personnel, as well as the development of internal disciplinary systems and information exchange. SNSP has developed a screening function,

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maintaining a national police register to prevent police officials dismissed for corruption from being hired by another law-enforcement organization.11 But its central goal is the professionalization of the police by means of “integrated” police training. As such, it has developed training programs and an Evaluation and Certification Program, set up as an audit system in 1998. The results of this program, however, seem to be limited (Lopez Portillo Vargas 2003a). Under the original LGSNSP the National Public Security Council (CNSP) was chaired by the head of the Federal Public Security Agency (SSP) and consisted of thirty-one state governors, the head of the Mexico City DF government, the federal Secretaries of Defense, Navy, and Communications and Transportation, the Federal Attorney General, and the federal coordinating council’s own Executive Secretary. In December 2008, the old LGSNSP was abolished after Congress adopted a new General Law of the Public Security System. The main idea behind the new law is to increase the role of the federal authorities and specifically to increase coordination between the authorities on all levels and create common procedures for evaluation of the police. A new National Council for Public Security was to be set up as the highest body responsible for policy development, headed by the president, and including the participation of the ministers of federal departments of Defense and the Navy, the Minister of and the Attorney General (PGR) and state ministries (ministerios de gobernacion). The new system is to comprise three new subsystems: (i) an assessment system responsible for evaluating whether individual federal police officers are suitable for their work; (ii) a system responsible for crime prevention on a national level and (iii) an information system responsible for compiling national criminal statistics, including a census (censo) of all police officers. De facto this new system was more a continuation than a substantial rupture with the way the security system was organized: The old SNSP security system already had lost much of its significance after in January 2005—probably as a response to the lynching of the three federal police officers—Fox had created a federal security cabinet headed by himself. This security cabinet included the chief of SSP who was coordinating activities, the Attorney General as head of the PGR, and a number of military officials (Reames 2007: 126). Immediately following the election of Fox as president in 2000, the new federal Public Security Agency (SSP) had been set up as a vehicle to propose reorganization and specialization in the design and focus of federal criminal policy. Its specific objective was to emphasize standards of specialization and professionalism and the use of scientific tools and suitable techniques (Cámara de Diputades 2003, as cited by Moloeznik 2006: 178). A similar organizational structure was introduced in Mexico City, where municipal Preventive Police were brought under the umbrella of its own SSP DF. The

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organization was supposed to unify the crime prevention function of the different federal policing bodies. It was to create focused mandates under unified control, and thus facilitate the development of more professional and specialized enforcement. The main national Preventive Police force (PFP) was set up in 1999 under the Office of the Federal Attorney General (PGR), but then placed under that of the SSP, where it was to focus on crime prevention rather than judicial investigation. As federal institutions, the responsibilities and functions of SNSP, SSP, and PFP are organizationally connected; for instance the function of the Secretary of SSP and of SNSP and the Commissioner of the PFP may be fulfilled by one and the same person, as was the case between 2001 and 2004. In 2001 the Federal Investigative Agency (AFI) was founded to replace the notoriously corrupt and violent Federal Judicial Police (PJF). It subjected the in-service conduct of the agents to increasing internal control. A first batch of 543 investigative agents graduated as AFI officers in September 2001.12 The key approach used to upgrade the level of officers within AFI has been to raise recruitment standards and upgrade training procedures. For this purpose, the Federal Office of the Attorney General (PGR) has emphasized strict criteria of eligibility to the judicial police for admission. Initially, recruits were only required to have taken some university courses, but now the agency only accepts recruits with a university degree. Less than 50 percent of those accepted for training have been chosen to serve in the force. At the outset, AFI members were not to be recruited from former PJF officers, but the organization was only able to fill about 60 to 70 percent of its projected positions. As a result, AFI was opened up to former agents of PJF, subjecting them to the same selection procedures as the others. Remarkably, former PJR officers have been admitted by AFI as instructors of new recruits. A legal clause prohibits those failing to live up to the required standards to be re-hired by other law enforcement agencies (Immigration and Refugee Board Canada 2004).

THE OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL ATTORNEY GENERAL The Office of the Federal Attorney General (PGR)—roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Attorney General’s Office—is responsible for investigating and prosecuting federal offenses, such as drug and arms trafficking, kidnapping, and environmental offenses. It incorporates both the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Judicial Police, and is currently organized into twelve separate divisions.

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Over the years PGR has faced sustained criticism for corruption as well as accusations of torture; according to the Government Operations Department during the first three years of the Fox-administration at least 1,529 PGR employees were sanctioned for various types of violations (Artz 2007: 165). The militarization of PGR since the 1990s has also been controversial. This process continued under President Fox who—contrary to his promises to withdraw members from the military of the police and intelligence services—appointed to his cabinet as Attorney General of the PGR General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, who had previously served as Attorney General for Military Justice during the Zedillo administration. Since 1985 PGR has been purged and restructured at least once by every successive president (Freeman and Sierra 2005: 274). Most PGR organizational changes and reforms have initially focused on corruption scandals and human rights abuses. In 1996 the Attorney General fired more than 1,200 PGR staff for corruption or unsuitability: Most appealed their dismissal to Mexican courts for procedural flaws, and Mexican courts ordered PGR to reinstate 234 of them. Nevertheless, there were another 270 dismissals of PGR staff between December 1996 and August 1997, with 192 facing prosecution.13 Since 1997 there have been constant PGR reorganizations. Following his acknowledgment that Mexico’s Judicial Police “were not really equipped to carry out [criminal] investigations” in February 1997, Federal Attorney General Jorge Madrazo announced the reorganization of several sectors in charge of criminal investigations. These measures were to include the development of new methods of investigating crime, taking advantage of technological advances (Amnesty International 1997). In April 1997 the Attorney General announced the dissolution of the PGR antidrug unit (INCD). This followed the arrest of its former head, General Jésus Gutíerrez Rebollo, who was accused of being an associate of the Amado Carrillo Fuentes drug-trafficking organization. INCD was replaced by new, specially vetted units: The Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Health (FEADS) and the Organized Crime Unit (UCCO also known as SSPF). To make them more reliable, professional, and focused than their predecessor, they were to be staffed with personnel—many drawn from the dissolved INCD—who would have to pass procedures examining them for drug use, inspection of their personal finances and lifestyle, and polygraph screening. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and FBI played a central in this vetting procedure, and FEADS also received technical support from U.S. funds. PGR’s Special Anti-Organized Crime Unit (UEDO), set up in the mid 1990s, was reorganized at the turn of the century. In the overall restructuring of the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and Judicial Police, 2001 also saw the incorporation of three agencies into PGR: AFI, along

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with the Federal Anti-Kidnapping Agency (AFA), and the Deputy Attorney General’s Office Against Organized Crime (SCDO). FEADS, despite its vetting safeguards and the technical support it received, proved unsuccessful: It was disbanded in January 2001 following extortion charges against seven officers in Tijuana; two million U.S. dollars had been demanded from drug traffickers in exchange for return of their drugs and two detainees (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Country of Origin Research, Mexico: Police, May 2004). In its place, in 2003 the Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigation into Organized Crime (SIEDO) was set up.14 In August 2003, following a review of PGR’s anti-drug units, all officers involved in fighting drug trafficking and organized crime were brought under SIEDO, which by 2007 comprised six separate units, each specializing in a specific area: crimes against public health; terrorism and arms trafficking; money laundering and counterfeiting; human trafficking in minors, bodily organs and undocumented people; kidnappings; assault and robbery and vehicle theft. Since the nineties the DEA has played a role in training and identifying counterparts to work with in PGR, in the face of general corruption within the office. In particular the DEA has been involved in the creation of Sensitive Investigation Units (SIUs), for which a program was created in the late 1990s to train and create a team of trustworthy investigators for the DEA to work with. But soon significant drug-related corruption was discovered among SIU agents too. Nevertheless, in 2003 DEA agents considered the program a success, allowing them to work with Mexican law enforcement personnel considered trustworthy (Freeman and Sierra 2005: 274–275).15 One of the general measures undertaken by Attorney General Macedo, in part to reduce corruption, was a “salary modernization” which helped bring PGR incomes more in line with those in other areas of public administration (Artz 2007: 165).

COMMUNITY POLICING FOR PUBLIC TRUST: A FRINGE EXERCISE Introducing community policing is the type of reform that clearly fits within the democratization process. It makes the police more socially accountable and responsive to the communities where they operate, also being organizationally for the police themselves less hierarchical and more democratically structured. Mexico has seen the development of different types of “community policing,” albeit to a limited degree. In one form or other, community policing programs have developed in border states such as Baja California and also in some towns in Chiapas and Oaxaca. One of the more developed and evalu-

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ated programs is the Policía Comunitaria in the southern state of Guerrero, where such a force was formally set up during a meeting of village officials in 1995 (Rowland 2006). It originated in the manifest failure on the part of the authorities, including federal and state police, to provide minimal levels of protection in rural areas and small towns, along with reports of abusive and ineffective military and state police. Community organizations, including indigenous advocacy groups and farmer unions, collaborated with community leaders and the traditional indigenous assemblies to create by 2004 volunteer-run programs in forty-five communities in the state. They had specific characteristics not commonly associated with community policing, however. Most notably the organizational structure, which not only supports officers but also plays a key role in the administration of justice, was involved in activities outside the legal purview: the weighing of evidence and eyewitness testimony, determining a suspect’s guilt or innocence, and even ruling on the type of punishment or rehabilitation to be meted out to those found guilty (Rowland 2006: 188, 194). The Policía Comunitaria received support from municipal officials from all three major parties, who helped to promote it as a nonpartisan issue. It was widely perceived as a success both in terms of community satisfaction (increasing feelings of safety as well as a sense of justice) and cost effectiveness. Nevertheless, by 2004 its legitimacy was questioned, drawing opposition from the government of the state and particularly its governor, putting in doubt its continued existence (Rowland 2006: 202). More recently, however, this threat appears to have subsided and the police also appear at least minimally supportive of the project.16 Another interesting local community policing experiment was the establishment in January 2005 of a Policía Adulto Mayor in Ciudad Juárez—a city already notorious for the murder and disappearance of some 300 women over the past decade—in response to the brutal sexual assault and murder of two young girls in the town. This “elder police force” consists of 35 pensioners, at least 60 years of age, selected out of 300 applicants. They receive two weeks of training at the police academy to learn techniques of observation and description and some basic first aid and physical training. The group patrols outside the city’s elementary schools, and on weekends in the town’s three biggest public parks. Wearing a uniform of black trousers and a yellow shirt with a state police logo, and armed only with a cell phone, its members work in pairs watching out for suspicious activities and alerting police to any problems. Many are retired schoolteachers and doctors, and it is hoped that being elderly they are better able to gain the public’s confidence which completely eludes the city’s notoriously ineffective and corrupt police.17 In Mexico City, community policing is in one sense not a recent phenomenon. In old Mexican films, when the city constituted a conglomeration of

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villages, the so-called neighborhood police (Policía de Barrio) for all intents and purposes amounted to a kind of community police, in the sense of displaying intensive local police-public interaction. But as a concept, the idea of “community policing” was launched for the first time during the first democratically-elected government in Mexico City (1997–2000). SSP DF selected high-crime areas, where police officers were provided a threemonths’ training course on how to work with communities. On patrol cars the new name “Policía Comunitaria” appeared. But this was the sum of the change involved, with little else setting it apart from conventional police patrols (Arroyo 2003).18

INTERNAL INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON POLICE As part of the rule of law a democratic police is accountable to wider, more democratic institutions. Throughout the world, the form and context in which such accountability takes place vary widely. Accountability mechanisms tend to be associated especially with institutions unconnected with the police themselves, and thus held to be unbiased in investigating or otherwise dealing with specific allegations and human rights issues involving the police. But any accountability system is multi-layered, of which internal accountability constitutes an important and integral part. Internal Controls on Police In Mexico, impunity and immunity fairly accurately characterizes the limited chances for police officers to end up in jail for serious human rights violations. At the same time, Mexican police of all ranks are disciplined and/or dismissed annually in large numbers, and also subject to preliminary investigation (averiguaciones); the Federal District Public Prosecutor’s Office from 1999 through 2001 carried out 1,634 such investigations (Azaola 2006: 26). Sometimes officers are sacked in mass police purges. For instance, on May 12, 2004, the governor of Mexico’s central state of Morelos fired the entire state Preventive Police force of 552 officers after two senior police had been arrested for allegedly protecting a drug gang. Providing security was in Morelos subsequently turned over to the Federal Preventive Police. In June 2005, in the violent Mexican–U.S. border city of Nuevo Laredo, 240 officers out of the 700 in its entire Preventive Police force were dismissed (Vargas 2005).19 Illustrative of the dramatic fashion in which such “clean-up sweeps” may take place, the entire uniformed Preventive Police was simply pulled off the beat for six weeks in Nuevo Laredo for drug testing, background checks, and possible connections to organized

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crime in an effort to weed out corruption (Freeman 2006: 5; Vargas 2005). Most were fired for failing to take the drug test (Vargas 2005). In 1999 Mexico City itself saw the mass arrest and firing of hundreds of officers in a public display of cleaning up the police. Radio and television stations had been alerted and they reported live the surrounding of a police station in the north of the city by motorized police wearing ski masks and armed with automatic rifles, who then herded their colleagues into buses standing by. But officers are also sometimes dismissed in substantial numbers in a less spectacular fashion. According to information provided by SSP DF to Mexico City’s Legislative Assembly, from July 2002 through February 2003, 1,489 officers were dismissed (Azaola 2006: 26). On its website in 2004, SSP DF announced that 1,270 officers had been dismissed from March 2003 through February 2004.20 In addition to being fired, police officers may also be subjected to a broad range of disciplinary measures, from reprimands, to temporary detention (arraigo), to being removed from one’s sector or unit, to “internal arrest”: SSP DF reported locking up 1,154 of its officers as part of corrective punishments officially handed out from March 2003 through February 2004. Police officers are also repeatedly put “at the disposal of” the Public Prosecutor to be investigated for suspected criminal offenses: According to SSP DF, 206 officers were investigated on suspicion of criminal offenses during the period July 2002 to February 2003, and the DF Prosecutor’s Office specified that no fewer than 502 officers were investigated during the period January to July 2003 (Azaola 2006: 26, 38). Dismissals are not restricted to the lower ranks; 2007 saw the dismissal of no fewer that 287 federal police commanders throughout Mexico, after AFI was merged into the SSP.21 In any case, SSP DF organizational policy is for senior officers to be moved around, as a rule every two years. In 2004, of the eighty-nine sector chiefs in the city, no less than sixty-five were given changed responsibilities (Azaola 2006: 26). In certain circumstances, being moved has disciplinary connotations. In particular, senior officers may be moved elsewhere within the agency as a punishment, especially for failing to reduce the rates of kidnappings, bank robberies, and car thefts, the type of crimes affecting the powerful and those with influence on the police, even if crime rates in other respects are going down. Nationally, levels of ordinary street crimes and robberies carry little political weight because they primarily concern ordinary people (an estimated 90 percent go unreported anyway). In contrast, on the local level the police chiefs (delegaciones) are more concerned with, and give more attention to, the kind of crimes affecting ordinary citizens. However, under former SSP DF Chief Ebrard, the policy was introduced of immediately removing a police chief as a punishment if a bank robbery occurred in his

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district. This policy relates to the former practice of senior preventive police of demanding bribes from banks in exchange for protection, until some banks refused to do so. Against this background, bank robberies have remained a sensitive issue, with those in charge of a district held responsible for this happening on their watch. In any case, the effectiveness of such an “internal accountability system” as applied to senior police is dubious under any circumstances. An organizational policy focussing on moving senior officers around—whether or not with implicit disciplinary overtones—as a key management tool to increase performance is obsolete at best. While suggesting the existence of serious internal control and accountability—the image police chiefs want to convey to the outside world—at the very least it also contributes to an organization perpetually in flux, its members constantly feeling at risk of being uprooted and losing their position. Fitting the nature of the Mexican approach to “internal accountability,” one remarkable feature of the SSP DF approach toward officers facing criminal allegations is that their names and their alleged offenses are put on the organization’s website for all to see. This links up with a characteristic of Mexican institutional reality as a whole, namely, that what is important is that the impression be given that something is being done. Whether this is in fact the case, and whether the measures taken are actually effective, is of secondary importance, if that. Thus putting the names of its members on the organization’s own website under the heading of combate a la corrupción—in clear breach of their privacy—is intended to convince a skeptical outside world that the organization is in fact serious in tackling the problem.22 Internal Controls within the Federal Attorney General’s Office As part of any police accountability control system specifically dealing with allegations of physical abuse by police agents, a procedure to assess a suspect or prisoner’s physical state and injuries is of great importance. It provides a basis for assessing such allegations and holding the perpetrators to account. The Mexican criminal procedure includes the presence of forensic doctors who will in principle examine all criminal suspects during the early stages of detention: while detained at a Public Prosecutor’s Office or on arrival at a prison. Medical examinations are usually automatically carried out on suspects, both before and after they give a statement to the Public Prosecutor. In addition, the Federal Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Torture of 1991 (LFPST)—which has been duplicated and legally introduced in nearly all of the Mexican states—specifies that any detainee must be medically examined by an official doctor upon his request.

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As part of a wide range of government initiatives to reduce torture on the federal level, the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), together with the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) in 2001 drafted a “model procedure for the medical examination of torture and other physical abuse.” It then adopted this procedure in its training program “in the medical report on possible cases of torture and/or ill-treatment” for PGR staff. In August 2003, PGR ordered that the new procedures should be applied by all PGR officials in cases of alleged torture or ill-treatment, while a number of state Public Prosecutor’s Offices have also been developing such procedures with the assistance of PGR (Amnesty International 2007: 37). Indicative of the need for such measures were the findings in 2003, by a corps of around 115 federal forensic doctors who examined approximately 13,000 detainees in pre-trial detention, and some 310 state forensic doctors who examined 62,000 detainees as well as an additional 120 physicians were assigned to the Federal District: Many detainees, their experiences make clear, continued to be subject to torture (See chapter 6 for a more extensive overview of these data) (Heisler et al. 2003). In 2006 PGR planned to produce a users’ manual to give its medical experts the necessary technical information to document torture cases on the basis of such international standards, and was to start organizing an intensive training program for them. If carried out this would address some of the deficiencies identified by a high proportion of medical experts in the earlier torture study: the need for additional training (98 percent), standardized protocols and documentation procedures for use in cases of alleged or suspected torture and/or ill treatment (81 percent), and monitoring to ensure the quality and accuracy of medical evaluations (95 percent) (Heisler et al. 2003). We are not aware of any evaluation of these initiatives. Their success can, however, be expected to remain seriously in doubt if other obstacles identified by the same study remain unchanged: the absence of basic ancillary equipment, such as cameras, to document external injuries, the large caseload, the presence of police officers during medical examinations, as well as fear for physical or employment-related reprisals for documenting evidence of physical abuse. Another issue is that forensic doctors have remained part of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, putting their independence in doubt.

OTHER INTERNAL VERSUS EXTERNAL CONTROL MECHANISMS, MEXICAN-STYLE In many societies the bodies or departments responsible for the criminal investigation of complaints are linked with, or even constitute part of, the

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criminal justice system. But even in such cases, they nevertheless can constitute a form of external institutional control, as they have formal and operational independence from those they are investigating and prosecuting for abuses. Prosecutors may in actual fact function independently from the police, and the investigation of allegations of serious police abuse such as maltreatment or torture, are carried out by a separate police department. In Mexico, however, on the federal, state, and municipal levels alike, the judicial police and the prosecutors fall under the overarching Public Prosecutor’s Office, where their functions are closely linked. The investigation itself and the decision whether to prosecute are thus in essence taken up by the same agency against which allegations are directed, so that it resembles a form of internal rather than external institutional control. This is the more so as there is no remedy open to a complainant if a Public Prosecutor’s Office refuses to prosecute. Especially among modern police forces therefore, broader internal institutional arrangements and mechanism are important to ensure police adherence to human rights and the rule of law. For example, intra-systemic accountability is a form of institutional control, that is to say, controls that prosecutors and judges are obligated by law to exert within the criminal justice system (see chapter 3). Not surprisingly, reform often focuses on improving the effectiveness of this internal control mechanism through procedural guarantees to ensure the rights of defendants. Mexican Preventive Police do have diverse internal control mechanisms. Within SSP DF there exists a separate Human Rights Executive Directorate (DEDH). In general terms, its mission is to establish a culture of respect for human rights within SSP DF. Complaints against Mexico City preventive police are supposed to be lodged with DEDH, which is responsible for their investigation and bringing them procedurally to a conclusion; this also includes proposals for police-public reconciliation. The directorate is also responsible for the implementation of recommendations directed at SSP DF from both the federal and the Federal District Human Rights Commissions. We will not go further into DEDH here. Instead we concentrate on two institutions in most Mexican police forces responsible for a response to and control of police misconduct: the Internal Affairs Unit and the Council of Justice and Honor. Internal Affairs Unit and the Council of Honor and Justice Within the capital’s Preventive and Judicial Police alike, the Council of Honor and Justice and the Internal Affairs Unit are key internal control bodies, introduced in 1997, with powers and functions laid down in Article 53 of the DF Public Security Law (LSPDF). This setting up of the Council of

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Honor within the Federal District Preventive and Judicial Police occurred against the background of the Democratic Revolutionary Party’s (PRD) winning Mexico City’s mayoral elections, thus breaking PRI dominance for the first time. The introduction of such internal controls can be seen as part of an overall drive to modernize and professionalize the police, as occurred elsewhere in Latin America as well (Frühling 2009). The primary function of the Council of Honor and Justice according to the website of the SSP DF is “to treat and resolve serious infractions committed by police officers in matters foreseen in the Public Security Law and other effective orders.” As such, the Council is concerned with disciplinary matters, that is to say, administrative trangressions. In this capacity the Council decides upon temporary suspension or firing of police, but its functions also include offering rewards and compensations, as well as dealing with appeals. Within SSP DF, the Council constitutes part of the Directorate of the Council of Honor and Justice, which is responsible for conducting studies, investigations, and projects that form the basis for the Council’s work. Infractions deemed to be of a serious criminal nature are to be handed over to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Internal Affairs Units were set up in various police forces well before 1997. They are formally responsible for the inspection and supervision of the different police services falling under their respective agencies. Within SSP DF, Internal Affairs is an administrative department with a civilian chief in charge. Its role is to supervise all police services and to carry out investigations related to public and internal complaints and accusations leveled against any personnel working within the organization. According to its website, Internal Affairs is responsible for supervising the police agency and verifying that tasks are carried out in conformity with operational plans, principles, and codes of conduct.23 It also inspects operations of police headquarters, verifying that SSP DF is complying with administrative rules and investigates reported acts of corruption and develops anti-corruption operations. Article 13 of both the Federal Organic Public Security Law and the Public Security Law of the Federal District provides the legal basis for the General Directorate of Internal Affairs within SSP and SSP DF; within the latter the directorate was formerly referred to as the Home Unit. Its formal aim, Article 13 states, is “to supervise police behavior with the aim of ensuring that the police fulfil their obligations.” It also falls on Internal Affairs to detect and prevent infractions of the criminal code, such as corruption and “irregular conduct” among officers of its police force. As a direct result of its activities, during the period August 2004 through May 2005 the cases of 170 officers were sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for a broad range of criminal offenses.24 In 2004 the Council of Honor and Justice of SSP DF dealt with 2,271 cases “of serious disciplinary infractions,” resulting in the dismissal of

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1,279 officers, 203 suspensions, and 226 officers receiving “corrective disciplinary punishments.” For their part, during the year March 2004 through February 2005 the Internal Affairs Units were officially involved in 1,068 cases (compared to 1,041 in the previous year), about half of which were a result of complaints by citizens, from accusations of abuse of force to extortion (Azaola 2006: 26, 27). What exactly can we conclude from such figures about police internal control? The Internal Affairs incident of 2004 Revisited SSP DF Chief Ebrard justified his dismissal of all members of the DF Internal Affairs Unit on November 20, 2004, on the grounds that the officers of this group must set a good example, rather than being the subject of scandal and acting abusively with citizens. The incident, apparently, was regarded as the tip of the iceberg, since complaints had been levelled earlier against members of the unit with the city’s Human Rights Commission (CDHDF). The justification for dismissing these Unit members is thus doubly revealing. It sheds a sobering light not only on the Unit’s practices but also on how decisions on disciplinary matters are reached. Indirectly it does much to disclose the nature of internal control of Mexican police. Virtually a whole department could simply be dismissed within a day and a half after the occurrence of an alleged incident without any prior investigation or any formal procedure. It makes clear that to be dismissed not even specific accusations against a particular individual officer are required: It suffices for an officer to be present in a group of officers, only one of whom was thought to be actually involved in and the instigator of the troubles. Furthermore, the dismissal of the entire group of officers at the stroke of their superior’s pen suggests this was done without any consideration of wider internal consequences for the police. By implication, those working in an internal investigative body were considered easily replaceable by others. More important, rather than serving as harbinger of higher standards, it is a strong indication that internal accountability is hardly carried out in an equitable manner. It demonstrates the absence within the police culture of precisely those values that an internal control system should seek to uphold: adherence to the rule of law and observance of clearly defined procedures to establish guilt and personal responsibility for specific acts. In short, from whatever viewpoint, the events of November 2004 shed a bleak light on existing internal control mechanisms within SSP DF. Internal Control and Technical Innovations In 2003 plans were announced to provide the Preventive Police with new foolproof uniforms. These uniforms were to contain three microchips,

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one in the shirt collar, one in the back trouser pocket, and one in the right shoe. The main idea behind this plan was that these uniforms would make it more difficult for criminals to impersonate police. At the same time, officials considered that the new uniform would facilitate improved monitoring of police movement around the city and afford a greater degree of internal control over officers who leave their work area while on duty. Another initiative undertaken to reduce corruption was to introduce video surveillance at major crossroads to monitor police/citizen bribe interaction. Early 2003, 172 closed-circuit cameras were set up with 450 officers to keep an eye on situations apparently involving bribery (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada 2004: section 2). Internal Control: Police Recruitment and Training Training is also a form of internal institutional control. Both initial recruit training and later on-the-job training aim to instill among the members of a police force certain skills, a desired police identity, operations and codes of conduct. Some kinds of training may be less readily undermined by the impact of police culture. For example, the practical and social skills mastered, and the level of physical, fighting or weaponry skills will influence whether police resort to the use of force under difficult and confrontational circumstances (Uildriks 1996; Uildriks 1997). Depending on their quality, intensity, and frequency, such training can in principle be expected to have a positive effect by enhancing a minimal, proportionate, and adequate use of force.25 For example, firearms instruction constitutes an important aspect of police training. Such training varies greatly; a six-months’ training for Judicial Police recruits and three months for preventive police, firearms instruction is limited to one morning for auxiliary police. During our interviews, all officers emphasized that they are only allowed to use their firearms in self-defence, when actually being shot at. It is a point often stressed during firearms training and has been part of an effort to reduce the liberal use of firearms for which the Mexican police was notorious. Even though the law itself is much more liberal on this point, nearly all officers consider that by law they are only allowed to shoot when shot at.26 It is possible that as a strategy, instructing officers to make use of their firearm only when shot at has succeeded in reducing the level of illegal firearms use. The number of such incidents at least appears relatively modest; illegal shootings and killings that do occur are frequently carried out by drunken officers—training and instruction are obviously of little relevance under such circumstances. The level of police training became an important issue in 1994, the year that security emerged as an issue of serious public concern in Mexico City.

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Police institutions started to complain of a lack of adequate police training. The then chief of SSP DF, Ebrard, informed the Legislative Assembly in 2003 that 90 percent of police personnel had failed to receive training since joining one of the Federal District police forces which Mexico City’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) and the National Technical Institute (ITFP) agreed to provide additional police training. This resulted in some 19,000 officers being offered 60 hours of classes on substantive and procedural criminal law, criminology, ethics, and human rights. In a subsequent phase, classes were offered on computer skills, language, and the structure of the transport system. Police unease at the low standard of police training has gone hand in hand with concerns about the standards set for police recruitment. Within both Preventive and Judicial Police forces, new selection procedures have been introduced to improve matters. These have, however, proven structurally difficult to enforce, because even during times of economic recession there are always more vacancies than people willing to fill them: To be a police officer for most people continues to be the last option for a professional career. Most who join the police have relatives who are already in the police, or who have other family-police ties. Based the involvement of Nelia Tello Peón with entry examinations and the selection procedure within the DF Judicial Police in 1999 and 2000, as well as the interviews for this study, some join because they have businesses that requires some kind of police protection. Finally, in the present economic climate others join the police out of economic necessity, for lack of a viable alternative and in the belief that easy money will come their way. Different police forces have different pre-entry qualifications. The Federal Investigative Agency (AFI) recruits need to have a university degree, and Mexico City’s Judicial Police has begun to recruit officers with a higher education degree. In contrast, DF Bank and Industrial Police (PBI) do not have particular recruit qualifications. But all police organizations have a psychological evaluation and exams to ascertain a candidate’s general and socio-economic knowledge. Scores achieved by candidates tend to be only just above the required minimum. Police training in Mexico is organized separately at federal, state, and local levels, and varies as greatly in content and focus as in duration. For DF Preventive Police the ITFP is responsible for both new recruits and professional on-the-job training, but not for Auxiliary Police or Bank and Industrial Police (PBI). Recruit training for the Industrial and Bank Police (PBI) is offered by the DF Center for Recruitment and Training (Centro de Reclutamiento y Capacitación); the Auxiliary Police have their own training center (Centro de Formación Policial de la Policía Auxiliar del Distrito Federal). Recruit training for DF Preventive Police takes six months. This training is

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currently divided into two periods of three months each. Theoretical and practical segments are taught by experienced and sergeant-level colleagues. As part of the theoretical training some basic instruction is given in the Mexican system of law, human rights, liaison with the public, and internal police regulations, along with driving instruction, police intelligence and investigation techniques, police strategies and action, firearms training, and detention techniques and strategies. Since 2001, ITPF has offered primary and secondary schooling to officers on request. Such schooling is part of the DF Public Security Program for 2001–2006 to generate an educated police by enabling young officers to embark on and complete their education, ranging from a primary school level to university level. For the DF Public Prosecutor’s Office (PGDF) and its investigative Judicial Police, the Police Training Institute (IFP) in Mexico City is responsible for selection and recruitment of personnel and specialists, as well as for recruit and on-the-job professional and specialized training. Basic recruit training for DF Judicial Police takes nine months, compared to the six months for Preventive Police. The specific modules taught the DF Judicial Police in 2007 are: Protection of civilians and first aid, apprehension and control techniques, self-defense, identification, investigation techniques for stolen cars, law, forensic medicine, computer studies, protection of functionaries and VIPs, investigation of homicides and assault, investigation of other specific crimes, editing and compiling police information, other police techniques and tactics, firearms basic skills and training, and applied criminalistics in police investigation. As part of the latter, a “moralization program”—covering such subjects as ethics, police codes of conduct, and human rights—is offered as well as a specialization and updating programs. Altogether, Judicial Police training in Mexico City primarily involves classroom instruction (in 2007 totalling 198 hours) and some practical training. A major development in terms of on-the-job training for Mexico City Judicial Police has been the start in early 2004 of a two-year study program offered by the IFP leading to a technical college degree. Early 2006 saw the first batch of just over 300 officers who successfully completed this schooling. As yet, the content of this program is considered confidential, and requests on our part for information on its content were refused. Human rights education has been receiving more attention within the police. It constitutes part of the curriculum for DF Preventive and Judicial Police, the DF Federal Police, and, according to available evidence, also for most of Mexico’s state police forces. Human rights courses are provided as part of both recruits’ and on-the-job training. For example, in 2003 IFP provided 129 courses successfully completed by some 30,000 graduates. These involved 24 courses for basic recruit training, 49 update courses (completed

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by around 25,000 officers), and 52 specialized courses (finished by nearly 4,000 officers). However, a mere four courses for promotion were offered, successfully completed by eight Judicial Police officers.

EXTERNAL CONTROLS External institutional control constitutes an integral part of any serious accountability system. Its constitutive elements can differ widely in character in different societies. Sometimes investigations and procedures are pursued by bodies that operate completely independently from the police or criminal justice system, such as an ombudsperson or human rights commission. Mexican federal and state ombudsman institutions constitute the most serious and explicitly external forms of external control. The National Human Rights Commission The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) was set up in 1990. It was founded in the aftermath of major violent political confrontations in the state of Guerrero and the ensuing allegations of human rights violations committed by its state police. Its creation followed both national pressure from human rights advocacy by Mexican NGOs as well as pressure from the international community to improve the Mexican human rights record, set against the background of PRI gradually loosing its legitimacy and hold on power throughout the country.27 Despite being a government agency, CNDH was given formal independence to investigate allegations of police abuse, and on its inauguration Salinas told the Commission to proceed deliberately to expose misdeeds by government officials and security forces, irrespective of rank. The first appointed ombudsman, Jorge Carpizo, enjoyed high public esteem and immediately started work on a number of high-profile cases. His appointment signalled right from the start that the work of the Commission was to be taken seriously, and two years after it was set up Salinas granted CNDH full autonomy. Originally created as part of the Interior Ministry, a constitutional reform in 1992 granted it legal standing independent of the executive. The same year the Law on the CNDH was passed, which gave the Commission exclusive authority to design its own internal rules and administer its resources. Following a constitutional amendment that came into effect early in 1997 and specified and regulated the powers of organizations to protect human rights, the mandate of CNDH became to formulate for the respective authorities independent public nonbinding recommendations and charges and complaints. The Commission also acquired the crucial authority to demand information from public officials. Constitutional reform in

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1999 granted CNDH complete independence from the executive branch. This detached it from the regular administrative secretariats, reflected in the greater involvement of Congress in appointing its management.28 CNDH now also prepares its own annual budget for the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP). This is presented as part of the federal government’s budget to Congress, which has the exclusive authority to approve it. SHCP then informs CNDH of its budget for the next year. The functioning of the Commission is specifically laid down in the Law of CNDH. After receiving a complaint, the Commission’s ombudsman must inform the accused authority and seek reconciliation between the parties respecting the human rights of those affected, and secure a solution to the conflict (Article 36). If the implicated state authority is found responsible, a non-binding recommendation is issued. The authority must respond within fifteen days as to whether it accepts the recommendation; if it does, it has an additional fifteen days to inform CNDH what measures it has taken. The Commission’s power to make public the authority’s failure or refusal to comply usually amounts only to a reference to the case in the Commission’s annual report. The Commission’s responsibilities also include resolving disputes arising from recommendations, agreements, and omissions by the thirty-one state and the DF human rights commissions.29 An important point is that CNDH may also suggest legislative changes or, more commonly, make general recommendations to improve institutional practices considered warranted by the case in question. It may, for instance, call for more intensive anti-torture courses or for greater independence of medical practitioners in examining detainees. Whether these powers will result in measures that adequately address the problem identified is another matter, and will be discussed later. Evaluating the Human Rights Commissions In Mexico, the independent investigation of allegations against police tends to be especially associated with the various human rights commissions, on the federal or state level or for the Federal District. It is probably due to the human rights commissions’ independence that allegations of torture tend to be presented there rather than to the Prosecutor’s Office. As far as convictions are concerned, both national, state and DF human rights commissions play an important role in that the few cases resulting in penalties tend to be those in which a commission has recommended the initiation of criminal proceedings. In its annual report for the period October 1999–September 2000, the Federal District Human Rights Commission stated that during the year it had made fifteen recommendations concerning torture, involving fifty-four public servants. In all cases, criminal investiga-

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tions were initiated, and eventually six police officers were sentenced for committing torture and five sent to trial for torture but actually convicted of abuse of authority (CDHDF Seventh Annual Report: 249–250, as cited in CAT 2003: par. 213).30 But the role of human rights commissions in respect to torture has diminished. Over time there has been a shift in the nature of complaints: Toward the end of the 1990s there was a sharp fall in the number of complaints of torture. This was likely to be the result of actually diminished police torture in the city, as CNDH is located in Mexico City and is particularly accessible for victims of torture committed there. At any rate, fewer complaints of torture resulted in the Commission’s turning its attention to other human rights violations. Based on analyses of the nature of the complaints it received, CNDH has gradually shifted its attention from torture as a human rights issue to emphasizing a more general culture of respect for human rights.31 The work of CNDH has been widely considered of major importance by Mexican civil society and the Mexican authorities. It has provided an institutional way for citizens to relate to and be more influential with the authorities by introducing a hitherto absent independent accountability system to which the authorities and state institutions had to answer. Working formally on the basis of recommendations to the authorities concerned, right from the start of CNDH in the 1990s, these recommendations would characteristically draw a rapid response and follow-up. In one instance they even resulted in the dismissal of a state Public Prosecutor. Together with that of a large number of nongovernmental organizations, its work can be seen as part of a broad struggle in Mexico for human rights and democratic control of the police. CNDH has undoubtedly contributed to greater emphasis on and recognition of the value of human rights in Mexico, and its work has considerable moral authority and influence on public opinion, proving notably resourceful in documenting abuses. For example, the Commission carried out extensive research recently in the aftermath of police crackdowns in Guadalajara in 2004 and in Atenco in 2006 resulting in detailed accounts of serious human rights violations. In 2006, a comprehensive and authoritative evaluation of conditions in 191 prisons was also carried out using a carefully crafted system of indicators to assist governments in addressing the problems in their own penitentiary systems (Human Rights Watch 2008: 15). Together with that of a large number of nongovernmental organizations, its work can be seen as part of a wider-ranging social struggle in Mexico for human rights and democratic control of the police. In fact, the investigation and documentation of abuses in itself has helped reinforce human rights values by “naming and shaming” authori-

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ties who have committed human rights abuses. As Human Rights Watch argues, “negative publicity is the most effective tool the CNDH has for deterring future abuses and pressing authorities to reform laws and policies” (2008: 4). CNDH has also played a role in promoting reform. A study it carried out in 1994 of the state’s responsibility to provide monetary compensations for victims of human rights violations resulted in a presidential reform proposal that was passed by the federal Congress. A comparative study of Mexican and international law related to women’s and children’s rights served as the basis for substantial reforms passed by the state of Oaxaca and the Federal District. More recently, CNDH campaigned for expanding press freedoms and played an important role in passage of federal legislation in 2006 to protect journalists from having to reveal their sources and in 2007 to decriminalize “defamation” (Human Rights Watch 2008: 83). CNDH is widely believed to have eroded institutionalized corruption and torture within the police and the wider criminal justice system. Whether this is in fact directly attributable to CNDH is impossible to ascertain precisely, but many consider that, as a mechanism of formal and independent institutionalized accountability, it has contributed to a significant reduction of the daily level of police torture. As a largely unintended consequence, however, Pimentel (2000) suggests that the activities of CNDH have undermined police control over the criminal element, particularly with respect to organized crime, because police are now more reluctant to take forceful steps to arrest criminals. This point will be further discussed in chapters 5 and 6. Whatever the organization’s precise impact, CNDH has undoubtedly contributed to a greater emphasis on and recognition of the value of human rights. All thirty-one Mexican states as well as the Federal District (since 1993) now have independent human rights commissions dealing with alleged human rights violations committed by state and local authorities. Indeed, from January 2001 until July 2005 the DF Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) received no less than 3,351 complaints against officers of SSP DF, the monthly average increasing from 45 complaints in 2001 to 85 in 2005 (Azaola 2006: 27). The increased institutionalization and expansion of human rights commissions—the budget of the CNDH in 2007 amounted to no less than 801 million pesos, approximately $73 million—has fortified efforts from within civil society to raise and respond to a variety of human rights issues. All in all, there can be little doubt that the introduction and institutionalization of human rights commissions throughout Mexico, combined with pressure from within Mexican society, has helped to create a growing barrier to the kind of institutionalized human rights violations, notably torture, earlier committed with impunity by the military and police forces.

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REFORMING THE JUSTICE SYSTEM UNDER FOX AND CALDERÓN The reforms initiated under Fox and Calderón (discussed briefly in chapter 3) reflect the desire to modernize the archaic Mexican criminal justice system. This aims both to make it more efficient and effective, as well as transparent and equitable. Fox’s Failure to Reform the Justice and Security System The proposals of President Fox’s Justice Reform Bill (Iniciativa de Reforma en Seguridad Pública y Justicia Penal) of 2004 in part aimed at creating a more effective criminal justice system to combat crime by proposing the following elements: (i) the establishment of a single Federal Police, which would integrate the investigative AFI and the uniform PFP; (ii) providing federal, state and municipal police the authority to conduct investigations under guidelines issued by district attorneys—as a replacement of the Prosecutor’s Office (ministerio público)—and removing the command of the Public Ministry over the police; (iii) transformation of the Federal Attorney General’s Office PGR into the Fiscalía General de la Federación (Public Prosecutor General of the Federation), which would be responsible for improving guidance and supervision of police investigations and prosecutions before the court32; (iv) integration of a National Police System responsible for the creation of a national police curriculum, standardization of the professional standards for the police and issuing of proper equipment to police, as well as integration of police intelligence by combining criminal and preventive intelligence; (iv) creation of a separate position of Judge for Enforcement of Sentences and the provision of jurisdictional guarantees for the resolution of conflicts and supervision of the enforcement of sentences. Elected in part on a human rights agenda, Fox put considerable emphasis on such issues, and a number of proposals in the bill specifically aimed to increasing the protection of human rights: (i) transformation of the criminal procedure system from a written inquisitorial to an accusatorial oral system, with increased transparency, equality among the parties, immediacy and publicity; (ii) introduction of the principle of the presumption of innocence in the Constitution; (iii) improvement of the quality of defense counsel, notably by the abolition of the “person of trust,” a person not qualified to practice law to represent a defendant to serve as a substitute for a lawyer; (iv) creation of alternatives to criminal proceedings;33 (v) establishment of an abbreviated process to allow defense counsel and prosecutor to plea bargain on the sentence to be imposed; (vi) introduction of guarantees that to be legally relevant all defendant statements should be made in front of a judge and in the presence of defense counsel; (vii) crea-

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tion of a separate criminal justice system for minors, with due process rights to minors provided in accordance with international standards; (viii) creation of a new type of judge to control the pre-trial process. In addition to the human rights reforms initiated or proposed by the Fox Administration, the Government Policy Commission on Human Rights and its subcommittees continued to develop various initiatives, including the harmonizing of domestic legislation with international human rights standards. The Constitutional and judicial reforms proposed by the Fox administration in 2004 included an extension of the scope of federal human rights amparo appeal procedures to include alleged violations of international human rights laws. Article 73 of the Constitution was to be amended to permit federal intervention in human rights cases that would normally fall under the jurisdiction of state or local authorities, faced with their widely acknowledged inadequate protection of human rights. This would allow the federal authorities to assume direct legal responsibility for such cases. But in the face of persistent PRI opposition Fox failed, primarily because of the inability of his administration to construct a governing coalition supporting his justice reform initiative. By the end of his presidency none of the above reforms had passed Congress. Public Security and the Justice Reforms under Calderón Calderón came into office on December 1, 2006, after a long and protracted battle following the controversial 2006 elections. His ascent to power occurred in the wake of an explosion of gang- and drug-related killings, which increased from some 1,300 in 2005 to 2,100 in 2006, tripling in the following two years to over 6,000 in 2008. The inability of the police to tackle the problem and control the import of guns and export of drugs along its borders into the United States induced President Calderón as one of his first steps to send the army into the city of Tijuana on the northern border. Troops disarmed the local police, who were widely regarded as working with rather than against drug gangs, and confiscated their guns for ballistic tests to check whether they had been used in unlawful killings. The start of Calderón’s Presidency also coincided with the brutal and widely publicized federal police response in November 2006 to a demonstration of indigenous teachers in Oaxaca in a context of continuous political unrest directed against the local governor. The Federal Preventive Police according to various reports, shot tear gas and projectiles from rooftops, leaving more than a hundred wounded (twenty-five by bullets) and twenty-five disappeared. Many of those arrested reported serious abuse, being beaten by federal police in jail, and also alleging sexual abuse. More serious allegations of serious sexual assaults against at least twenty women in May 2006 had emerged in an outcry over excessive police violence after

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a demonstration of flower growers/vendors in the village of Salvador de Atenco, which left one fourteen-year-old dead and almost fifty persons injured. The incidents in Atenco and Oaxaca were also remarkable for a lack of condemnation of police excesses on the part of the federal government, resulting in worries among NGOs that human rights issues were no longer prominent on the government’s agenda. Such concerns were directly related to the fresh security policies of the new government, which amounted to a reduction of suspects’ human rights in favor of increased police powers deemed necessary to more effectively tackle organized crime. On March 9, 2007, the Calderón administration submitted to Congress legislative proposals that would allow police to enter anyone’s house without a judge’s order, if they believed that a crime had been committed there. The proposals also included other expansions of police powers, for example, by giving them permission to tap telephone conversations without a court order on the presumption of criminal activity. Whereas plans and initiatives to reform the police had been largely shelved during the last years of the Fox presidency, they were immediately revived by Calderón’s endeavors to increase effectiveness of and control over the federal police. One of his first moves was to revamp plans to unify the different federal police forces, AFI and the PFP, announcing their expansion and reorganization under the authority of the Public Security Ministry, a move proposed in a bill submitted to the Congress. In January 2007, he negotiated an agreement between the security minister and Mexico’s thirty-one state governors and Federal District to give them the power to intervene in local police forces in an effort to clean them up. García Luna, who was put in charge of the new federal police force, started removing 284 federal police commanders, replacing them with his own handpicked officers as part of a wider restructuring of the new force. Many were recruited from outside the force, were trained at the new police academy and specifically vetted for corruption. Other officers had a background in the military or in Mexico’s espionage service, and most of them had worked under García Luna in AFI during the Fox administration. As part of the restructuring of the department he also demoted dozens of officers, replacing them with his own. During the first 18 months of the new force around 3,000 new recruits were brought in, most drawn among college students and former soldiers. In contrast to Fox, Calderón was successful in getting new legislation passed to overhaul the justice system, and he successfully bargained with the opposition PDR to get reforms passed by Congress on a number of fronts, including police, judicial, and electoral reforms.34 The Calderón reforms that were enacted into law in June 2008 had in part already been proposed by President Fox in his 2004 Judicial Reform Bill, with the notable

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exception of Fox’s plans to make the prosecution system more independent from the executive, the creation of a specific juvenile justice system, and the development of alternatives to criminal justice. The Calderón reforms were designed to fundamentally alter Mexico’s criminal justice by introducing an accusatory oral trial system, and incorporating the principle of the presumption of innocence. These were adopted with the approval of 95 percent of all delegates in the House of Deputies and the Senate; only a handful of PRD delegates continued to oppose expansion of law enforcement agencies’ powers (see chapter 3). The Calderón reforms particularly reflect increased public concern about the rise in street violence and the power of organized crime, especially drug cartels. In response, army involvement in security operations, particularly in border areas, has been a key strategy against organized crime by drug cartels and gangs. A part of the judicial reforms has extended state powers against those suspected of organized crime, who may now be detained without charge for up to eighty days under judicial changes adopted by Congress in December 2008 as part of the broad package of judicial powers, as well as a number of individual constitutional guarantees (see chapter 3). Broad cross-party consensus on Calderón’s reforms can be attributed mostly to the removal of a controversial proposal to grant the police authority to enter homes without a warrant in cases of “flagrancy” or when someone’s individual safety was perceived to be in danger (El Universal 6 March, 2008). Calderón’s original proposal for even broader powers of detention was removed after complaints from the Mexico City DF Human Rights Commission, among other rights organizations. Under the newly amended Federal Criminal Procedures Code, police are permitted to search a house without a warrant only when someone’s life is in immediate danger, a criterion still likely to offer police wide discretion for entering private homes without a warrant.35 One benefit of the Calderón federal reforms is that they will help streamline the now widely disparate laws of the thirty-one Mexican states and Federal District: by 2009 all thirty-one states had approved the constitutional reforms. Whether they will indeed fundamentally modernize and alter justice and police practices and bring Mexico closer to the rule of law with observance of due process and other human rights, is an issue to be returned to in chapter 7.

CONCLUSION Two general elections that saw a defeat of PRI in 2000 and 2006 have precipitated a major shift of power between the various state institutions. Most manifestly there has been a loss in power of the president, and an increase

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in the power and autonomy of Congress, federal bureaucracies and judiciary, and at the state level. Clearly, the democratization process has altered the political and institutional landscape in Mexico, as Morris (2009) puts it, even to the extent of totally refashioning the Mexican state and state-society relations. In this chapter we have looked at some of the main institutional police internal control mechanisms, and outlined the main police and judicial reforms initiated under the Fox and Calderón presidency. While setting these out against the background of Mexico’s democratic development, we have as yet not sought to come to in-depth understanding of their relevance. This we shall do in chapter 6. To be able to do so properly, however, the personal perceptions and functioning of Mexico City’s preventive and judicial police are required in their response to human rights and other reform and internal control issues. To this subject we now turn, to present the heart of our empirical police study.

NOTES 1. For an overview of the political process involved in this transition see Morris 2009: chapter 3. 2. Points raised with Davis in private correspondence, November 5, 2006. 3. Morris 2009 offers a general overview of these reforms. (See also Arellano and Guerrero 2003, Franco-Barrios 2003; Mitchell 2005; Sánchez 2004.) 4. For a more extensive discussion of the role of IFE in the democratization process see Schatz, Concha, and Magaloni Kerpel (2007: 207–208) and Morris (2009: 62). 5. These reforms were preceded by a 1987 constitutional reform that gave the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary more power; some rather minimal guidelines for local judiciaries and judges were also introduced (Morris, 2009: 61; Lopez-Ayllon and Fix Fierro, 2003: 317). 6. The improvement in judicial independence and the impact of its rulings clearly increased the relevance of the Supreme Court. Over the period 1995–2002, 164 Acciones de Inconstitucionalidad were filed, accompanied by 649 Constitutional Controversies, compared to 55 such cases during the period 1917–1994. “This quantitative upswing has been accompanied by the newfound willingness of the [Supreme Court] to proactively provide meaningful guidance with respect to a seemingly unlimited range of contemporary political, commercial and social issues . . . and illustrates the way in which the Supreme Court is increasingly using its power of interpretation for the purpose of displacing the executive as the ultimate referee with respect to the interests of government, business, and society, attaining a new prominence in the public life of the nation” (Kossick 2004: 767, 768). 7. Starting in 2004, the United Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency of the U.S. State Department, lobbied for the reform toward a system of oral trials. USAID channelled funds to promote this reform among Mexican academics and lawmakers. One of the first results was the creation of the Support

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Program for an effective legal system in Mexico (Proderecho) which was to function as the main “advisor” to lawmakers for the new judicial system (Carasco and Liticia 2008). 8. Ley de Amparo, Article 137. For a more extensive overview of the limited impact of the law, see Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001: 103 ff. 9. Presided over by the Secretary of SECODAM, this interministerial body incorporated all eighteen secretaries of state, the Attorney General, the directors of various decentralized agencies, SECODAM’s undersecretary for Atención Ciudadana y Normatividad, and five officials from the president’s staff (for a more extensive discussion of the role of CITCC, see Morris 2009: 86ff). 10. In a speech before the National Federation of Lawyers on September 1999, Fox cast corruption as “a social phenomenon with origins in political and economic arrangements and specific institutions,” and promised “to combat corruption without privilege or protection, and without political or partisan vengeance.” Perhaps as proof of the ingrained nature of Mexican political corruption, in 1999 the Fox campaign engaged in a variety of corrupt practices through its Amigos de Fox organization, including the laundering of funds, the establishing of ghost companies, foreign financing for the campaign, etc. (Morris 2009: 86). 11. By mid-2002 this registry contained the pictures and fingerprints of 174,000 officers from various police and prosecutor offices, some 53 percent of the 325,816 personnel on active duty at that time (Secretaria de Seguridad Pública 2002, as cited by Moloeznik 2006: 176). 12. Kent Paterson “Deepening U.S.–Mexico Security,” Americas Program, November 2001, amercas-irc-online.org/reports/2001/bl84.html (last accessed November 2006). 13. Data offered by Attorney General Madrazo, to the U.S. Embassy, cited by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, “Mexican Institutional Reorganization and Anti-Corruption Efforts” www.whitehousedrugpolicy-gov/publications/ enforce/rpttocong/usmexmex-html (last accessed November 2006). 14. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2003. 15. As Freeman and Sierra (2005: 275) point out, however, there were few concrete examples of SIU successes; most arrest of major drug traffickers during these years were carried out by the military. 16. Information based on the work of the Due Process and Law Foundation, provided in private correspondence from Mark Ungar, May, 2 2007. 17. Olga Rodriguez (2005) suggests that the Policía Adulto Mayor were wellreceived by the parents—after initial battles, with traffic congestions and unruly parents double-parking to drop off and pick up their children. The coordinator of the group also reported a reduction in the number of stolen cars and assaults on parents outside schools. We are not aware of the fate of this experiment in the face of the onslaught of cartel violence and the flooding of the military in the city in 2008 and 2009. 18. Somewhat reminiscent of the concept of community policing in the Mexico City neighborhood of Iztapalapa, a so-called “safety corridor” was created in an area identified as particularly dangerous for school children. This corridor consists of officers placed at regular intervals to secure the children’s safe-coming from and going to school.

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19. Freeman (2006: 5) noted that actually less than half of the 700 were indeed cleared to return. Being easily removed or dismissed is characteristic not just of the Mexican police in particular, but reflects the fate most employees can face, whether they work in the state or private sector. 20. The reliability of these figures is, however, uncertain. In the course of 2004, DF Preventive Police Chief Ebrard announced that during the two years under his command at SSP DF he had fired 580 officers from the force, substantially less than the officially published figures. These figures stand again in stark contrast with those provided by DF Mayor Obrador, who stated that between September 2002 and August 2003, 2,698 preventive police had been dismissed (Azaola 2006: 38). 21. In Mexico’s Drug War, Bad Cops Are a Mounting Problem, Tim Padgett with Dolly Mascarenas, Nov 22, 2008, www.time.com/time/world/article/ 0,8599,1861296,00.html (last accessed December 22, 2008). 22. The number of police and ex-police ending up in jail is actually larger than the conventional wisdom of Mexican police impunity would suggest. A recent prison study found that 7.6 percent of inmates of three different prisons were “government workers” (trabajadores del governo), and 14 percent had at one time (alguna vez) worked in the army and the police (Bergman et al. 2003). 23. www.ssp.df.gob.mx/htmls/ssp_tipos_pre_int.html. 24. www.ssp.df.gob.mx/htmls/corr_pol_disp_mp_05.htm. 25. In a study of police brutality in urban Brazil, Human Rights Watch (1997) attributed a gradual reduction in the number of killings by police in São Paulo during the 1990s to the introduction of a program to retrain police officers who have been involved in fatal shootings, including a course on human rights. In Rio Grande do Sul HRW found a higher level of professionalism and fewer human rights violations compared to other Brazilian urban areas, which it in part attributed to a higher degree of training, two or three times the average length in Brazil. 26. Illustrative of current misconceptions among police, one preventive officer argued in a private conversation that if the police would be shot at by a 22. gun, shooting back with 38. gun on the part of the police would be considered disproportional and thus abuse of power. 27. In the course of 1990 the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) had won almost half of the 113 mayoral elections there. Following allegations of PRI-organized election frauds, two major incidents occurred, one involving the beating to death of a protestor by Guerrero state police seeking to halt an “airport demonstration,” followed a week later by a confrontation between 800 state police who were to evict PRD protestors from eight town halls. In one village, the police moved in shooting, and PRD shot back. At the end of the day, four people had died (three of them police), eight PRD followers were reported missing, thirty were wounded, and a dozen arrested. As reported in June 1990 in America’s Watch report Human Rights in Mexico: A Policy of Impunity, there were in the wake of these incidents dozens of reported clashes between PRD and PRI followers, with many killed. During this period, a group of women who for many years had been campaigning for government attention to the disappearance of their children, for which the police were considered responsible, was for the first time invited to a meeting with the President Salinas. At the close of the meeting the President promised them news of their children “within twenty days.” Exactly twenty days later, on June 6, 1990, he announced the

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creation of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) (Dillon and Preston 2004: 202). This was shortly after the murder of a well-known human rights lawyer, Norma Corona, in May. Since the setting up of such a special institution was likely to expose PRI-related abuse and further undermine its previously unfettered hold on power, this decision could only have been made in the context of the President Salinas’ ever-increasing alienation from his own party, given the pressure on Salinas to distance himself from PRI excesses and abuse of power. 28. In shifting the appointing authority from the President to Congress, the Law of 1999 specified that the Senate elects, by a two-thirds majority, the president and members of the National Human Rights Commission Advisory Council. 29. Such disputes may concern complaints by individuals about their state commission or against recommendations issued by the state commission, as well as failure of state authorities to comply with these. A modification of the state commission’s recommendations can be made, or instead CNDH may ratify them with a directive to this effect to the relevant authority. 30. In the latter case the court judged that torture had not occurred, in spite of the overwhelming signs of torture and the nature of the injuries, which were lifethreatening. It considered that an essential element of torture had not been proven, namely, that the intention of the aggressors had been simply to punish the victim. 31. One issue emerging from the complaints sent to the Mexico City CDHDF was the more than doubling in one year of the number of complaints of arbitrary arrest (399) by 2002, probably as a consequence of pressure on police to bring a greater number of offenders before the Public Prosecutor. Analysis by the Commission gives us insight into the human rights issues emerging from these complaints: (1) infringements of personal liberties; (2) infringements of physical and psychological integrity; (3) harassment; (4) robberies by police; (5) human rights violations by police superior officers against lower-ranking police (Ugalde 2003). 32. Introduced as part of the Justice Reform Bill, the Law of the Federal Public Prosecutor (LFGF) proposed reorganizing the functions of the PGR. The Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor (FGF) was to replace PGR and function as an independent prosecution system free from interference from the Justice Ministry authorities and at liberty to act strictly on the basis of legal criteria. By its conversion into an autonomous and impartial technical body, the idea was to eliminate the possibility of its manipulation by the executive, thus giving renewed legitimacy and increased institutional credibility in the prosecution system. The LFGF would provide legal ordinance to set the rules for the new ministerial agency and its functions, distinguishing between administrative and prosecutorial personnel. The new structure introduced the office of fiscal, whose job would be to investigate and prosecute crime, a function distinct from that of the procurador, responsible for the constitutionality and legality of the proceedings. The current territorial and functional specialization structures was to remain the same. Within FGF there would be specialized “public ministry departments,” comparable to the PGR’s current specialized “sub-procurator departments.” At the same time, the organization was to be more territorially decentralized in order to increase efficiency and cooperation among other agencies and police. The Federal Public Prosecutor was to be appointed by the president for a period of five years, a period that could be extended only once.

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33. The Federal Defense Bill (Ley Federal de Defensoria) of 2004 was proposed to replace the old Federal Public Defense Act (LFDP) establishing general directorates as a means to improve the quality of both private lawyers and public defenders. The aim was to advance “principles of confidentiality, honor, and professionalism” in both public and private legal defense to strengthen the presence, organization, and function of defense skills. To be certified, a public defender would have to be licensed in law, possess the relevant diplomas and documents, and be evaluated by the Federal Judiciary (Judicatura) Council, subject to renewal every five years. For public defense this would mean the abolition of the use of “persons of confidence,” the possibility for the defense to confer in private with a defendant, and the right of the defense to see the prosecutor’s evidence at an early stage in the proceedings (Bardán et al. 2005: 101). The bill, however, failed to pass under the Fox presidency, and these reforms were not included among the 2008 reforms introduced under Calderón. 34. Electoral reforms have been initiated, aiming both to reduce the length of federal elections and to redefine the role of the Federal Election Institute (IFE). 35. Other expanded powers give investigators the right to review private records without a judge’s order; and let information from recorded phone calls be used as evidence in criminal cases if at least one of the conversation’s participants agrees.

5 From Inside the Police: A Survey

Society sees police officers as rats, but people are unaware of and do not understand the true nature of my work, that it is dangerous and that we are there for people’s protection. There is much uncivilized behavior and maltreatment of people committed by some police, for which unfortunately all of us pay. (Preventive Police officer, thirty years old)

At about 9 P.M. in the fairly affluent neighborhood of Chuatemoch in the Río Lerma district of Mexico City, a taxi driver stands double-parked in front of a local shop. In this district, by day a normally busy street is by this time at night virtually empty. A police car parks behind the taxi, immediately followed by two motor police who position their motorbikes in front of it. Without further ado, one of these officers starts writing out a ticket, taking down the license plate number of the taxi. During this process, the middle-aged taxi driver comes out of the shop, walks straight by the ticketwriting officer without the slightest acknowledgement, gets into his car, and, while the officer is still in the process of writing his ticket, drives away. The message is clear, “You do what you like, it has nothing to do with me, and I am just going to ignore you completely.” The officer, furious, starts shouting and shaking his fist at the disappearing taxi, and both he and his colleague jump onto their motorbikes to go in hot pursuit. (The outcome was not observed.) In all its banality, this incident illustrates current police-public relations: In essence there are none. Police and public live in different worlds and, when they can avoid it, simply do not interact. As any observer walking around Mexico City will note, police interact primarily with other police. Only rarely will there be any voluntary informal police-public interaction, 131

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save for that involved when police are acting in their official and repressive capacity. The deliberate police policy of employing officers in areas far from their residences as not to be identified as police illustrates the social isolation of the police. Preventive police in fact prefer the long journey—in Mexico City easily amounting to three hours daily—rather than being identified in their own residential neighborhood as police. An important related point emerging from Azaola’s group interviews (2004) (in which the author participated) with both preventive and judicial police is that officers have no friends outside the police. Thus, also socially, there is no integration whatever of the police within society.

THE CONTEXT OF POLICE PERSPECTIVES Mexico’s policing realities are complex. Our study is based on the premise that to understand the impact of different reforms, together with internal and external institutional controls, thorough understanding of the daily realities in which police officers work is required for an adequate assessment of their likely effect. In this chapter an inside perspective will be given based on our survey of police, along with other research findings. Since Vicente Fox in 2000 was elected president in part on a justice reform platform, our primary focus will be on developments since that year. Yet, is there any reason to believe that matters have improved with Mexican police and thus that some of the reforms and institutional controls may in fact have had some positive influence in reducing corrupt and abusive police practices? These questions underlie our preliminary empirical and theoretical discussion of initiatives to reduce corruption and police abuse of power. To understand the impact of the various reforms in police structure and institutional controls we must understand the societal context. We shall therefore start by discussing our findings with respect to police perceptions of their relations with the public, the social isolation of the police, and what it means to be a police officer in a Mexican context. Some of the defining characteristics of police officers’ working realities will also be considered in terms of their internal organizational work environment. Specific attention will be paid to formal and hierarchical relations, the dependence of the rank and file on their chiefs, corruption among senior police, and the organizational corruption with which they themselves are faced. In addition, we examine the aspects of their work which most trouble police. Insight into the relevant societal and organizational realities will enable us to better to understand the likely impact of the internal and external institutional control mechanisms set up to reduce police abuse and corruption. As a basis for this analysis, we shall present our research data concerning police experiences with and views on these control mechanisms and the meaning for them of their training in a Mexican context, as further detailed

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in the methodological appendix A. The combination of both surveys and interviews administered in 2005, added considerable insight into how the rank and file experience the problems of everyday policing, and how they view the occurrence and reasons for police corruption and abuse of power, as well as their response to a range of institutional control and human rights issues. Our study does not allow us to establish in any quantitative way changes in police opinion and attitude over the years; this would require identical survey data from an earlier and/or later date. At any rate, it would be almost impossible empirically to attribute any changes to specific reforms, institutional controls, or other measures. Our data do allow us, however, to link up specific differences in responses with such variables as age, gender, and educational variations. These help us to establish whether certain policies—such as raising educational standards or increasing the number of female officers—may have influenced police attitudes or perhaps even police practices. Of course, the link between attitudes and behavior is a tenuous one, since societal, organizational, and situational pressures all constitute major factors shaping police practices. Nevertheless, attitudes can shape specific practices too, especially with respect to corruption. Officers’ normative views on police integrity, honesty and human rights are thus relevant both when considering the impact of some reforms and institutional controls and in reflecting upon those necessary in the future for improving human-rights-oriented policing. Asking insiders—who are at the same time possible perpetrators—about their views on this point, of course, obviously raises methodological issues. (These are discussed in our methodological appendix A). Clearly, if police are asked sensitive questions by outsiders whom they do not know, there is a strong likelihood that a considerable number will present a more positive picture than their real views and experience would justify. For many officers their loyalty to their own organization comes into play, as well as a wish to present a positive image of themselves as individuals. It is therefore inevitable that the number of respondents actually holding a pessimistic or negative opinion on a specific point is likely to be greater than conveyed by the survey data. (See appendix A.)

POLICE AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT To begin with, we were interested in the relative weight of various characteristics of the societal and organizational environment that police officers consider to affect their work most. Therefore we asked them to select a maximum of two out of six possible factors including dangers and public attitudes (Question 5). Danger may be defining characteristic of police work and police-public relations, certainly one would expect this to be the case in Mexico where

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police are killed on a regular basis. Interestingly, the dangers affecting police work are mentioned less often by the police than might have been expected in view of the frequency with which police are injured and murdered on the job, especially considering that the survey was administered in the wake of the Tláhuac lynching (see chapter 2). Twenty-five percent of judicial police and 23 percent of preventive police identified “danger” as one of the two aspects most affecting their work (Question 5, Response 5). In light of the explosion of violence in Mexico since 2007, however, it is quite likely that danger currently affects police more than indicated by the survey results from 2005. Police Perceptions of Police-Public Relations Now I know that being police is not synonymous with authority but with corruption, with being a criminal and nobody respects you. (Judicial Police officer, twenty-eight years old)

Mexico’s poor police-public relations have a long history. This partly derives from the fact that the police have traditionally served as a repressive tool for power elites. Police officers are well aware of the public’s hidden or even open suspicion and hostility toward them. Asked which two aspects most affected their work most, police frequently mentioned people’s attitude as a problem—60 percent of judicial (investigative) police and 50 percent of preventive (uniform) police (Question 5, Response 1). In our main survey police were also asked directly to pick three aspects that negatively impacted their work. Lack of public confidence in the police was mentioned by a large segment of police respondents (Question 12, Response 1): 44 percent of preventive police and 37 percent of judicial police, a finding that can be directly attributed to the lack of police legitimacy and their isolation in society. Police-public relations in Mexico, these survey data confirm, are thus highly problematic, and considered as such by police also.

Figure 5.1. What do you think about people’s attitude toward the police? (Q. 2)

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For any analysis of the impact of reforms and institutional controls it should be of interest to know whether police themselves consider that there have been some improvements in police-public relations. Our respondents were divided about the overall trend in public attitudes towards the police. (See figure 5.1.) In a survey of 145 preventive police (Tello 2004), seeking their views about the police lynching in Tláhuac (see chapter 2), officers were asked their opinion of the main reason for such lack of public confidence. Corruption was by far the most important reason given, either related to its present bad image for the police (48 percent) or to the corrupt practices “in the old days” (8 percent). Fourteen percent felt it is because all police are “tarred by the same brush.” More self-critically, other preventive police attribute it to the police failure to fulfill their responsibilities adequately (14 percent), or to a lack of “correct” values among the police (6 percent). In our main survey we asked police their opinion on public attitudes and behaviour towards them. The police response should be seen in the context of the way in which police see their role: the rank and file are oriented in what they do almost exclusively towards their bosses—especially within the Preventive Police—rather than to providing a service for society. As a result, people’s attitudes and responses are easily seen by the police as obstructing their performance. Furthermore, the police (by and largely correctly) feel the public lack any precise idea what purpose the police serve, and what their powers are. People therefore regularly expect the police to do things beyond their legal authority. For example, people may wish for someone to be apprehended without being prepared to file a complaint, the statement necessary for the police to be legally entitled to take action; the public characteristically does not wish to be involved in the legal proceedings in any formal way. (See figure 5.2.)

Figure 5.2. What is your opinion about people’s attitude toward the police? (Q. 4)

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Figure 5.3. Do you think the attitude of criminals toward the police has changed in recent years? (Q. 3)

Accounts from inside and outside the police illustrate over and over the disrespectful manner in which officers are treated by the public, coupled with incidents in which they are subject to intimidating behavior by citizens. These are only possible when the police inspire not only little respect but also little fear. Moreover, when asked specifically about the changes in attitudes toward them, well over half of both street and investigative police said criminals are now less afraid of the police than before. (See figure 5.3.) A large majority of police surveyed ascribed this development to an increased emphasis on human rights on the part of the authorities. For all intents and purposes the “authorities” can be translated here as the National Human Rights Commission, discussed below. As to reasons for the reduction of public fear of police, the police are now less directly connected to and controlled by the no longer ruling PRI party to which both state and federal police—until 2000—used to be closely linked. Of course, a decline in public wariness could also be tied in part to any reduction of human rights abuses. It can be hypothesized that public fear of police—especially the Judicial Police—has been fed through informal networks at least partially by personal accounts of police maltreatment and torture. On this assumption, a decreased level of fear among lawbreakers and other citizens can be taken as yet another indication of an overall decrease of police abuse in Mexico City.

POLICE OPINION OF THEIR OWN AGENCY For me this organization means internal chaos. (Judicial Police officer thirty-nine years old)

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The hardships induced by police social isolation and lack of public acceptance are scarcely mitigated by internal police organizational realities. Within neither the Judicial nor the Preventive Police is the prevailing police culture one of being treated and treating others with much respect. This is by and large a reflection of the general societal characterization of the police. Organizational Irritants For a better understanding of which organizational characteristics police consider most impede their adequately fulfilling their responsibilities, we requested respondents to select three out of eleven possible “irritants” that most impeded their work. (Question 12).1 Deficient equipment emerged as an overriding impediment to their work among the rank and file, mentioned by 66 percent of preventive police and 63 percent of judicial police (Response 2), topping all other concerns. Similarly, asked what conditions affected their work, (Question 5, Response 4), for both judicial and preventive police the overall lack of equipment was a dominant complaint, mentioned by 64 and 55 percent, respectively. For most this especially involved improperly functioning firearms, which often failed to fire at the crucial moment, and are generally old and reportedly inferior to those used by criminals. Insufficient gasoline supplies—police are given vouchers (bono) by superior officers which have to last them their whole shift—was mentioned as a problem by 58 percent of judicial police (Response 12), but by many fewer preventive police, 24 percent: not surprising since a large number of these are on “walking duties.” The lack of gasoline limits the possibilities for preventive police to catch and shake down drivers for bribes to overlook (alleged) traffic offenses. During interviews frequent mention was also made of inadequate maintenance of patrol cars—officers often being responsible themselves for carrying out repairs. The poor quality of police uniforms was important for only 4 percent of surveyed judicial police, but for 14 percent of preventive police (Question 5, Response 3). For them the quality of their uniforms generally symbolizes the value attached to their position, and is a sign of respect for them personally: Provision of poor uniforms is thus interpreted as undermining their prestige (Azaola 2003). The degree to which police rate physical exhaustion caused by long working days as one of the three top problems is remarkable, especially for judicial police, namely 41 percent, compared to 24 percent of preventive police (Question 12, Response 10). For officers “being police” is in many ways a complete way of life, with little time remaining outside working hours for anything else; on average they have one free day per week. On top of this,

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police hours are left to the discretion of police chiefs, and as a rule comprise no less than twelve hours per day, not infrequently extending to twentyfour hours. The only certainty officers have is the hour they are expected to start their work. In the little free time available, they also have to carry out all their own official and informal business. Family pressures and problems are themes emerging from the interviews. Coupled with long travelling hours and with a virtual absence of any holidays, being tired or exhausted very much constitutes part of officers’ daily existence. Several individual interviewees expressed the need to have their schedules changed to be less exhausted and therefore able to carry out their work more effectively. Internal Hierarchical Police Relations Our senior officers do not offer us the necessary means, budgets are badly managed, and we do not have new police cars for lack of money. (Judicial Police officer, thirty-six years old)

The main principles of the police disciplinary systems within Mexico’s police forces are based on the military model: Police leadership and authority are “one and indivisible,” and are “never wrong.” Even if wrong or wrongfully given, any instruction is to be treated as a rightful order that must be obeyed. Therefore traditionally, police hierarchical relations in Mexico have been characterized by the unconditional loyalty and obedience expected of police toward their superior officers. Typically, officers are totally submissive to their immediate superior and subjected to domination and humiliation by him, being completely at his disposal. A superior has the power to determine the occupational fate of a subordinate. In such a system the rank and file to all intents and purposes are devoid of any independent decision-making powers. Related to this paradoxical dependence of many judicial and preventive police officers in the face of their disdain of senior older police officers, indifference most characterizes their treatment by their senior officers, as we have seen. This sentiment also runs through answers to Question 11. Twenty percent of both investigative and uniformed police indicate that senior officers are not concerned about their well-being (Response 6). For example, they reported that their officers have little regard for the primary needs of the rank and file, such as meals on the job, and usually no such amenities are provided at work, although the lack of superiors’ trust emerged as somewhat less of a problem than anticipated on the basis of the prior group interviews, the complaint was chosen in the survey by only 14 percent of preventive and 15 percent of judicial police (Question 11, Response 8). Nevertheless, a widespread feeling prevails among the surveyed police of their being exchangeable and expendable. “They treat me like a machine”

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as it was regularly put during interviews, is subscribed to by 32 and 30 percent of surveyed preventive and judicial police respectively. For most officers, little internal support is forthcoming in times of difficulties. “They do not help me when I have problems” (Question 11, Response 4) was most troubling for 39 percent of preventive police and 32 percent of judicial police. For instance, when complaints are lodged against officers, they do not receive legal or other help from within the organization. The military model of the Mexican police does much to explain the manner in which disciplinary punishments are meted out by ordinary senior police, who do so far more often than the Council of Honor and Justice. Article 42 of the Security Law of the Federal District (LSPDF) 1993, stipulates that “the arrest involves the locking up of a subordinate for having committed substantial offenses or for having accumulated five reprimands within a calendar year and can last thirty-six hours.” Our interview data suggest the average officer may face instant incarceration once every year or so. “Patronage,” an important characteristic defining hierarchical relations in Mexican society as a whole, together with its accompanying loyalties, also constitutes a significant force in police hierarchies. Having a “patron” means receiving favors, like being sent to a training course or given added chances for promotion. The other side of this coin is that since substantial numbers of police do not enjoy the luxury of having a patron, the accompanying benefits thus elude them. A large segment therefore feel left out in the cold. Our survey data reflect this discrepancy among the rank and file. (See figure 5.4.) These data suggest that somewhat fewer judicial police feel treated with disrespect by their superior officers than the uniformed preventive police. But the group and individual interviews with judicial police largely negate this more positive picture, and much more likely reflects the stronger ten-

Figure 5.4. (Q. 6)

What is your opinion about the treatment you receive from your bosses?

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dency of judicial police than uniformed police to try to present a more favorable impression about themselves and their organization to the outsider students who administered the survey (see the methodology appendix A). In recent years Mexican media have in fact repeatedly reported lowerranking police clashing with and rebelling against their senior officers, including the use of physical violence. Clearly the traditional submissive hierarchical police relations are in flux. What has also been changing is that the older generation of typically very authoritarian police chiefs has over the years been complemented by a new generation of somewhat less authoritarian and more educated senior officers. Nevertheless, in spite of some cohesive relationships between different ranks in a number of police stations reported to us, on the whole relationships between the rank and file and their police chiefs in Mexico are still of a very formal and authoritarian nature. The negative police experience with their superiors’ lack of respect for them is closely related to the lack of police professionalization. Arbitrary and Unjust Treatment by Senior Police I disobeyed an order from my chief to unjustly arrest two policemen, and then instead he symbolically arrested me and had me stay working a day that I wasn’t supposed to. (Judicial Police officer, thirty-five years old)

The extent and manner in which norms and discipline within a profession among its own ranks are maintained is an important indicator of the degree of professionalization of that particular profession, in this case the police. But it also constitutes an important measure of the degree to which democratic and human rights values have been inculcated on an institutional level: If all is well, there should be procedural guarantees and safeguards to ensure that officers are not simply subjected to the whims and arbitrary treatment of their senior officers. This is important for the quality of policing. The way police are treated within their own organization will shape their professional identity, and also the extent to which democratic and human rights values can be expected to be internalized among the rank and file and thus the manner in which they operate in a professional capacity. Some of the work impediments surveyed in response to Question 12 relate to police chiefs. Thirty percent of preventive police mentioned their poor treatment by police superiors (Response 4), compared with only 13 percent by judicial police. The latter is rather remarkable, since 36 percent of the judicial police mention their bosses when selecting what negatively impacts their work (close to the almost 43 percent among preventive police) (Question 5, Response 2). Thus, compared with other irritants in the

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judicial police working environment, being treated poorly by their chiefs is of less importance. In our survey, we also asked respondents to select three “irritants” out of eleven bothersome characteristics of their chiefs that had emerged in the group interviews held by Elena Azaola with both preventive and judicial police (Question 11). Tying in with our earlier discussion of the patronage elements in the police, no less than 52 percent of the preventive police refer to their bosses being unjust and showing favoritism (Response 11), compared to 35 percent of judicial police. The theme of arbitrary treatment also emerges with respect to the punishments senior officers hand out. Azaola (2006) notes that during her group interviews with preventive police, virtually all said they had been subjected to unjust arrests by their senior officers. Further revealing are the responses to Question 7 about how they judged the manner in which senior officers punish. These indicate that many more were in fact critical of the way internal punishments are meted out. A large group of the uniformed and investigative police viewed senior police as on the whole punishing in “an arbitrary manner,” and even more police declared that senior officers generally punish them for “little things” (Responses 2 and 3). Being punished for minor or insignificant matters is mentioned as a grievance by 24 percent of uniformed police and 17 percent of investigative police, failure to salute or violations of “dress code” typically topping the bill in this respect (Question 11, Response 5). In fact, overall the responses to our question about how they judged the manner in which senior officers punish them (Question 7) indicate that many more were critical than those approving of the way internal punishments are meted out, as the sum of findings in figure 5.7 illustrates (66.6 percent of preventive police and 59.6 percent of judicial police respondents). Uniformed police particularly mentioned being punished for minor matters such as not wearing a police hat, for which they may be instantly detained for eight to thirty-six hours. Examples given by judicial police of behavior resulting in punishments are: not saluting senior officers, wearing dirty shoes, or entering a “judicial zone” (zona judicial: area where only judicial police are allowed) with a cap on, the last two being offenses for which officers may be detained. During one interview a twenty-nine-year-old judicial officer noted that he had been arrested no less than fifteen times for matters ranging from disrespectful behavior and defiance to being drunk, although he considered himself a person “without vices.” Severe punishments are likely to ensue from such violations as losing one’s weapon or protesting against orders.2 Judicial police suggest that within their organization such punishments are regularly handed out as a consequence of specific confrontations between the lower ranks and their seniors. Azaola concludes that the testimonies offered nevertheless indicate a recent decrease in the hours that officers are usually held and that the conditions under which they are held have improved. At the same time, it

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can hardly be claimed that such punishments are handed out in conformity with clearly established procedures and norms, since Article 42 of the Public Security Law (LSPDF) fails to specify the types of conduct to which the law applies (Azaola 2003: 6). More investigative than uniformed police expressed a positive sentiment about the manner in which punishments were handed out. (See figure 5.5.) By and large this may reflect the number of rank and file who are friendly with their senior officers; as regards the judicial police, it also includes officers seeking to convey a positive image on this point to the outside world. Furthermore, we should remain aware of differences among the Mexico City police. For example in the neighborhood of Iztapalapa the interviewing students reported strong comradeship (fraternidad) and loyalty among judicial police there: No one spoke ill of their chiefs, pointing out that they were treated with respect. The different ranks also shared meals together in the canteen. In any case, that arbitrary treatment is considered somewhat less of a problem overall by investigative than by uniformed police reflects the difference in position and values of the rank and file in the two police forces. Preventive Police officers stand in a much more submissive relation to their superiors; as a result, for them an emotional bond with senior officers is more important, making them more sensitive and likely to be disturbed by differential treatment. By contrast hierarchical relations in the Judicial Police can to a greater extent be characterized as power competition relationships, with the issue of how to advance within the organization having greater prominence for the rank and file. This difference is connected to the higher educational background of judicial police, enabling them to take a more independent professional stance toward their senior officers, who may well have a lower education than they do.

Figure 5.5. What is your opinion about the way police chiefs punish officers? (Q. 7)

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One consequence of a higher educational background for new recruits that emerges unequivocally from our interviews is the stress put on internal relations within the police by considerable rivalry and other problems with internal collaboration between more highly educated officers and those with more street experience. Higher educational levels have also increased tensions between the ranks, particularly with the lower judicial police becoming more directly critical of their senior officers and less inclined to unquestioningly accept their arbitrary decisions and orders. This is an interesting development, which can be interpreted as the beginning of institutional democratization. As will be discussed in chapter 7, it also holds some hope for bottom-up institutional pressures to tackle internal police abuses of power, arbitrary decision, and punishment, corruption and pressures to commit crimes to which the rank and file are subjected by their superior officers. Indeed, the group interviews with the judicial police suggested the existence of numerous conflicting internal factions, arguably the most significant one being the distinction between the older generation and the newer officers with a higher (sometimes university) educational background, accompanied by a more critical attitude toward senior officers. During the group interviews held by Azaola, younger judicial police officers were sometimes tacitly derided by the older ones for not being “streetwise,” lacking experience from years of working on the streets. Such criticism is, of course, found within many police forces around the world. But another feature has a more specifically Mexican characteristic. Members of the older judicial police generation complained bitterly of being a virtual “slave” of the organization, dependent on the discretion of their bosses, including control over their working hours, which can easily be extended. At the same time, however, older officers appear to have internalized this system as part of their policing reality, paradoxically complaining about the younger generation—who reportedly have frequent clashes with senior police—for standing up and refusing to work extra hours when asked to. Overall, in any case the rank and file tend to be very critical of their chiefs. Lack of Competent Management The more senior, the more stupid. (Judicial Police officer twenty-eight years old)

First of all, promotion in all Mexican police agencies tends to rely on personal ties with those who have influence rather than on merit and the “right” qualifications (which at any rate can be bought, for substantial amounts of money). A recurring complaint during the group interviews with judicial police was that the incompetent or corrupt but wellconnected officers get promoted and the good officers do not. Similarly Elena Azaola found officers complaining that some instructors in police

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training courses will sell both exams and certificates of qualification (Azaola 2003: 9). As could be expected, such a state of affairs is inevitably detrimental to the quality of police leadership, as clearly illustrated in the response to the Tláhuac lynching discussed in chapter 2. During the group interviews, judicial police referred disparagingly to the disparate occupational backgrounds of police chiefs. Many feel they lack knowledge of or care for the profession. Instead, they frequently contended, senior police are most worried about the rank and file not paying them sufficient respect. This is one dimension of the common power—rather than solution-orientation of senior police, a point to which we later return. Differences between preventive and judicial police come out on another point associated with police chiefs (Question 11, Response 9): Only 13 percent of uniformed preventive police complained of inadequate instructions compared to 19 percent of judicial police, a difference perhaps best understood in the light of the greater importance attached by judicial police to specific instructions as part of their work in solving criminal cases. Among preventive police the lack of capability in senior police is in fact specifically singled out as a concern by 27 percent, but by judicial police it is mentioned by no less than 48 percent, exceeding all other concerns. (Question 12, Response 7). Both among preventive and judicial police about 20 percent identify general incompetence of police chiefs as a problem affecting their work (Question 12, Response 7). The group interviews similarly point to such a difference. This large disparity between judicial and preventive police reflects the contrasting character of hierarchal relations in the two police forces already discussed. Judicial police generally lamented a lack of knowledge on the part of their superiors and complained bitterly about being told to perform preventive patrol duties, considering this to be an irrational misuse of Judicial Police resources. Moreover, they widely viewed their chiefs as incapable of providing public security within the city, and in particular of preventing crime. Twenty-two percent of both investigative and uniformed police criticized senior officers for not understanding the true nature of police work (Question 11, Response 7). And about 20 percent of the former were critical of senior officers failing to give clear instructions, more so than preventive police, of whom 14 percent chose this point (Question 11, Response 9). As already discussed, this difference can be attributed to the greater relevance of superior officers’ day-to-day instruction and guidance for judicial police.

SOCIAL RELATIONS AMONG POLICE You should defend your own mates: our new colleagues lack commitment and don’t fit within the profile of the agency; there is no respect for the institution. (Judicial Police officer, thirty-five years old)

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In setting out the wider societal and organizational realities for an assessment of police reforms and institutional controls, it is important to understand the relationships among the rank and file themselves. In the context of their societal isolation and troubled relations vis-a-vis their senior officers. The nature of their relationship with colleagues is of crucial importance for understanding their social identity. For this reason we asked police to indicate whether they regard some of their colleagues as friends and whether they meet socially in a private setting. A large majority surveyed said that they have friends among their colleagues, although this is considerably more the case among judicial than preventive police. (See figure 5.6.) The social meaning of these friendships, however, differs. For preventive police, friends are especially people with whom one can discuss work or private problems, whereas friendships among judicial police are more connected to power- and mafia-style networks. In such a context “being friends” especially means protecting each other and offering security in relation to criminal networks and activities. This contrast is reflected in the extent to which judicial and preventive police receive police friends at home. (See figure 5.7.) According to our survey of those who do exchange visits, 8 percent of judicial police receive a colleague at home at least once a week, 31 percent, once a month, 27 percent, once every six months, and 14 percent, once a year. Of preventive police, 5 percent received a police friend at home once a week, 24 percent once a month, 8 percent once every six months, and 9 percent once a year. Overall, one can say that even for some preventive police societal isolation and organizational hardships are in part compensated for by informal police relationships. In terms of their significance, however, they constitute very much a double-edged sword. On the one hand they are vital for police in order to survive in a hostile societal and organizational environment, and thus serve an important social function. On the other hand they are not only

Figure 5.6. Have you got any friends among your police collegues? (Q. 14)

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Figure 5.7. Have you visited the home of your colleagues or have they visited you socially? (Q. 15)

partly a consequence of police societal isolation, but also help to perpetuate this, serving as an escape route for police to survive socially. Furthermore, especially within the Judicial Police, friendships constitute part of an informal police reality, enabling corruption and other criminal practices and networks to continue. Inevitably, formal police reform and institutional controls often have to overcome the power of such informal networks. One may suspect that these informal networks are likely to undermine the impact of reforms and controls.

POLICE ABUSE OF POWER: CORRUPTION, EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE, AND TORTURE It is beyond doubt that police corruption and various forms of abuse of power are still widespread in Mexico. Abuse of power can be diverse ranging from selective and partisan law enforcement and bribery, to illegal use of force to torture, and even summary execution. Has there been a decrease in such occurrences, and, if so, can this be attributed to specific reforms and/or institutional controls? In any case, if there are no signs of improvements, one can assume a priori that none of the relevant reforms, existing controls, or other efforts have had much influence in reducing police corruption and human rights violations. After losing its stranglehold on power (first at the municipal level in Mexico City and gradually on a federal level), PRI during the 1990s no longer had the incentive or the capacity to control the police. With the new political parties in charge of at first local and then the federal government, the police for their part had less incentive to respond to government efforts to clean them up. In contrast to the loyalties the police owed to the state under PRI dominance, under the new democratic conditions and rule by different parties police lacked special loyalty to the new parties in power.

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As a result, David Davis (2006) argues, recent police chiefs have had less reason to respond to government efforts to clean up the police. Although this point is hard to substantiate empirically, it is a valid one to make, and it will be interesting to see what our empirical data suggest about the direction police corruption and abuse of force has been moving within Mexico City’s police forces since President Fox’s inauguration in 2000. It is widely believed that at least in Mexico City matters have in fact improved to some extent. There are, however, no hard data on this point. Therefore, in both our surveys and in the interviews we have sought some indication of trends in police abuse of power, especially corruption and the use of force.

INSTITUTIONALIZED CORRUPTION: A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD Young men and women come to register a complaint about the theft of their cell phone. The moment you start asking questions you realize that they have not been robbed but that they have lost it. I could then prosecute them for making a false statement and it is then that they offer me one or two thousand pesos to avoid this so that the offense remains forgotten. (Judicial Police officer, thirty years old)

On October 19, 2008 in Morelos state a rather remarkable incident occurred. Police agents maintained in a letter sent to Congress—following a field investigation backed up by records and revelations that were supposedly made by the bodyguards present—that numerous armed men intercepted García Luna on a highway and disarmed members of his escort while a gangster warned him: “‘This is the first and last warning so that you know that, yes, we can get to you if you don’t follow through on the spot’ . . . then Garcia Luna withdrew from the spot for four hours in order to negotiate with the gangster.” (Ravelo 2008). The investigating agents warned in the accompanying letter of the dangers in granting more power to the SSP and of proceeding with the integration of federal police forces, asserting that a significant number of SSP police commanders are working for drug traffickers. Corruption in Mexico has remained all-pervasive throughout society, appearing in the face of all initiatives to counter it within state institutions well beyond those of the criminal justice system. In 2002 Transparency International estimated that the average household spends 8 percent of its income on bribes (Reames, 2007: 129). Corruption is a central issue in this study, in itself constituting a human rights violation in that it infringes on the principle of equality before the law and on the rule of law more generally. Furthermore, its prevalence on societal, institutional, and cultural

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levels helps it to permeate Mexican policing and its institutions and undermines police reforms and institutional controls. Only 18 percent of preventive police and just 8 percent of judicial police mentioned corruption in their own agency as a problem (Question 12, Response 5), yet corruption within the Mexican police is still clearly pervasive. We hesitate to draw any firm conclusions from these differences in responses between the two types of police. The group interviews with judicial police suggest that in fact for a sizeable number of officers internal corruption has been a problem, more so than the survey data suggest. Clearly for judicial police, internal corruption by others in the agency is an irritant to a less extent than for preventive police, who are more likely to be the victims of such practices within their organization. The fact that substantially fewer judicial police than preventive police considered having to pay senior officers a problem should probably be interpreted in that light (see Question 11, Response 3). Some forms of corruption have largely disappeared (like banks paying protection money to the police chief of their neighborhood), but many businesses (restaurants, bars, bakeries, movie theaters) pay police protection money, and other forms of corruption also clearly prevail (Pansters and Berthier 2006). During a workshop held in 2003 for the Preventive Police by Nelia Tello Peón, one of the officers cut short a discussion on corruption, declaring “we are all corrupt.” Being objects of police corruption in Mexico is indeed a widely-shared experience of the public. One study found that no less than 50 percent of the Mexican population claimed to have paid bribes to police for various reasons.3 Especially within the Federal District’s Judicial Police, such corruption is entrenched and institutionalized, as well as in the Federal District’s Public Prosecutor’s Office to be discussed below. Bribery can be police- or citizen-initiated. Not only do police demand bribes for a variety of “favors,” but notably people accused of traffic offenses seek their way out of trouble by offering bribes, as do known criminals implicated in more serious crimes. Bribes may be demanded or offered under various circumstances, notably to avoid fines or arrest, or to induce an officer to arrest someone else, or to obtain official documents. As one judicial police officer summed up the prevailing public attitude, “People prefer giving you a bribe rather than to wait in line at a cashier’s desk, which is a waste of time and even more money.” One of the justifications offered by judicial police for taking bribes is that it is a choice as to whom a suspect will give money in exchange for charges being dropped: to the prosecutor involved in the case or to the police person. “Delinquents will dance with the ministry [Public Prosecutor’s Office]” is the slang expression used to refer to the practice of prosecutors taking money from those facing the threat of prosecution. In such a context, judicial police

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argue, the choice is basically not difficult. In essence it amounts to a suspect’s choosing between giving his money to the police or to someone in the Public Prosecutor’s Office. In fact, some officers argue that accepting money when the offenses are not too serious does not really amount to corruption: It would cost a delinquent double that at the Public Prosecutors to buy himself out of charges.4 Most people, police comment, are thus inclined to bribe their way out of trouble through the police rather than face the Public Prosecutor. As one interviewed judicial officer noted, people “prefer to settle matters before getting to the public ministry or police station.” The amount of money involved in bribery varies greatly. This is partly situationally determined and partly related to the different police forces concerned. Bribes demanded or expected by preventive police in connection with alleged traffic offenses may be as low as thirty pesos, depending on the circumstances. The sums expected by judicial police for release of those arrested, on the other hand, are substantially higher, running into the tens of thousands of pesos, as revealed by our interviews. In our survey we sought an indication of the general trend in police corruption by inquiring about police views on present corruption levels in their own agency compared to five years earlier. On the whole, the survey data offer little indication that these had significantly declined within this time period. (See figure 5.8.) The most striking element in figure 5.8 undoubtedly is the proportion of uniformed police that considered corruption to have actually increased between 2000 and 2005. Investigative police on the whole portray a somewhat more optimistic picture of corruption changes over this period. But in the light of earlier reflections on reporting bias, these figures do not guarantee that there has been any real improvement, and this difference is clearly insufficient to warrant any clear-cut conclusion as to possible differences in trends the two police forces during that period. With their greater sophistication and higher educational background, we found judicial police

Figure 5.8. As regards corruption within the agency, do you consider there to be . . . (Q. 20)

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more inclined to offer a socially desirable response toward sensitive survey questions—in the group interviews they widely acknowledged the occurrence of corruption tacitly or explicitly—whereas preventive police, with a much lower average educational background, were more likely to respond in a spontaneous and straightforward manner.5 However, our survey data do suggest, albeit tentatively, reduction of corruption between 2000 and 2005 within both police organizations. Our personal interviews did not really alter this picture: During the individual interviews a substantial proportion of judicial police volunteered that their chiefs these days were somewhat less corrupt than formerly, less frequently instructing their officers to obtain bribes for their benefit (for a similar conclusion see Azaola 2003). By the turn of the Millennium corruption had become a hot topic, in both politics and in the media. As a result main actors are less likely to engage openly in acts of corruption. Some police thought the change in corruption lies in the fact that their superiors are less brazen about it and more careful. For example, other police testimonies suggest that bribes to senior police are now given as “loans” and that senior officers who have three or four apartments have supposedly obtained these by winning the lottery (sorteos) (Azaola 2003). The decline in open corruption could in part offset the effects of greater police resistance to political pressure to comply with anticorruption measures under present multiparty conditions compared to PRI domination, as suggested by Diane Davis (2006: 69 ff). Senior Officer Corruption Our chiefs are the ones that rob most. (Preventive Police officer, thirtyfive years old)

Besides being perpetrators themselves, the lower ranks are victims of the whole system’s rampant corruption. A large percentage of bribes obtained by the rank and file flows upward “producing wealthy officers at the top and a wide base of still-empoverished patrol personnel at the bottom of the pyramid” (Reames, 2007: 129). Particularly among Mexico City’s preventive police the most common system of corruption is that of the rank and file paying “quotas” to senior officers, the money for which can only be obtained from taking bribes from a large number of citizens (Silva 2007; Martínez de Muguía 1998). Senior officers expect officers under their authority to pay for favors/services/privileges that in most Western and professional police forces are granted as a matter of course. Such “favors” vary from being allowed to go home at the end of regular working hours and taking days off to the allotment of equipment, weaponry, and uniforms. Payment may be asked not only in money but also in providing superiors with free meals or bottles of wine. Senior officers expect the rank and file to maintain their

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own assigned patrol cars and other personal equipment out of their own pocket. This is impossible without all officers in some way being involved in police corruption to acquire extra money on the side. At the very least such demands on the part of their senior officers constitute a powerful institutional incentive for police to engage in corruption. For the rank and file, corruption is thus a double-edged sword. They are not only the beneficiaries receiving bribes but are also at the other end, having to pay their superiors, within their own organization. The effects of such institutionalized corruption are manifold. These developed and corruption structures throughout the hierarchy give stability to the mechanisms for officers who engage in acts of corruption, creating the opportunity for mutual control through the possibility of accusations (Silva, 2007: 183). It creates the structure for impunity of police abuse in general, and undermines the moral fibre of the organization and affects the trust and confidence of police in each other. The involvement of senior officers in corruption is a powerful underlying reason why they are generally held in low esteem by the rank and file; at the same time the rank and file lament being regarded by the police leadership as basically a bunch of thieves. In any case, ordinary police view a majority of their senior police officers as corrupt. (See figure 5.9.) The most intriguing question that figure 5.9 gives rise to is how to interpret the substantial proportion of judicial police stating that the majority of police chiefs are not corrupt, and the big difference in this respect between uniformed and investigative police. The fact that less than a quarter of the Preventive Police interviewees maintained that the majority of senior police are not corrupt could plausibly be related to their being friendly with their

Figure 5.9. (Q. 10)

As regards your superiors, which opinion would you subscribe to most?

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chiefs; this subset may well enjoy patronage-related favors, making them the beneficiaries of practices they chose not to identify as corrupt. The response given by judicial police stands in stark contrast with the picture emerging from the Azaola group interviews with judicial police, which showed virtual consensus on the point that widespread corruption exists among a majority of senior police. This suggests that the 46 percent of judicial police reporting that a majority of chiefs are not corrupt is not the proportion of such officers really considering this to be the case. During one group interview with judicial police there was general agreement that perhaps no more than two percent of senior police are considered “good,” in terms of professional standards and not being corrupt. Significantly, the group interviews suggest that most senior officers drift into corruption after being appointed. One officer, with the obvious consent of the others present, commented: “When they are appointed, seniors are fine for six months, then they become corrupt.” Corruption has become a way of life for many or most judicial police themselves. This helps to explain whether having to pay senior officers for a variety of “services” is less regarded as a specific problem than other aspects of their treatment by their seniors (Question 11, Response 3). Senior officers expecting to be paid money is mentioned specifically as one of the three top problems by 15 percent of preventive police but by only 8 percent by judicial police. Since senior police themselves are very much involved in corruption and other forms of malfeasance, they generally lack moral authority vis-a-vis the rank and file. This is a crucial point when appraising the relevance of internal police control in a Mexican environment. In the case of preventive police in particular, meting out punishment occurs in the context of favoritism toward specific individuals, a central characteristic of Mexican hierarchical relations. Under such circumstances, punishment to maintain discipline and control has more to do with senior officers’ exerting power over particular individual police than a serious effort to maintain standards within the force. As a result, internal control as a first line of defense in Mexico is unlikely to do much to reduce levels of police malpractice, a very different situation from most Western police forces. Corruption within the Public Prosecutors’ Offices Rampant corruption—in the Office of the Federal Attorney General (PGR) as well as the Federal District Public Prosecutor’s Office (PGDF)— has regularly emerged as a theme in the media in the past few years. Zepeda Lecuona points to the opportunities the case overload offers for such corruption. Because of this overload prosecutors are in a position to empower themselves with wide unregulated discretionary powers in differentiating between cases and allocating scarce resources. (2007: 145). Supervisors

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cannot readily determine whether cases are closed or not—because investigations cannot be effectively processed or because they have intentionally or unintentionally been “marginalized”—thus offering the opportunity for corruption with impunity. This corruption not only involves those subject to criminal investigation and possible prosecution, but also the police. As revealed both in the group and individual interviews, the rank and file are expected to pay for a variety of services in their working relations with the Federal District’s Public Prosecutor’s Office. For instance, one specific department in the office is responsible for providing information (telephone numbers, owners’ license plates) needed by Judicial Police investigators to be able to carry out their work. Invariably, if money is offered, such information will be provided quickly, otherwise it may take a couple of weeks to be provided. It is, for instance, customary for officers to pay to get a license plate checked rapidly as part of a criminal investigation. The degree of institutionalized corruption is in part related to the informal ties and understandings with delinquents themselves for which the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been notorious. As a result police are unsure of the consequences of arresting known criminals, who may very well be set free that same day because of such ties. It would be even worse from a police point of view—a theme emerging throughout our interviews—if well-connected suspects suffer injuries in their arrest, even if only minor abrasions. The arresting officers then run a serious risk of ending up in a police cell themselves. At the very least the criminal case against the arrested involved would be thrown out.6 Almost all police interviewed still considered the DF Public Prosecutors’ Offices to be marred by corruption and incompetence, in spite of the reforms introduced—in particular on a federal level—since the mid-1990s (see also Freeman 2005: 274–276). Frustration about the DF Public Prosecutor’s Office in general is widespread. As one judicial officer commented, “They don’t care about doing their job well and they don’t let me do mine. Magistrates make speculative decisions that affect both citizens and our own organization.” Matters are not improving, nor are they getting worse; it has simply always been like this, is the common opinion emerging from the group interviews with judicial police. Our survey data illustrate the point. No less then 25 percent of preventive police and 27 percent of judicial police specifically mentioned corruption in the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Question 12, Response 6) as interfering with their work. Police Attitudes Toward Corruption People offer money for me to arrest someone: people offer it to you, you don’t ask for it. They ask me to arrest someone who is drunk and they give

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Police attitudes toward corruption are certainly not consistent; attitudes toward corruption within their agencies are complicated and multilayered. Many police are convinced that the large majority of their fellow officers have joined the police for financial reasons, that is to say, for the bribes they expect to come their way. Yet at the same time, police often express great resentment toward society for tarring them all as corrupt, and they complain frequently that lawbreakers make use of this reputation and unjustly accuse police of corruption. However, many lower-ranked officers themselves clearly disapprove of the level of corruption within their organization, if only because they themselves suffer the consequences of its many manifestations during their work. The reasons given in the survey to explain police corruption outline their normative outlook on the subject. Most police consider that the most important reason for the prevalence of corruption is that “society promotes it.” In short, for about half of the police the cause of police corruption lies in the corrupt societal environment. “I am not corrupt but corrupted, and it is society that makes corruption continue to be spread,” as one preventive police officer commented in his interview with us. Such a justification claims corruption as a fact of life over which the police have little control, and as such undermines any moral revision on their part. To some extent this also applies to the other reasons offered which attribute responsibility to their own organization, albeit indirectly. (See figure 5.10.) More than four out of ten preventive police see low salaries as the main reason for police corruption, compared to only a third of judicial police; the

Figure 5.10. What do you think is the most important reason for police corruption? (Q. 23)

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latter’s lower ranks in 2005 earned around 12,000 pesos per month, (between $2,500 and $3,000), about twice the salary of the uniformed police. Both judicial and preventive police may also receive bonuses, notably for having carried out specific arrests. Senior police earn quite substantial salaries.7 Only a small proportion of police see the main reason for corruption as the necessity of having to pay their chiefs for “favors.” This is perhaps less than might have been anticipated on the basis of other studies, which suggests that the rank and file experience considerable pressure from senior officers for such payment (Azaola 2006: 9). With a related question, we also asked police more explicitly about their normative view of police corruption. In this respect our survey data show some substantial differences. Particularly the uniformed police look upon corruption as “inevitable because of the bad level of police salaries,” and so basically excusable, not a matter deserving moral condemnation.8 That fewer investigative police are of the same opinion undoubtedly relates to their higher salary levels. (See figure 5.11.) As had become clear during the Azaola group interviews, for some officers the (im)morality of taking bribes depends on whether these are police- or citizen-initiated. The survey made clear that this group within both investigative and uniformed police is relatively small. Remarkably, a surprisingly large proportion of both judicial and preventive police consider that there is no justification at all for corruption: “It is always wrong for the police to accept money” is the opinion subscribed to by more than a third of preventive police interviewed and almost half of the judicial police. In Mexico it is clear that expressing such a view does not mean that one does not participate in corruption. But it does indicate that a large number is at least aware of the morally dubious nature of existing police practices.

Figure 5.11. What is your opinion about corruption within the police? (Q. 22)

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The individual and group interviews with judicial police afford an interesting contrast in their outlook on corruption, which hover between normative “apologies” and exculpatory “explanations” for its occurrence. Besides those already discussed, other explanations/justifications were also offered during the discussions when the survey was administered: the need to support a mistress or second wife; the frequently late payments of salaries that are required to support the family; the cost of drug addiction suffered by an unknown but substantial number of judicial police; the money necessary to maintain their equipment, including cars and to pay for gasoline. Female Officers and Reducing Corruption Some initiatives have been taken to increase the number of female officers, sometimes explicitly on the assumption that they would be less likely to be involved in corruption. In 1999 within the Mexico City Preventive Police a special “women-only” traffic force of sixty officers had been created because female officers, considered less corruptible than their male colleagues, would presumably decrease police corruption in dealing with traffic offenses. Beside the issue of the number of female officers, which are low in absolute terms,9 it is in fact uncertain whether the introduction of more female officers is an effective strategy to reduce corruption. On the whole, our survey data indicate that differences in the proportion of male and female Preventive Police officers who completely condemn corruption are remarkably small. (In this respect we should keep in mind that this comparison within the uniformed police is based on a sample in which women constituted only some ten percent of the total.) A virtually identical proportion of both genders condemn corruption outright: 32 percent of females compared to 33 percent of males (Question 22, Response 3).10 However, the response to Question 25 tentatively suggests that female officers engage somewhat less in corruption than their male counterparts. The same percentage of male and female uniformed police—45 percent— considered female officers as much involved in corruption as their male counterparts. The difference is that, of the remaining 55 percent, a much greater percentage of uniformed female officers consider female officers considerably less involved in corruption (35 percent) as opposed to just a little less (16 percent). This division of opinion is almost exact opposite among male preventive police officers. (See figure 5.12.) The response by judicial police provide a somewhat more optimistic picture on the issue of female involvement in corruption, with more investigative than uniformed officers considering women substantially less involved. Interestingly, the Azaola women-only judicial police group interviews suggested that female involvement in corruption tends to be linked to such practices by their husbands in the police.

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Figure 5.12. To what extent do you think female officers are involved in corruption? (Q. 25)

Overall we conclude that any gender difference in corruption is only a matter of degree. Indeed, this might be expected in light of the inevitable socialization of women into corruption within their organization.

POLICE ABUSE OF FORCE The Judicial Police has been the most notorious for torture, which in Mexico is one of the most widely discussed and pressing human rights issues. Any trend in their abuse of power is especially relevant. Early in 2000, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) officials spoke of decreasing police use of torture, citing their data as evidence of a sharp decline in its occurrence, predicting that it could soon be totally eradicated (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001: 10). Such a claim has been rightly criticized by Mexican human rights groups, since changes in the number of complaints generally cannot be taken uncritically as a measure of the level of particular human rights abuses.11 Nevertheless, our survey data of judicial police also suggest—albeit somewhat tentatively—a decrease in their abuse of power. Furthermore, our interviewees within the Judicial Police considered a decrease in torture the most important change that had occurred in their organization from 2000 to 2005,12 a decrease also suggested by the virtual absence during those years of complaints of torture reported to the DF Human Rights Commission. In comparison to their view about any downward trend about corruption (59.6 percent; see figure 5.8) nearly 6 percent more judicial police pointed to a

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downward trend in police abuse during this period, suggesting a somewhat more positive development on this front. (See figure 5.13.) The fifty preventive police (AFI) respondents separately surveyed in early 2005 gave similar distribution of responses: 60 percent said there was now less abuse of power and force within the federal police than five years earlier (while only 33 percent thought there was now less corruption) (Question 20). When asked to reflect on police trends in abuse of power and force, preventive police are likely to have different situations and practices in mind from judicial police. By and large, the response from uniformed police to the question of trends in police abuse of power and force did not differ significantly from their views on corruption. An important point to make when interpreting figure 5.13 is that preventive police are not in the business of investigating crime and interrogating witnesses or suspects except in the case of delito flagrante. In fact their outlook turned out to be altogether different from what we anticipated. The verbal commentary accompanying the survey responses indicates that officers focus especially on the abuse of power that they themselves are subjected to within their own organization. This seems to apply especially to the 14 percent of Preventive Police who said that it had in fact been on the increase within their organization. During the interviews we held—as well as informal talks with ordinary officers Nelia Tello Peón has conducted over the years—preventive police never failed to complain about the manner in which their rights are constantly violated, a point we have already discussed (see figures 5.4 and 5.5). Having outlined what our survey results yield about corruption and abuse of power toward the end of the Fox presidency, in the next section we turn to the issues of internal and external control mechanisms, discussing what our survey and interviews convey about their (in)adequacy from a police perspective.

Figure 5.13. As regards abuse of power and force within your agency, do you consider there to be . . . (Q. 19)

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THE (IR)RELEVANCE OF INSTITUTIONAL POLICE CONTROLS It is a fact that there is no justice for us; they can put us in jail for killing a burglar, even if this was necessary and inevitable. (Preventive Police officer, thirty-three years old)

The Internal Affairs Unit and Council of Honor and Justice As internal control mechanisms in modern professional police forces serve as a first line of defense against police malfeasance, it is of interest to see how they look from “the inside.” The mass dismissal of members of the Capital District Internal Affairs Unit already provides a gloomy picture of the process of Mexican internal police control (see chapter 4). Our survey and interview data are hardly more reassuring. Judicial police in the group interviews recounted that a police officer investigated for alleged corruption or abuse of force is quite likely to be offered the choice of facing charges or paying off the Internal Affairs investigating officer. In one group discussion among judicial police, Internal Affairs was universally branded as “the mafia,” completely devoid of any moral authority. In our survey we asked police their opinion about the Council of Honor and Justice. In the light of the group interviews with Azaola the main query about the response to Question 9 is how to interpret that a considerable minority of both investigative and uniformed police subscribe to the moderately positive view that, “It generally operates in a just manner.” (See figure 5.14.)

Figure 5.14. What is your opinion of the Council of Honor and Justice? (Q. 9)

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The students administering the survey believed all those choosing the more positive assessment were simply not being truthful about their real opinion (see appendix A): Indeed, a large majority of respondents jokingly talked about the “Consejo de Horror and Injustiticia.” Most police are convinced that members of the Council receive bonuses if they punish enough officers, and that this reason is why some officers are punished unjustly. Conversely, the Council is also widely considered corrupt in that it allows officers who are in fact guilty of abuse of power or of refusing to obey orders not to have to face the Council if they are well-connected or offer its members bribes. Both Internal Affairs and the Council of Honor and Justice are clearly held in low esteem, within the Judicial as well as the Preventive Police, and are seen as marred by considerable dishonesty and by acting arbitrarily. This is facilitated by lack of clarity in procedures used to fire police; many officers indeed appeal their dismissals, which are regularly adjudicated as having been unlawful. All in all, the work of both Internal Affairs and the Council is unlikely to have much regulative, normative, or preventive effect.

POLICE RECRUITMENT STANDARDS AND TRAINING Police Recruitment A defining aspect of police preparations—particularly in the light of efforts to raise professional levels within the police—is that the educational background of new police officers has risen considerably since 2000, especially within the Judicial Police, but also to some extent among the preventive police. Whether this has indeed contributed to an increase in professionalism and adherence to human rights even to a limited extent—as hoped by those propagating such a development—is hard to establish in view of the countervailing influences of the wider organizational and social environment on police. Police Training: A Symbolic Exercise If you observe your colleagues, all of us have big stomachs, because we don’t exercise, [and] we don’t have time to eat properly. (Judicial Police officer, thirty-five years old)

Police training in Mexico as an institutional control mechanism is supposed to set the parameters of proper policing with some human rights significance. It is, however, equally true that failure to offer certain kinds of training also sets normative parameters within the organization, by indicating what is and is not considered important. A lack of physical training and exercise, for example, characterizes most Mexican police, together with the

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“fast food” that officers commonly consume for lack of proper institutional meal facilities. Their lack of specific training influences officers’ working personalities and the role they are implicitly expected to play as police. In terms of what it does and does not offer, police training is in principle a highly relevant institutional control mechanism. Since 1994, efforts to improve police training have spread in and outside Mexico City. This process has characteristically introduced new courses and other training, replacing them with the existing instruction, without any serious evaluation or clear-cut vision of the direction and/or relevance of the training to be provided. Neither the SSP nor the SSP DF offer specific explanations or justifications for the content, organization, or methodologies used for either recruit or on-the-job Preventive Police training, nor is any such information forthcoming from the Police Technical Training Institute (ITFP). One of the flaws marring current police training is reminiscent of education for the Mexican legal profession (Kossick 2004: 731 ff): Teaching methods are characteristically old-fashioned—an instructor offers an abstract talk on a particular subject—with little to no thought given as to how it may be connected to the functions officers are to perform in their daily work. Nevertheless, the quality and scope of police training among the different Mexico City police clearly varies (as seen in chapter 4), and one is as likely to find officers devoid of even the most basic and elementary policing and communication skills as officers who have clearly had professional training. Against this background, the main results of our survey provide some insight into the development and relevance of police training in Mexico City. As figure 5.15 suggests, on-the-job training has clearly increased more for judicial police than for preventive police. This is hardly surprising in the light of the differences in their function and tasks, as well as the logistical problems in organizing such training for the many preventive police. Due to their large numbers relative to courses offered, preventive police have to choose their training, but whether they can do so or not depends in part on

Figure 5.15. What do you think about the training police receive these days? (Q. 17)

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their chiefs: During the interviews many officers reported that to participate in training, they have to pay their chiefs for the favor. In the survey we asked police to indicate areas in which they had received additional training. Preventive officers were very vague on this score, many only able to remember that they had indeed participated in some kind of course, but unable to remember what it was about. Only two kinds of onthe-job training were reported by uniformed police with some frequency: firearms training, which 30 percent reported having received at least once as a police officer. Twenty-three percent remembered a human rights course. As it turns out in the interviews most preventive police are only interested in firearms training. In contrast, many more judicial police reported that they had had on-the-job training one or more times on the following topics: firearms training (60 percent), human rights (45 percent), personal and combat defense skills (40 percent), ethics and Civic Culture Law (Ley Cívica) (28 percent), patrolling and use of handcuffs (26 percent), public security (17 percent), explosives and terrorism (13 percent) (Question 16). As already mentioned earlier in this chapter a lack of adequate on-thejob training does not feature prominently as a problem that judicial police mentioned as preventing them from functioning properly (Question 12, Response 8): Twenty-four percent of preventive police but only 10 percent of judicial police mention a lack of training as a problem, a difference between the two police forces probably related to the difference in quantity and quality of training offered to them. During the interviews, judicial police commonly said that the quality of courses tends to be good, even though they pointed out a lack of connection between police training and the reality of police work. In any case, even for judicial police, on-the-job training occurs without much vision and coherence, compounded by the informal selection for participation. For judicial police this constitutes an important issue: Some officers are clearly given preferential treatment. The lack of any systematic physical training is especially noticeable: An officer may be sent for such training perhaps once a year—and on occasion twice—only to be sent for a completely different training course the next year. Even though judicial police tended to say they are happy with the quality of the physical training offered (see figure 5.16), it is clear that physical training carried out on such a basis hardly serves any useful purpose, exercise being required on a regular basis to maintain basic physical skills. Being sent to a course has an especially symbolic significance for police. It is taken as signifying that they are considered important, and being selected contributes to their self-esteem. What a course actually consists of is hardly of importance, nor for what they get out of it in terms of skills or knowledge. This is clearly illustrated by the fact that preventive police in particular were usually unable to remember anything about the (limited)

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Figure 5.16. In your opinion, the courses in which you participated . . . (Q. 18)

training and courses in which they had participated, in fact not even their subject. Inquiry into which specific courses had been attended characteristically caused either unease or even irritation. Thus, the largely positive response to the survey questions by preventive police concerning the value of training courses should be seen more as indicating the extent to which such courses contribute to self-esteem, rather than any actual benefit from them. In contrast, the significance of nearly two-thirds of investigative police stating that courses have been “indispensable” to their ability to carry out their work most likely also reflects the much more extensive on-the-job training offered. They at least partly indeed viewed training as having had positive impact on the quality of their work. Nevertheless, on the face of it our survey data suggest that officers tended to consider training of relevance for the quality of police and even for police adherence to human rights. Emphasis on human rights in the public arena has contributed to a gradual increase in the number of human rights courses offered police. As the survey reveals, such an increase has occurred in particular within the Judicial Police. Considerably more uniformed than investigative police stated that the predominant effect of these courses had been “to give them a more positive view of human rights.” However, in view of their inability to remember what any of the courses were about, it seems safe to assume that any impact on a cognitive level was absent, and the influence of courses on a change of attitude has been marginal at best. Furthermore correlating attitudes about human rights (Question 26) and those who had taken human rights courses (Question 16) showed no difference: In other words, assuming that police were randomly assigned to take part in human rights courses, these have not resulted in more officers looking upon human rights in a favorable light. The influence of basic recruit training and

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on-the-job training is therefore conditional and hard to measure: Police culture tends to override much that has been taught on a cognitive level if this does not somehow become institutionally embedded. Unintended Consequences of Human Rights Commissions Crime is made worse by the National Commission of Human Rights, because they very much restrict the apprehension of delinquents: sometimes it is necessary to use violence and then as a result it is the police who are [accused of being] guilty of maltreatment. (Judicial Police officer, thirty-nine years old)

As discussed in chapter 4, the work of CNDH, and its wake also that of the State and DF human rights commissions, has been widely considered of major importance in Mexico, having provided an institutional way for citizens to relate to and be more influential with the authorities by introducing a hitherto absent independent accountability system to which the authorities and state institutions had to answer. CNDH has undoubtedly contributed to greater emphasis on and recognition of the value of human rights in Mexico, and its work has had considerable moral authority and influence on public opinion, proving notably resourceful in documenting abuses. Indeed, perhaps the greatest influence that might be expected from such institutions as state or national human rights commissions is that they contribute to a greater human rights awareness and sensitivity, not only in society as a whole but within the police as well. Yet the Commissions’ formal and bureaucratic approach has first and foremost produced reports and formal conclusions. In terms of changing police attitudes among the rank and file it has mainly been counterproductive, persuading police not to incorporate human rights as part of their approach, but rather to considering CNDH and other human rights commissions as working against the

Figure 5.17. How does the Human Rights Commission affect police work? (Q. 27)

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effectiveness of the police, being in the interests of “delinquents,” making police work more difficult. A majority of officers view an increased emphasis on human rights by the authorities in a negative light, diminishing fear of the police and serving the interests of lawbreakers. Our interview data show that such a negative view relates especially to activities of the CNDH, the institution considered responsible for such increased emphasis, in conjunction with the DF Human Rights Commission to a lesser degree. Officers, in short, are overwhelmingly of the opinion that the Commission has made the work of the police less effective. A recurring theme during the group interviews was that the Commission defends criminals and that its members are incompetent. This undermines the impact of the various human rights commissions, and in particular the CNDH, to promote the value of human rights within the police itself, since for a large majority of surveyed and interviewed police the Commission is simply seen as “the enemy.” At any rate the work of the Commission as yet seems to have done little to propagate human rights values among the police rank and file.

POLICE ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN RIGHTS It has gradually become more common and acceptable, especially among senior police, to talk about human rights. Nevertheless, one is not likely to meet many ordinary officers with much knowledge in this area. For most police, human rights are generally seen as a negative force, shaping in an unhelpful way both public and criminals’ attitudes toward the police, and making police work that much more difficult, as already noted. A small proportion of those surveyed looked upon human rights in a favorable light: Eighteen percent of preventive police and about 20 percent of judicial police surveyed thought that it is a good thing for the police to pay attention to human rights (Question 26, Response 2). For the great majority the words conjured up negative associations. Almost two-thirds of police generally associate human rights primarily with their being “abused,” namely by serving primarily the interest of criminals; furthermore a sizeable minority just generally feels the issue of human rights receives too much attention in Mexican society. Less than one in six police see human rights in a favorable light; only a small minority of police found positive outcomes from an emphasis on human rights. (See figure 5.18.) The predominantly negative feeling conjured up by “human rights” very much relate to consequences attributed to an increased emphasis on human rights. Many police officers are convinced that to be able to function

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Figure 5.18. What is your opinion of human rights? (Q. 26)

effectively it is necessary for the public and “the criminal element” to fear the police. The vast majority of police said the main effect of the attention paid to human rights has been a lessening of fear of the police. (See figure 5.19.) With reduced fear not complemented or replaced by “respect” for police, to the police this predominantly signifies lesser police control. With this logic they especially associate human rights with making work much more difficult, allowing people to manipulate the law for their own purposes. For example, according to interviewed police, allegations of police abuse result in the Public Prosecutor’s Office failing to pursue cases against a suspect and even arresting the accused officer instead. In consequence, police argue, police work becomes less effective and people are less afraid as a result.

Figure 5.19. What are the other results of the importance the authorities attach to human rights? (Q. 28)

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Significantly, the distribution of responses presented in figures 5.18 and 5.19 overall did not vary in any major way by educational background, age, duration of employment within the police, gender, or general or specific training in human rights. A preliminary conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the socializing impact of the police on each other is apparently very powerful. It means that in a Mexican context attempts to increase human rights values within existing police forces along any of these lines (raising educational background requirements, training, or more female officers) cannot on their own be expected to have much effect. What the attitudinal responses make equally clear is that, on the whole, efforts to change human rights values among the rank and file have so far been largely unsuccessful.

CONCLUSION Our empirical findings from the study of Mexico City’s Preventive and Judicial Police illustrate the difficulties of the democratization process and accompanying institutional and organizational reforms to fundamentally alter institutional practices. Formally characteristic democratic control mechanisms have been put in place, but the democratic and rule of law values and principles that determine their democratic significance have barely become institutionalized and internalized. Old and undemocratic institutional patterns have largely remained, like patronistic and personal dependency relations of the rank and file of their (often corrupt) senior officers; some progress on this front has occurred as regards the younger generation of judicial police taking a more independent and critical attitude toward their superiors. In terms of police-public relations, fear of the police has (perhaps as yet) not been replaced by some basic respect, and the transition of repressive toward more “democratic forms of policing” are clearly hard to achieve in the light of the social isolation of the police and continued widespread—unfortunately largely justified—mistrust of police and wider criminal justice system. Our data of trends over the period 2000–2005 concern levels of corruption and abuse of power suggest that in the post-PRI era some progress was achieved. It was to be expected that progress in terms of corruption reduction would be modest at best in the light of political and institutional practices being in a state of flux, facilitating the emergence of “new corruption,” with people taking advantage of unclear rules, muddled lines of authority and tentative accountability systems (See Morris 2009 as discussed in chapter 1). Of course since the survey was administered in 2005 it has become increasingly clear that the corrupting influence of the drug cartels have increased, reaching, as will be discussed, the most senior of police. Indeed, the setup

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of internal accountability systems (introduced in the mid-nineties) will have contributed by means that are decidedly in contravention of democratic and rule of law principles: The systems concerned manifestly function in an arbitrary and even corrupt manner themselves. The picture emerging from those working within the system makes clear that police officers are hardly guaranteed basic internal procedural safeguards that constitute the basis of any democratic order, and still remain at the mercy of arbitrary decisions within their institution, both from superior officers as well as the internal control bodies set up to control and regulate police conduct. The same can be said about other facets of police work, including such basics as to who will be singled out for promotion and training courses. The first five years of the Fox presidency do seem to have resulted in a reduction of torture and other forms of police abuse of power, at least in Mexico City. Our interview and survey data do not permit us to form a precise picture of the factors that have contributed to this development. However, what has become unequivocally clear in this chapter is that one of the most important and fundamental disappointments of the democratization process so far has been that it has failed to instil democratic and human rights values into those working within the law enforcement institutions themselves. Without the internalization of such values it is difficult to see how police on their part can operate likewise vis-à-vis the public and criminal suspects as a matter of course, being tempted to do otherwise when the opportunity presents itself. In the absence of an internalization of these values, it is to be feared that, under unfavorable circumstances and the kind of escalated violence connected to the increasingly gruesome violence and corrupting influences deriving from the vicious turf war between the different drug cartels, gains in terms of progress in the establishment of the rule of law and human rights principles among a modernized criminal justice system will be under severe pressure or could even be lost. It is indeed to the social context and its impact on both fronts that the discussion will be pursued in the following chapter.

NOTES 1. We drew up this list on the basis of the complaints made during the group interviews with judicial and preventive police by Elena Azaola in 2004. In it we included the matter of police-public relations. The list struck a chord with many police; a considerable number wished to list all mentioned problems. 2. In one incident we were made aware of informally, a lower rank senior officer concealed from his superior that one of his men (temporarily) lost his firearm, undoubtedly rewarding him with the unreserved loyalty of his subordinates.

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3. Poll on Corruption National and Good Governance, 2004. “Encuesta Nacional de corrupción y buen gobierno.” Este País 154, January 2004. 4. On one occasion the students administering the survey observed that a youngster arrested by judicial police was paying for the tortas (a kind of Mexican roll) they were eating and their drinks, and was subsequently let go. The officers were completely brazen about these events, and made no effort to hide from the students what was going on. 5. When interpreting the responses of both groups, this difference should be taken into account. (See methodological appendix A.) 6. One of the consequences has been that police have a preference for “administrative crimes,” not involving known criminals and thus causing fewer problems. In addition, the possible long wait ahead for police to process a detainee—perhaps lasting six hours—is a general characteristic of the system discouraging officers from arresting and an additional reason for them to let people go in exchange for money. 7. Interestingly, the police are the only professional group in Mexico that justifies its corruption on grounds of low salaries. Other groups such as the teaching or medical profession, which earn salaries at a similar level, do not justify their corruption on this basis. 8. The options provided in the survey were based on the opinions expressed in the group interviews with federal and preventive police carried out by Elena Azaola. These discussions showed a considerable disparity in thinking, with moral views on such matters tied to their varying opinions about its inevitability in its wider societal context. 9. Senior preventive police informed us that in 1999 female officers constituted around 30 percent of SSP DF. However, such a figure inevitably includes a large number of women officers carrying out administrative responsibilities. Our survey data drawn from officers working on the streets indicated that overall levels of female police within the Capital District, Preventive Police had remained low, at around 10 percent the proportion in our sample. In our survey the percentage of female officers within the Judicial Police sample was only some 4 percent. This, however, is likely to be an under-representation, as the one group interview with female judicial officers revealed that about half the women working within the Judicial Police carry out office work and were thus not part of our sample. (See appendix A) 10. Fifty-five percent of male officers considered corruption “inevitable” compared to 49 percent of females in the Judicial Police. More females chose the morally in-between category: Nineteen percent of female preventive police considered that corruption is wrong only when it is actively sought but not when the apprehended themselves offer bribes, compared to 9 percent of male officers. 11. This applies particularly to the country as a whole, which comprises a large and diverse population with unequal access to human rights institutions at which abuses can be reported. Moreover, CNDH does little work concerning alleged abuses within the criminal justice process. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights reported that only a few of the thirty-two CNHD state commissions, one of them in Mexico City, actually devote resources to the problem. This means that CNDH is not really in a position to draw any conclusions on this point for the whole of

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Mexico: In essence it is a body that relies for its information on complaints, making it virtually impossible to discern any trends. In fact, the organization’s jurisdiction is generally limited to alleged human rights abuses by federal police. The bulk of potential abuse that occurs in cases falling under state jurisdiction falls outside its scope and attention. 12. During the personal interviews, one question asked was: “What in your experience is the most notable change that has occurred within your organization over the past five years?”

6 Police and Politics: A Legacy of Mistrust and the Failure of Reforms So Far

Mexico can with some justification be said to be in a perpetual crisis of the lack of public confidence in the state. The same also holds for Mexico’s policing, whose deeply rooted problems became very visible during the Tláhuac lynching and its aftermath. Ordinary people generally experience a situation where trangressors have general impunity from punishment, which tells them that state justice and security institutions are of little benefit to them personally. They consider that in reality the law means nothing for getting things done and that, to most, the rule of law means little. Mexico’s current crisis of policing is related to the authorities’ inability to address in any substantial way the prevailing feelings of public insecurity and of persistent corruption within the police and the wider criminal justice and political systems. Indeed, the high degree of mistrust pervading society is a central feature of its societal and political context, and appreciation of this reality is essential for understanding the nature of Mexican policing and the impact of reforms. This chapter focuses on both the causes and impact of public distrust of Mexican institutions, with specific attention to the relationship to corruption. Recognizing the profound nature of Mexico’s prevailing social and inter- and intra-institutional mistrust is crucial to appreciating both the opportunities and limitations in current police reforms and institutional control, and helps to establish the kind of reforms proposed in chapter 7 that are necessary and possible for improvement in the future. Here we specifically probe the lack of police legitimacy and the continued arbitrary enforcement of the law in Mexico. Both are related to the politicized nature of policing in Mexico, especially the extent to which security has become a political issue since 1995 and how this has been dealt with in 171

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the light of Mexico’s cultural and political heritage. As noted earlier, senior police are power- rather than solution-oriented; in Mexico City in particular this helps explain tensions among federal and local authorities, as well as the various political allegiances of the different police forces. Varying characteristics of present-day Mexican policing also contribute to the mistrust and lack of legitimacy of the police: their focus on repressive policing of “nuisance crime” rather than serious and particularly violent crimes, and the police still engage in torture, in spite of the apparent diminution of such practices in Mexico City itself. Mistrust of the police is increased even more by the widespread participation of police in various criminal practices: drug dealing, corruption, kidnappings and other forms of extortion. In this chapter we also revisit the institutional and social characteristics that prevent democratic practices and the principles of the rule of law from taking hold within police institutions. In spite of the demise of the PRI oneparty rule and its hold on the police and judicial apparatus, law enforcement continues to be exercised in a highly political and arbitrary manner, and remains notorious for being influenced by the political pressures that may be put on criminal investigations and prosecutions. So far it has proven impossible to reform the police into an organization able both to provide security and to act in accordance with the rule of law and the principles of human rights. Overall, the democratization process since the mid-1990s has been accompanied by decreasing public security. In fact, in recent years the war against the drug cartels has significantly worsened the security situation in large parts of Mexico, particularly in the northern region. In general, in Mexico, politicians and police chiefs alike tend to formulate policies on the spur of the moment, often replacing them later without serious evaluation of their effectiveness. One standard response under democratization has been to throw more police manpower at a particular security problem, and another response has been to increase the role of the military. Neither approach has proved to have any long-term effect, and has failed to convince a sceptical public that the state has much to offer in terms of providing security. The role of community policing—as a democratic form of policing par excellence—has remained largely cosmetic and a fringe exercise. Furthermore, a more in-depth inspection of the kind of institutional reforms that might provide evidence of a transition from authoritarian to more democratic and human-rights-based law enforcement practices shows that the results of the police modernization and democratization process on an institutional level have in fact been marginal. For example, the introduction of medical examinations of prisoners to identify and prevent the occurrence of physical abuse by law enforcement agents has had little or

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no impact. Police training has remained fragmented and its influence as a mechanism to improve the quality of policing has remained limited. The previous chapter has already provided a gloomy picture of police views on institutional policing realities and existing internal institutional controls. There may have been some reduction of human rights violations by torture and abuse of power. But corruption and arbitrariness, including in the functioning of internal institutional controls such as the Internal Affairs Unit and the Council of Honor and Justice, remain deeply institutionalized. This undermines the foundations for the rule of law, and is a direct transgression of the principle of equality before the law. The introduction of more inter- and intrasystemic controls has so far only seen limited improvements. Violation of the rights of ordinary police themselves is also one of the issues to be reexamined in this chapter, as it impedes police officers from internalizing the principles of human rights and the rule of law. After considering the main societal and organizational characteristics relevant to Mexican police reforms and controls, we revisit the real-world constraints on relevant reforms and institutional controls outlined in chapter 4, above all the creation of the Federal Investigative Agency (AFI), internal and intra-systemic control mechanisms, police training, and the reforms of 2008.

INSTITUTIONAL DISTRUST IN MEXICO In modern societies with high levels of institutional complexity, trust is based primarily on institutions’ technical competence and their commitment to their mission. A willingness to rely on political actors and to believe in the social milieu are defining characteristics of a democratic culture, including its bureaucratic functions (Diamond 1994). In Latin America such trust by and large does not exist. Instead it takes on a “focalized form,” as Roniger (1990: 16–18) puts it; that is to say, it is personalized and more narrowly ascribed only to specific individuals. In Mexico, there has been a profound lack of public trust in the country’s institutions and political forces, a finding confirmed by many studies (Klesner 2001).1 People believe that politicians and other members of state institutions use their positions primarily for their own personal advantage; their professed broader goals in the public interest come in a distant second, if that. But in Mexico generalized institutional and societal mistrust extends far beyond the relationships of citizens with police and other institutions such as the judiciary and politics, that is, politicians, and political parties. For it constitutes an important underlying and defining characteristic of social relations in Mexican society as a whole; outside one’s immediate circle and specific selected individuals, all fellow citizens are essentially viewed

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as potential predators. Thus desconfianza (mistrust) runs deep in Mexican society. It is a term that resonates with whomever one discusses Mexico’s current woes, whether institutional, political, or at a broader societal level. This broad mistrust, as a defining force in social relations, has serious consequences for police-public relations and for institutional realities, both with respect to the police itself and to the wider criminal justice system. Distrust of the judicial system itself has substantially worsened over time, both before and after democratization; in 1995, more than 25 percent of people surveyed expressed no confidence in the legal system, compared to 12 percent in 1981 (Bergman 2002: 17, citing World Values Surveys). Transparency International, in its 2004 annual report, found that the police and the political parties score 4.5 on a scale of one to five in a Mexican public opinion survey, in which 1 is “not corrupt” and 5 is “totally corrupt.” The legal and judicial system fared only marginally better with a score of 4.3, as did the federal legislature, which scored 4.2. All in all, Mexico ranked seventh-lowest of all forty-eight countries studied for perceived corruption. The Mexican police themselves were ranked even lower, tying as the second highest in corruption, tied with Ghana, Peru, and India: Only the Nigerian police were considered more corrupt by its population. However, a public survey carried out by Nelia Tello Peón in the neighborhood of Los Pedregales in Mexico City in 2004 indicates that street police are seen as the most corrupt by only 16 percent of the population, whereas politicians of all parties and “the authorities” were seen as the most corrupt by 34 and 40 percent, respectively. In any case, these survey findings indicate the elevated degree of mistrust in Mexico, crucial to understanding the underlying realities in Mexican society. Mistrust runs high within the institutions themselves as well. Party politics, favoritism, clientelism, and officials’ sheer opportunism create a climate in which no public employee can feel secure in his or her position. Careers are not built primarily on demonstrated competence, but instead on one’s personal ties, so connections are of crucial importance. At the same time, anybody is at risk of being fired for negative events, whether deservedly or merely as a result of an unfortunate collision of circumstances, a state of affairs that applies very much to the police at all levels. Yet on a day-to-day level in Mexico one does not get a feeling of crisis, or of a sense of all-pervasive mistrust. People simply get on with their lives, accept such a state of affairs as a given over which they have no control, and do not allow it to affect their state of mind. If nothing else, this reflects the many-layered realities of Mexican society, with hidden characteristics lying below the surface that are not evident at first sight. In spite of existing insecurity and mistrust, Mexican people and society still function. That “Mexico somehow does not fall over the edge into the sea,” as one insider put it, can at least partly be explained in fact by the very low expectations people have

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for the country’s institutions and politicians, and their successfully seeking support instead in informal networks, notably their own families. On another level, however, the degree of mistrust has profound consequences for Mexican society as a whole. It creates a sense of social disintegration and constitutes a powerful impediment to the country’s moving forward economically and socially, as well as impeding institutional sophistication and stability. It also clearly affects the quality of the country’s democracy by undermining people’s commitment to collective projects, and it influences civic behavior, levels of crime, and public disorder (Doig and Theobald 2000).

SOURCES OF GENERALIZED MISTRUST IN MEXICO Our references in chapters 1 and 2 provide greater understanding of the general sources of mistrust in Mexico. Mexico’s deeply Catholic, patriarchal, and hierarchical social structure, suggests a deep-rooted historical dimension to its prevalence of general societal mistrust. Mexico, Rosalva Hernandéz and Héctor Ortiz Elizondo (2007: 369) point out is, a “nation-state structured as if it comprised a single culture, imposing a homogenizing judicial order with institutions based primarily on values held by a segment of the dominant mestizo population.” In fact, Mexican society is highly polarized, politically and economically, and arguably also ethnically. Social polarization—whether political or in terms of class, income, ethnic, or religious differences—is a key determinant affecting trust and social cooperation (Knack and Keefer 1997). In polarized societies, individuals differ in background and are less likely to share mutual expectations about behavior, making it more difficult to set up self-enforcing agreements. As Stephen Knack and Phillip Keefer point out (1997), individuals and groups have a greater incentive to repudiate policy agreement in a context of social polarization; when policy coalitions are unstable, trust relations between individuals often break down. Armony (2004) points to “unequal societies” in general as an important contextual factor undermining the rule of law. When the rule of law is a weak force it is difficult for individuals to count on sanctions for their own behavior and that of others. This in turn hinders the development of broader networks of social trust through civic engagement. Of course, a country’s institutional structure and the past performance of its institutions are also crucial in determining the level of trust and extent of civic norms in society. When state institutions are able to restrain arbitrary behavior of a country’s leadership and elites, Knack and Kiefer (1997: 1279) note, government actions are more credible and likely to inspire trust. Mexico’s institutions have remained highly unconvincing in this respect.

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Corruption and the Lack of Trust Not only the police, but most sectors of Mexican public life are notorious for their corruption. This state of affairs can be linked to a range of Latin American cultural characteristics.2 In Latin America, Nef (2001) has pointed to particularism (allegiances only within each social circle), formalism (leading to the double standard), and clientelism (expectations of higher-ups dispensing favors), as well as corporatism, authoritarianism and centralism. Luzani (2002: 168, 173) points to Latin Americans’ general irreverence for the law as a major factor fuelling political corruption. She associates this with a widespread perception that bribery is a way of life, many Latin Americans adhering to the theory that bribery makes public administration work more smoothly. Widespread corruption in Latin America has been explained by the region’s cultural traits. Historians contend that corruption during colonialism reflected a dualistic structure—a formal, legal order set alongside an informal political reality characterized by clientelism, personal loyalty and favors (See Morris 2009: 210–212 for an overview of the literature concerned). Other studies have pointed to a weak collective identity, a strong sense of hierarchy, social capital and political trust, the intense desire to get ahead within a society offering few opportunities (as discussed by Morris 2009: 211; see further González-Fabre 1996; Hooper 1995; Husted 1999, 2002; Lipsted and Lenz 2000; Zaniartu 1996). Cross-national studies have shown that countries with low levels of interpersonal trust suffer greater corruption (La Porta et al 1997; Seligson 2001, 2002), as do societies with a generalized tolerance toward corruption (Catterberg and Moreno 2002, 2007), the kind of characteristics prevailing in much of Latin America. One important issue concerns the contested direction of the cause and effect between culture and corruption (See for an overview of the relevant literature Morris 2003, 2009). Some authors view the public attitudes toward a culture of corruption as the outcome of years of entrenched political corruption. Others think specific cultural characteristics provide the setting and thus are the cause that allows corruption to foster; corruption is then an ethical issue emerging from the moral weakness of society or the persistence of traditional values. Within the institutional approach many of the above-mentioned cultural traits are considered a consequence of corruption rather than a root cause explaining its existence.3 Few would dispute the existence of a “culture of corruption” in Mexico. With some justification the belief that you can only get things done by offering bribes can be considered a national state of mind. A 1998 public survey in Mexico City found that 62 percent of respondents said that at times it is necessary to bribe officials in order to resolve a problem; 53 percent agreed with the statement that it is so difficult to comply with laws and regulations that “there is no alternative to corruption” (Gutiérrez 1998).

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Indeed, Mexico’s “culture of corruption” has undoubtedly contributed to the prevailing public mistrust, both towards others generally and toward the state institutions specifically. The 1996 Latinobarómetro found that 64 percent of Mexicans believed that other Mexicans are generally dishonest, and 72 percent declared that others are not law-abiding (Lagos 1997), while the Hewlett Foundation 1998 survey suggests that the lack of public confidence in Mexico’s public institutions is in fact a direct consequence of their perceived corruption (cited by Morris 2003).4 The consequences of this fundamental problem is reenforced by another survey finding that 54 percent of the Mexican interviewees gave corruption as the principle reason for failing to pay taxes (Latinobarómetro 1999 in Moloeznik 2006: 277). The issue of corruption and mistrust can be set in a wider context of the relationship between state actors and the citizenry. In Mexico this relationship has remained largely clientelist. The democratization process of the past decades has done little to fundamentally change this relationship into one based on the rule of law. This is reflected in what Telma Luzani refers to as “Latin America’s generalized irreverence for the law” (2002: 168), a point illustrated by responses to a 2001 Mexican survey question, “Who do you think respects the law less, those in power (gobernantes), citizens, or both?” About half of the interviewees said neither respected the law, and one-third said those in power respected the law less than citizens (Secretaría de Gobernación 2001 in Moloeznik 2005: 277). If it is true that politicians can easily ignore judicial verdicts when it suits them, this illustrates the failure, even by members of state institutions themselves, to internalize the fundamental principles of the rule of law.

A PERVASIVE LACK OF POLICE LEGITIMACY The public see us as rats, corrupt, the worst that exists. (Preventive Police, thirty-five years old)

Mistrust shapes public attitudes toward the police. The police are not only seen in society as ineffective and arbitrary, but as deeply corrupt, and so part of the crime problem. Police as Incompetent, Ineffective, and Arbitrary In an effort to weed out unfit, incompetent and corrupt personnel, as formalized in the new Public Security Law of 2008, a massive testing of law enforcement personnel has been ongoing, involving lie-detectors, drug tests, psychological profiling and tests of personal wealth among other measures. In November 2008, President Calderón presented to Congress

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the results for more than 56,000 state and municipal police already tested in 2008: Around 27,700 (49.4 percent) were rated unfit for police work (receiving a “not recommendable” rating), as opposed to 23,380 approved. Some states and regions fared considerably worse than others. In six states as many as two-thirds of police failed security tests. In the border state of Baja California almost nine out of ten police failed background and security tests (Stevenson 2008). During the group interviews with Azaola, judicial police commented that in reality very few crimes are investigated at all, although to the outside world a façade is maintained that this is in fact the case. If investigations are started they are seldom carried through to their conclusion. Judicial police are generally restricted to “nonsense cases” (basura), as they put it. Of course, it is common knowledge in Mexico that there are virtually no investigations carried out against powerful people, no matter how serious the suspicions or allegations involved, connected with and compounded by rampant institutionalized corruption. Mexican police are known for their inadequate and selective enforcement of the law. For example, rather than arresting real delinquents, preventive police prefer to arrest people who are drunk or young men for their aggressive behavior, rather than for having committed an actual crime. On the other hand, police can never be sure whether those arrested have connections with the public prosecutors’ office—arresting a malefactor with connections is considered risky by police. Most commonly those detained are released within a few hours after confessing to the charges against them. An AFI operation against illegal CDs and videos may receive considerable attention in the media, yet any tourist walking the streets can observe that illegal selling of such products occurs openly. In the enforcement of international anti-piracy laws, police arrests and seizures can be seen largely as a symbolic token, a gesture for international audiences elsewhere, rather than that the authorities are serious (Aguiar 2007). The same applies to Mexico’s illegal drug business: Drug vendors are largely left untouched, in spite of detailed police knowledge of their operations and whereabouts. The unresolved murders of a large number of women in Ciudad Juárez since 1993 have received considerable international attention. The InterAmerican Commission of Human Rights concluded that the authorities failed their responsibilities and that there was an overall lack of efficiency and political will to confront the problem, especially during the first years that women started being murdered there on a regular basis. Illustrating the point, in its World Report 2005, Human Rights Watch describes the case of Víctor García Uribe, a bus driver convicted for the murder of eight young women in Ciudad Juárez on the basis of a confession he later recanted on the grounds that it had been made under torture. His lawyer was gunned down, after receiving death threats for three months to drop the case. An-

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other suspect in the case died while in police custody. In other cases in Ciudad Juárez, confessions and subsequent conviction were also secured on the basis of confessions that defendants claimed to be the result of torture. Mexican law is evidently enforced in a very arbitrary way. Beatriz Magaloni and Guillermo Zepeda (2004: 175) contend that the Public Prosecutor’s Office use of its own discretion in deciding whether to prosecute in fact contributes to police arbitrariness in its modus operandi. The fact that verdicts are not made public (justified on privacy considerations) is also of importance, preventing any outside scrutiny and public debate on the quality of decision-making within the criminal process, such as lack of the rule of proof and a whole variety of criminal procedures with possible human rights implications. Repressive Policing of “Nuisance Crimes” It is clear that, rather than a gradual move toward even-handed enforcement or community-oriented policing, the main trend in Mexico City has been toward more repressive policing of certain groups of the population. August 2004 saw the introduction of a new “Civic Culture Law.” The law for Mexico City provides administrative sanctions of up to $150 and thirtysix hours in jail for public activities such as “offering a service that has not been solicited.” These include activities like windshield washing, offering or seeking prostitution (traditionally tolerated in parts of the city) painting graffiti, and disposing of trash in public areas. In the first eleven days of the law’s introduction, police reported that they had brought some 3,000 workers in the “informal” economy before judges. Targeting the poorest population groups who rely for their survival on such activities within the informal economy and have no viable alternatives, the law has drawn considerable criticism from several quarters. It has been rightly criticized as both merely symbolic and highly ineffective because it targets the poorest population groups who rely for their survival on this type of work. The repressive impact of the Civic Culture Law has been significant. Of the more than 21,000 cases police brought before Mexico City’s Public Prosecutor, the great majority concerned minor infractions of this law (Azaola 2006: 15). The new Civic Culture Law of 2004 led to a heavy presence of street police. Even the Judicial Police were expected to carry out patrol duties, much to the horror and bewilderment of the officers involved. They completely failed to see the purpose of this or understand its underlying thinking, since it was obviously at the expense of their investigative responsibilities. However, by 2005 through lack of enforcement the new civic culture law was in practice replaced by a policy of preventive checks and controls on people.

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Torture by Police As previously discussed in chapter 3, Mexican police have been notorious for their involvement in torture. In a study by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) of the period 1990–2003, some 588 cases of torture—many involving more than one victim—were documented by state and national human rights ombudsmen. There has been some suggestion that in the late 1990s, notably in Mexico City, the overall level of torture had dropped. By 2000, both the CNDH and the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District (CDHDF) took the position that the number of reported torture incidents had dropped to such an extent that it had ceased to constitute a priority for the organization. Reports by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN special Rapporteur for Human Rights, however, concluded that on the whole torture had persisted in Mexico although there had been improvement in some localities, notably Mexico City. A gloomier picture emerged during a fact-finding mission by the Committee Against Torture in 2001 (CAT 2003), with numerous descriptions given by victims themselves of recent torture. Two studies indicate that while the extent of police torture may have diminished in some parts of Mexico over the past ten years, the problem has far from disappeared. One study was carried out in 2002 among 115 federal and 99 state forensic physicians, as part of a larger initiative to implement governmental reforms to eradicate torture (Heisler et al. 2003). Assessing the nature and extent of torture and ill-treatment among detainees held in pre-trial detention and examined in 2002, the study concluded that torture and ill-treatment of detainees was still a major problem. These incidents were commonly undocumented and therefore almost impossible to substantiate. 49 percent of the federal physicians and 58 percent of the state forensic physicians reported that torture was a severe problem for detainees. Between 1,658 and 4,850 detainees out of 13,000 examined alleged torture in police custody. The physicians reported that they had documented evidence to substantiate such claims in a range from 285 and 1,090 cases. In addition a significant proportion of the physicians suspected torture or illtreatment of detainees examined during the previous year. A study of three prisons in the Federal District, Mexico State, and Morelos is also hardly reassuring. Of the 34 percent of the prisoners who had confessed prior to their trial, nearly a quarter said they had done so because they had been tortured, and another 12 percent of those who confessed because they had been threatened (Bergman et al. 2003). Other figures emerging from the same CIDE prison study (2002) were also revealing. A large percentage of inmates reported being threatened or humiliated by preventive police (16 percent), judicial police (32 percent) and in the prosecutor’s office (6 percent). Being beaten or tortured was also reported on a large scale by preven-

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tive police (24 percent), judicial police (41 percent) and within the public prosecutor’s office (Azaola and Bergman 2007: 110).

Medical Examination of Prisoners As described in chapter 3, the Mexican criminal procedure includes the presence of forensic doctors who will in principle examine all criminal suspects during the early stages of detention, by the public prosecutor or on arrival at a prison. If one looks into the reality of the system, however, it becomes clear that on the whole it has little to offer to the victims of torture for several reasons. First of all, when confronted with allegations that confessions are the result of torture, many judges typically demand an official medical certificate confirming that a detainee showed evidence of injuries caused by torture. In view of the flawed nature of the examinations themselves, such certificates are very difficult to come by. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights concluded that the system of official medical examinations in actual fact frequently serves as an impediment to defendants’ complaining about torture and claiming that confessions resulted from physical abuse (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001: 83). The examinations themselves tend to be carried out in a way that does little to disclose and document physical abuse. The Committee Against Torture in its 2003 report (CAT 2003: paragraph 147, 151) was particularly critical of the attitudes and behavior of the medical experts assigned to public prosecutors’ offices. Some of the torture victims it interviewed mentioned that a doctor had seen the marks of torture but refrained from inquiring into their cause; others had not certified them in writing, or had failed to do so properly. Some of the interviewees themselves had not reported torture to the examining doctor for fear of being tortured again. In a study of torture of detainees in pre-trial detention in 2003, forensic physicians acknowledged that cases of torture would commonly not be documented and therefore be almost impossible to substantiate (Heisler et al. 2003).5 Many of the physicians attributed this to police efforts to minimize physical signs of violence. The reasons most frequently given by physicians for lack of evidence for torture were: lack of photographic equipment and services (58 percent), inadequate monitoring and inaccuracy of medical examinations (36 percent), inadequate documentation (29 percent), limitations in training (28 percent), fear of reprisals for documenting torture (23 percent), and fear of coercion by police officials (18 percent). Medical examinations may be carried out in the presence of police investigators, which might intimidate doctors and prevent them from proper examination and an appropriate medical certification (Jalisco Human Rights

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Commission in CAT 2003: paragraph 150). The Committee found the medical certificates issued by the Attorney General’s doctors were at times missing from the file of the detainees who had alleged torture. Sometimes there was no mention of injuries whatsoever, and a detailed description of injuries was only occasionally included. In contrast, in the large majority of files a certificate issued by the prison doctor had been included, but in no case were the causes of any injuries mentioned (CAT 2003: paragraph 152). In fact, the form filled in by medical experts on examination of a detainee differs from state to state, but all of them only allow a description of the injuries, not of how they were caused. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights concluded that there were two principle explanations for the inadequate system of official medical examination: first of all, the inadequate working conditions of the doctors employed by the state. They were poorly paid and trained and had to carry out prisoners’ physical examinations with inadequate equipment (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001).6 In the second place, they lacked independence. In many states, forensic doctors form part of the Office of the Attorney General, and even when not in its employ, they often work closely with the Judicial Police and the Public Prosecutor. This close relationship can make them reluctant to include damaging information in the certificates concerning possible torture. The Office of the Public Defender—who assigns defense lawyers to around 80 percent of defendants who cannot afford to hire one privately—is by law allowed to use its own official forensic physicians, but in fact the office lacks sufficient funds to maintain its own corps of physicians. The Federal Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Torture specifically makes it possible to demand an examination from a private doctor of one’s choice. Such examinations, however, are usually not permitted until after the detainee’s appearance before a judge and commitment to a regular prison (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001: 85). By that time, physical evidence of torture may have started to fade. Finally, in some jurisdictions, as in Mexico City, the court system itself has forensic physicians at its disposal to investigate allegations after a defendant has been formally charged and placed in prison. However, although these doctors can be considered independent, only the public prosecutor or judge with jurisdiction over the case has the power to request such an examination; a defendant does not (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001). As part of a so-called “contextualization process” a model procedure has been set up by the Attorney General’s Office to comply with the international standards of the Istanbul Protocol, which prescribes universal standards for the medical examination of torture victims (CAT 2003: paragraph 268–270).7

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We are not aware of any official evaluation of these initiatives. However, their success remains seriously in doubt if other obstacles identified by the same study remain unchanged: the absence of basic ancillary equipment such as cameras to document external injuries, the large caseload, the presence of police officials during medical examinations, as well as fear for physical or employment-related reprisals for documenting evidence of physical abuse. Another problem is that forensic doctors have remained part of the public prosecutor’s offices. Doubts as to whether the new PGR procedures for investigating allegations of torture or ill-treatment meet the standard of an independent and impartial inquiry have continued, particularly when implicated officials belong to the public prosecutors’ offices (Amnesty International 2007: 38). Furthermore, examinations or studies carried out by private doctors or technical experts are generally accorded less evidentiary weight by judges, making it difficult to challenge the findings of official forensic services. It may well be that such a tendency has been reinforced, as Amnesty International argues (2007: 38), precisely on account of PGR efforts to promote its new procedures, based on the Istanbul Protocol, as the legal standard for assessing evidence of torture. In 2006, federal plans proposed to turn forensic services into autonomous agencies. But in states which have actually introduced similar reforms, such as Jalisco, the Governor has retained the power to appoint and dismiss the director of forensic services, thus allowing the executive significant influence on its operations. Widespread Police Involvement in Crime There are various forms of corruption for which the Mexican police are known: bribes for real or trumped-up traffic offenses and the release of arrested suspects, as well as protection money for the massive drug trade and the traffic in illegal CDs. The depth of police involvement emerged in a recent anthropological study on the illegal-CD trade in Guadalajara (Aguiar 2007). The direct or indirect involvement of police in such businesses is one obvious explanation for the lack of any serious response. For judicial police, corruption constitutes an integral part of their work. Most only await a suitable opportunity to shake down a suspect. But where judicial police specifically ask for bribes, preventive police bribes are more likely to be offered. In 2002, attempts to address corruption also included DF Office of the Public Prosecutors (PGDF). In Reforma of March 31, 2002, the Federal District Public Prosecutor, Bernando Bátiz, himself stated that since the start of his administration on December 5, 2000, the unit responsible for such issues as corruption within PGDF had undertaken 140 investigations implicating 176 persons officers in PGDF. In addition, he reported that some

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weeks earlier he had sent a report to the DF Legislative Assembly describing efforts to restructure the PGDF and address corruption within the agency.8 Police Involvement in Organized Crime In 2004 the head of the PGR’s antiorganized crime unit (SIEDO) announced the arrest of thirteen members of the Chihuahua State Judicial Police (PJE), with the arrest warrants of four other PJE-members outstanding, for their involvement in the forced disappearances and killings at the behest of the Juárez drug cartel.9 Reports of police involvement in organized crime in recent years have appeared at an alarming rate, increasingly pointing to the involvement of the highest police ranks. But police involvement in organized crime of sorts has far from been a recent phenomenon. As we saw in chapter 5, corruption occurs throughout the police hierarchy, many senior police expecting their subordinates to extract money from citizens for their benefit. During the group interviews with judicial police, officers recounted that some old-style police chiefs send their officer to collect “protection money” from gangs involved in robberies. The longer senior officers stay with their organization, it was said during the group interviews, the higher the demands and the higher the stakes. For example, confidential reports mention the “selling” of the post of police commissioner for the city’s international airport for $3.5 million, a fair indication of the institutionalized nature and depth of both police corruption and its involvement in the drug business, given the importance of the airport for drug transports (Gutiérrez 2005; Pansters and Berthier 2006: 45). The same confidential reports confirmed the existence of the so-called Brotherhood of the White Powder (Hermandad del Polvo Blanco) protecting drug traffickers and being involved in the business. Many of the higher senior police have been members. The Hermandad turns out to be a secret, informal and corrupt power network of senior police offering each other support and protection. It is a network whose origins go back to the increasing involvement of Mexico City’s police in corruption, violence, and drug-trafficking during the 1970s (Piccato 2003). Its rise coincided with the reign of the Federal District police chief Arturo Durazo from 1976 to 1982, as appointee and protégé of President José López Portillo. During that time, according to Pablo Piccato, longstanding connections between the Federal District Preventive Police and diverse illegal businesses were systematized. It resulted in a kind of “criminal organization” in the police institution’s upper ranks, eventually surviving as La Hermandad, the Brotherhood. Nowadays the Brotherhood is enveloped in myth and speculation but it is believed to still constitute a network of relations and complicity among the middle and upper ranks of Mexico City police forces. According to

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López-Montiel (2000), the Brotherhood works as a complex chain of protection and corruption that guarantees impunity for its members. Whether as a formal network or merely an informal structure, it is governed by strict rules of conduct and loyalties and by an organized system for distribution of the spoils. Police Kidnappings Police or ex-police officers have long been known to participate in kidnapping rings. Although the extent of their involvement is unknown, the involvement of some police is illustrated again and again by the criminal convictions of ex-police officers. Mexico City judicial police are particularly notorious in this respect, but uniform preventive officers from SSP DF are also convicted on kidnapping charges from time to time. Reports regularly surface about police kidnapping in the media. For example, early in March 2005, federal judicial police arrested two officers accused of two specific kidnappings, providing the media with their names and their picture, taken after their arrest. One of the officers was reported to have made a statement to the Public Prosecutor confessing his involvement in three other kidnappings during the previous year. Their role in the El General gang had been to capture their victims and hand them over to other gang members at a safehouse where the abducted would be detained during the ransom negotiations (Reforma March 6, 2005). In another case, on July 15, 2005, in collaboration with two other policemen, a Judicial Police officer arrested two Brazilian girls at the market of Mixcoac Mexico DF after they had been unable to show him their passports. Detained in a room of the police station, they were told they would only be released on the payment of some platica. The officer and his accomplices negotiated the amount with a friend of one of the girls, who offered to pay 350,000 pesos (at that time equal to some $35,000) and a car. On his way to the central offices of the Judicial Police where the ransom was to be handed over, the friend passed as a Preventive Police officer and requested his help, as a result of which the officer was arrested (Reforma July 20, 2005). During recent years reports have continued to emerge on police complicity in criminal gangs and kidnappings, and matters are clearly not improving. For instance, on September 2, 2005, PGR charged fifteen Nuevo Laredo police officers with kidnapping and organized-crime activities, such as abducting people on the orders of the Gulf drug cartel. The officers were suspected of seizing and detaining people linked to a rival gang organization, El Chapo Guzmán, and handing them over to the Zetas, the paramilitary enforcement wing of the Gulf cartel. According to the PGR statement, they

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were subsequently tortured to obtain information, ransomed for their freedom, or murdered (The Miami Herald September 3, 2005). During 2005, local media suggested that officers from the federal AFI have been increasingly involved in organized crime, and also linked AFI to the unresolved murder in 2004 of Enrique Salinas, brother of Mexico’s former president Carlos Salinas.10 One highly publicized kidnapping in 2008 involved the fourteen-year-old son of a prominent businessman, who was seized at gunpoint by armed men dressed as federal officers from the car in which he travelled in Mexico City. In spite of the demanded ransom being paid, the boy was found dead in the trunk of a car a month later. The case prompted citizens to organize anticrime marches, and politicians to propose new antikidnapping measures: President Calderón called for life imprisonment for some forms of kidnapping, and Mexico City’s mayor Ebrard released a twenty-point antikidnapping plan. On account of one of the surviving bodyguards of the boy, who had been left for dead at the scene, three suspects were arrested, two of them police (New York Times August 14, 2008). Convincing evidence of the involvement of federal police in kidnappings had emerged more that two and a half years earlier, in December 2005, when AFI in fact became the focus of a major scandal, which confirmed suspicions about their involvement in organized crime and kidnapping. A DVD made public by the Dallas Morning News showed four men, tied and bruised, being questioned by an unseen interrogator. The four admitted to being elite Zeta enforcers for the Gulf cartel, and confessed in detail to the methods used in kidnapping, torturing, and killing its enemies. They also described their links to Mexican law enforcement, implicating high-ranking officers. At the end of the video, one of the men is executed—shot through the head—and the federal authorities said they believed that the other three shown on the video had also been killed. According to a PGR official, this resulted from a dispute between rival drug gangs, the four men having been kidnapped several months before in Acapulco. The four kidnapped men may have had police connections: On the DVD they claimed to be working with Mexican law enforcement, and two of them said they were former soldiers trying to recruit military colleagues to work for the Gulf cartel (Miami Herald December 3, 2005). Following publication of the video, PGR announced the arrest of eight AFI officers for their alleged involvement in the torture and execution shown. Two civilians were also reported arrested, with another ten suspects still at large (The Herald Mexico December 4, 2005). A judge released five of the officers for lack of evidence, but PGR issued arrest warrants; the three other AFI officers remained in custody on drugs and kidnapping charges. The AFI chief of police was arrested on December 2, 2005. Subsequent press reports, based on Mexican court files, concluded that AFI officers probably kidnapped the Zetas, and handed them over to members of the Sinaola

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cartel to be interrogated and executed; some U.S. and Mexican officials believed the video was taken by current or former soldiers (Dallas Morning News November 30, 2005 and February 6, 2006, as discussed by Freeman 2007: 15). Inevitably, any possible illusions about AFI being a beacon of relative integrity among Mexico’s police forces will have been further undermined, and in fact given a fatal blow by the arrest in December 2008 of the AFI second in command of the organization from 2003–2005 on suspicion of having leaked information to the Sinaola cartel in return for monthly payments.11 The potential involvement of police—even within antikidnapping branches—was also illustrated by the arrest of the chief of the antikidnapping branch in the state of Michoacán in 2004 for having personally run a kidnapping ring. These arrests made clear that those requiring police assistance in such cases can never be sure that the help offered is not in fact in collusion with the kidnappers in question. In combination with constant media reports of officers arrested and convicted for kidnappings, such a state of affairs greatly exacerbates the mistrust of the police in general. Mexican Police have continued to suffer a dubious reputation for being involved in kidnappings. In general, judicial police tend to be involved in kidnappings where the kidnapped person is held for ransom in contrast to preventive police whose secuestros express kidnappings are to obtain money, mostly by taking the victim to a cash machine. From a number of personal accounts received during the research year in Mexico, we can select two accounts from people who actively contributed to this study, friends of the researchers kidnapped by police or with police involvement. One kidnapping, in January 2005 was a typical “express” kidnapping, using a police car late at night to corner the car in which the friend was travelling. Taken to various cash machines, he was forced to withdraw the maximum daily allowance at each of them. He was also told to call his father to bring an additional 15,000 pesos (then about $1,500). Four hours later he was released after the kidnappers received the ransom. The incident was remarkable in that the two kidnappers did not make the slightest effort to hide their police identity.12 Another kidnapping, of the director of a private school in the fall of 2004 was a much more prolonged and gruesome affair. He was chauffeuring a school bus full of children, when it was attacked by a group of men, and he was initially held hostage with the children. When the kidnappers discovered his identity, they concluded he was a “good catch” and decided to “sell” him to another gang. There he was held in a so-called “safe house” (casa de seguridad) for thirty-one days, while his release was negotiated with the aid of the AFI anti-kidnapping branch. He was chained to a bed and guarded by one man. From the speech of two other men who occasionally appeared, it was clear that these were either judicial or ex-judicial police.

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After his release, he refused to press charges on account of the detailed information that the kidnappers possessed about him. During his ordeal, he was viciously attacked after an unsuccessful attempt to escape, with bone fractures and kidney injuries as a result. Sometimes police participation in kidnappings comes from unexpected quarters. In 2004 the head of a police statistics department in Mexico City—a respected and most unlikely suspect—was found guilty of running a kidnapping ring. There are no hard data on the extent of police involvement in kidnappings. An analysis carried out by the Mexico City newspaper Reforma for the period from January 2003 through March 2004 indicated that some 20 percent of all kidnappings, prosecutions involved police (Azaola 2006: 16). If anywhere near representative of the total number of kidnappings mentioned earlier, these figures would suggest that police connections with kidnappings (including the detention of people in exchange for negotiated ransoms) in Mexico City are in the hundreds; the extent of police involvement in “express kidnappings” can only be speculated on.13 In particular, the brazenness exhibited in the example of police using a patrol car to carry out a “kidnap express” shows an alarming lack of fear on the part of the kidnappers of being identified as police: During the kidnapping the victim might easily have observed their license plates. It also suggests their high sense of impunity, at the very least the perpetrators feel secure in counting on the silence of their colleagues, with no fear of a criminal investigation revealing their identity.

POLITICAL POLICING: IMPEDING POLICE DEMOCRATIZATION In Mexico, as in the rest of Latin America, the police are more akin to a military than a civil organization. Historically, they have also been part of the political authorities to which they owe their very existence. Consequently they identify themselves with their political masters, rather than as independent and impartial bodies responsible for maintaining the rule of law. The relations between police and the political authorities have remained in line with this experience and cultural context. Mexican police forces are thus characteristically aligned with the ruling elites and political party in charge, traditionally PRI. As a result, the Mexican democratic transition has as yet hardly resulted in a reform-minded police, and overall passivity, traditionalism, and parochial values have remained hallmarks of the police. As already presented in chapter 1, “political policing” is a concept most prominently used for the first time by Huggins (1998). The essence of her argument is that all policing is political, even though its manifestations

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may vary. At one end of the spectrum the police may be the very visible handmaids of organized power, as historically in much of Latin America. But even at the other less visible end, Huggins argues, policing is inherently political, the major difference being that the relationship of the police is “obscured by ideologies of democracy and social control that claim to make police mere extensions of a class-neutral state and the people” (1998: 9). In Latin America particularly, policing can easily be classified as political policing in that commonly it is deeply influenced by specific power constellations within society, rather than based on an impartial, just application of the rule of law to all. In Mexico, it has kept its political nature despite the early 20th century revolutionaries’ rise to power.14 As a concept, “political policing” helps us understand the underlying realities of Mexican policing. The historically political nature of policing in Mexico explains why it so difficult to reform the police into an organization able both to provide security and to act in accordance with the rule of law. It also facilitates understanding why existing institutional control mechanisms have so little impact, enabling us to look below the surface of many of the initiated and proposed reforms. Power-Orientation: Undermining Development of Effective Policies With its colonial past and seventy-one years of one-party rule, Mexico’s political elites are inspired by a raw drive for personal and political survival to a considerably greater extent than by politically inspired visions on how to tackle social problems. Such a state of affairs extends far beyond the political domain and has become part of the cultural heritage and Mexican national and institutional characteristics. Within the police also, those in charge are overwhelmingly power- rather than solution-oriented. Traditionally, higher ranks in the police tended to have PRI affiliation, and are still often filled by people with no police background and little knowledge of police work; for example, the head of SSP DF, Joel Ortega, appointed in November 2004, had a professional background as an engineer. Such appointments undoubtedly influence the primary orientation of those in charge. What is ultimately of importance is not so much to find a solution to a problem but to gauge how one’s superior or the person to whom one is accountable will view a particular decision. In short, the expected consequences for the decision-maker personally are likely to carry more weight, rather than considerations of what is right, appropriate, or called for in the light of the circumstances involved. As we saw in chapter 2, this is an important underlying explanation for the lack of adequate action undertaken by the various police chiefs in the case of the three-hour lynching of the three policemen in Tláhuac. Power-orientation and the importance attached to “coming across well” to relevant audiences also form the most plausible explanation for the dismissal

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of virtually the entire SSP DF Internal Affairs Department by Mexico City Police Chief Marcelo Ebrard on November 20, 2004, which opened chapter 4. With “trouble” running high within the police that month, and in the light of previous allegations of corruption against members of the branch, every officer in this department was simply dismissed the day after the alleged incident. Such a rapid response in a Mexican context serves as a token to the media that tough decisive action has been undertaken “to set things right,” without including such niceties as establishing any degree of personal guilt and even before any investigation of the incident that precipitated it. Bizarre as the wholesale firings may look from the outside, it very much fits a Mexican response to the first sign of trouble, and it could have occurred in any institutional setting. Effects of Politics on Police Policies On a political and state institutional level, there is a marked lack of well-thought-out policies on how to tackle crime and security issues. Police budgets are increased annually—within the SSP DF from over five million pesos (then about $500 million) in 2001 to over seven million pesos in 2006—but they have little to show for it in any increased public safety and reduced or solved crime. Fragmentation characterizes the police response to a multitude of related problems; police and crime policies often emerge on the spur of the moment, with politicians and police chiefs formulating policies for different audiences in response to questions and criticisms encountered on particular occasions. As a result, ad hoc and transient solutions tend to be proposed, as in the case of López Obrador speaking out in February 2002 against any “outsider coming over here to tell us what to do” (Gobierno del Distrito Federal 2002), yet subsequently hiring Rudolph Giuliani in October to do exactly that. Mexico is notorious for the political pressure that may be put on the investigation and prosecution of crimes, encouraged by the public prosecutor’s office as part of the executive branch at a federal and state level. In the context of Mexico’s heavily politicized policing, arrest quotas are set periodically to encourage police to make doing so, alternating with periods in which they are discouraged from making arrests. Under López Obrador, the Mexico City Government had by the year 2000 imposed arrest quotas for particular types of crime (such as auto theft), and police received financial rewards for meeting these (Alverado 2006: 283). Around 2003 Chief Ebrard introduced a bonus system to make police officers more active and encourage them to make arrests. But by late 2004/early 2005, this policy de facto had been reversed; police chiefs started to give instructions to reduce the number of arrests, and the DF Public Prosecutor increasingly refused to investigate and prosecute criminal cases brought in by police. Among

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police there was a widespread belief that Mayor López Obrador was the original source of such orders, in an attempt to reduce the level of reported crime: The provision of “good statistics” would allow him to claim success on this front during the pending presidential elections, in which he was expected to run. Early 2005 saw the politicized character of the police in yet another domain. Against the background of the bitter, long-standing political rivalry between President Fox and Mexico City Mayor López Obrador, the Cámara de Diputados—a four-member Federal Congressional panel—started a process of desafuero (roughly the equivalent of “impeachment”) against López Obrador. In response, the mayor whipped up popular support and organized “voluntary donations” in aid of his cause. Reports appeared in the media that police officers were allegedly expected to pay 30 percent of their monthly salary for this purpose. One case drew considerable media attention, namely, the firing of Superintendent Mario Montaño, director of the “Horse Group” within the SSP DF: He was fired officially for “neglect of duty,” but according to Montaño himself it was because he had refused to pay the 10,600 pesos demanded for the López Obrador campaign.15 Whatever the precise merits of this case, the contributions (voluntary or otherwise) made by police officers to the López Obrador campaign were eerily reminiscent of the practices in the days of PRI dominance. The incident illustrates the extent to which positions are still seen in terms of client-patron relationships: those offered a job or career opportunities are expected to return the favor to the benefactor. As the Tláhuac lynching illustrates, the political dimension of policing is also manifest in police alliances with local and federal authorities. The police response to a massive demonstration in April 2005 in support of López Obrador illustrates the way that such alliances color disputes and and how the authorities say what suits their purposes. The Mexico City SSP estimated the size of the demonstration at more than a million, whereas federal police officials claimed that only some 120,000 people took part. But the political dimension is not limited to the Preventive Police. The Federal and the Mexico City Public Prosecutor’s Offices are reputed to fall under the heavy influence of opposing political parties, respectively PAN and PRD.

PUBLIC SECURITY AS A POLITICAL ISSUE DURING DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION Mexico City residents suffer from a great sense of insecurity. Robberies with violence, assaults in the subway, carjackings, and in poorer areas arrests by police are daily occurrences. During the mid- to late-1990s there was a

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dramatic increase in robberies, kidnappings, extortion, and other forms of violent and nonviolent crime (Alvarado and Davis 1999). Studies vary as to the extent of the crime-rise during the mid-1990s, but that there was a massive increase in crime is beyond doubt: One study (Davis and Alverado 1999; Pansters and Berthier 2006: 43) reported an increase from 70,000 crimes reported to the PGDF in Mexico City in 1993 to 175,000 in 1997, whereas another study reported a tripling of the crime rate in the city between 1995 and 1998 (Fundación Mexicana para la Salud 1999, in Davis 2006: 65). In Mexico as well as other emerging democracies in Latin America, periodic increases in crime can be attributed not so much to changed political conditions as such, but rather to associated processes: poor economic conditions and rising income disparities. The rise in criminality and insecurity in Mexico City in 1994 took place against a background of the peso crisis of 1994–1995 and major macro-economic changes instigated by the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which made the border areas more attractive to domestic and foreign manufacturing firms. The opening up of Mexico’s economy particularly affected Mexico City’s industrial sector, which was incapable of competing, and its industries were relocated to border areas. Much of the city’s workforce was laid off as a result, and there was also a rise in youth unemployment, which very likely contributed to the rise of youth gangs. In 1994, insecurity in Mexico City emerged for the first time as people’s number-one concern (Tello Peón 1994). Surveys indicated that crime and security issues were considered even more important than the prevailing economic crisis from the drop in value of the peso and resulting inflation. The following year, insecurity appeared center-stage on the political agenda, where it has remained a prominent issue ever since. A national opinion survey conducted in December 2005 found that crime and kidnappings constituted the most important source of fear among Mexicans. Nearly 20 percent were more afraid of kidnappings and crime more than anything else, followed by death (7.9 percent), economic insecurity (7 percent) and health problems (3.5 percent) (Consulta Mitofsky 2006 as discussed by Bailey and Cornelius 2007: 490). Kidnappings are particularly high on the list of insecurity worries among the middle- and higher-income population. The number of such kidnappings is unknown, because many go unreported, but they occur daily.16 They are a great source of insecurity, both on account of the brutality with which these are carried out and because in principle anybody is a potential target (for example children in the poorer classes may be kidnapped to work in the sex industry), combined with the possibility of police complicity in such cases. Poor performance by state judicial and law enforcement institutions also did much to increase public insecurity during the 1990s, as Laura Magaloni

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and Guillermo Zepeda (2004) conclude on the basis of a statistical study comparing different Latin American countries.17 Mexican police have been characterized by their overall inability to provide security, and the available public surveys invariably report considerable public scepticism about the police contribution on this front. A recent survey of certain districts in Mexico City found that as much as 78 percent of the population felt the police did not serve any useful purpose.18 There are therefore good reasons to suggest that Mexico’s security crisis during the 1990s was caused as much by a manifest inability of the criminal justice system to respond adequately as by an increase in crime and violence as such. Responses to Insecurity The upsurge in crime in Mexico City occurred in the middle of its democratization process. In 1995 the National Congress passed legislation to fully democratize the governance of Mexico City as of 1997: the local consultative body, the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District (ALDF) was granted legislative powers followed by the decision to allow direct election of the mayor. The changing political balance set in motion by this democratization process, Diane Davis points out (2006), called into question the old authoritarian power structures of PRI, including the latter’s close relations with the police, and so produced new policing practices. The fact that this democratization occurred at a time of surging criminality and insecurity significantly shaped the political response. With mayoral elections looming in 1997 and with major public concerns about upwardly spiralling crime, the city’s last appointed PRI mayor, Oscar Espinosa Villareal, in conjunction with the PRI leadership, decided that for a successful PRI bid for mayor, an effective strategy to improve the crime and public security situation in the city would be crucial (González 1998, in Davis 2006: 90). Villareal’s main strategy was to militarize the city’s police force, using the army to purge the most corrupt elements. Local police had long been known for their involvement in mafia-style and drug-running activities. This contrasted sharply with the reputation of the military, which had been involved in fighting drug lords and organized crime and was a revered social institution with considerable political powers dating back to the Revolutionary Army. In June 1996, General Salgado Cordero was appointed head of the Mexico City police and immediately replaced 150 high- and middle-level police with army officers. Yet the militarization of Mexico City policing turned out to be largely ineffective. Many of the military officers appointed to clean up the force turned out to be just as corrupt as the police, and several were subsequently jailed for criminal activities (Piñeyro 2004). The introduction of the military into local policing resulted in strong organizational and cultural rivalries and

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a battle for control between the police and the military. Neither wanted to stop the drug-related criminality but instead to “insert themselves into these lucrative networks of illegal activities . . . to carve out the greatest possible influence” (Davis 2006: 66). Moreover, the routines adopted by army officers upset both the authorities and the public, particularly when these involved violent police raids, with large groups of police entering neighborhoods to search houses and individuals for drugs, weapons, and stolen goods. These harsh methods resulted in popular discontent which, according to Pansters and Berthier (2006: 45), was also fuelled by citizens preferring to come to “arrangements” with the police, something that was more difficult to do with the army. The militarization of the police was reversed after Villareal was beaten in Mexico City’s first mayoral elections in 1997 by the candidate of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, whose election was accompanied by high expectations for eliminating corruption. Cárdenas said he would establish both democracy and order, insisting right from the start that he would end bringing in the military to reform the police (although he nevertheless appointed a retired military officer as the first police chief). He was supported by some renegade forces from within PRI familiar with the workings of PRI internal operations. This further raised expectations that he would be able to end the political dirty tricks that were widely held to sustain the cycle of police corruption and crime. Cárdenas appointed a trusted political ally, Samuel Del Villareal, as the DF Public Prosecutor to fight corruption within the criminal justice system head on. Del Villareal restructured the judicial bureaucracy to eliminate delays between arrests and bookings that allowed criminals “to dance away.” With the help of the PRD-controlled city council, he rewrote laws he considered set impractically high standards of evidence for bringing indictments by prosecutors. Cárdenas also replaced the old corrupt police management: The loyalty of senior officers to PRI had meant that he could not count them to implement his plans. The first newly appointed Mexico City police chief was fired in 1997 following an investigation into his connections with drug traffickers. In August 1998 Cárdenas appointed Alejandro Gertz Manero, a university president, as city police chief (Dillon and Preston 2004: 377). Del Villareal and Gertz Manero installed tracking devices in patrol cars to prevent officers sneaking away from their beats to carry out private extortion, and they named a respected human rights activist to head the police academy. Cárdenas also actively sought reforms in structures for hiring personnel and formulating alternative mechanisms for police oversight (including the reintroduction of lie-detector tests for new or re-employed police personnel) and forced resignations from the Judicial Police.

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But Mayor Cárdenas’s reforms backfired almost immediately, and officers on the beat brashly defied the new anticorruption measures, in effect refusing to work. Crime rates soared, possibly because of police involvement in criminal acts as a form of retribution for the reforms, which soon obliged the chief of police, Gertz Manero, to acknowledge that the force was out of control (Dillon and Preston 2004: 377). As a reformer seeking to change the system from the outside, Del Villareal was in the end unable to find an effective strategy from the inside to reform the intricacies of a system that was, as he was fully aware, being saturated with drug money (Dillon and Preston 2004: 397). Ultimately, the most visible effects of the various police reforms introduced under Cárdenas were internal strife and fragmentation within the criminal justice system. In response to the reforms, most street-level officers went on a virtual strike, refusing to cooperate in investigations into drugand other gang-related violence, and the cleansing of the Judicial Police alienated the courts as well. Cárdenas’ reforms on the whole were a failure, not least of all because they did not solve the government’s inability to indict the criminal element within the security forces. Intriguingly, his period as mayor nevertheless saw a gradual reduction of crime reported to PGDF from 170,000 in 1997 to just over 120,000 in 2000, including violent crimes (Pansters and Berthier 2006: 45).19 As yet no study has been undertaken to explain this trend, occurring as it did in the absence of any effective police reforms.20 Most plausibly the drop in crime between 1997–2000 should be seen against the background of the crime explosion directly related to the economic crisis of 1994, which affected such large segments of the population. In the peso-crisis many had lost their savings, pushing them to the very brink of financial ruin. With the gradual stabilization of the economy, the steady reduction of crime can then be explained as a consequence of an economic and social return to the pre-crisis situation. This reduction concerned especially property crimes without, however, their ever falling back to the crime levels before 1994 (Alverado 2006: 286). Possibly the biggest improvement in security relates to restricting involvement of taxis in kidnappings and robberies. Although there are no hard data on this point, impressionistic data suggest that the situation is now better than in the second half of the 1990s. Taxi drivers are now obliged to have their licenses with their picture stuck on their window. As they repeatedly testify, police check these licenses frequently and those whose documents are found wanting are liable to serious sanctions, including charges of attempted kidnapping. But despite such policies there are still many taxis driving around without documentation. Nevertheless, also because of an increased presence in fixed cab stands over the years, taking a taxi in Mexico City is in principle somewhat less hazardous than it used to be.

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In spite of a decrease in Mexico City’s level of reported crime during the late 1990s and first years of this century, public pressure for tackling crime and insecurity remained high at the inauguration of PRD Mayor López Obrador as successor to Cárdenas in 2000. López Obrador’s first major initiative was to increase the coordination of crime prevention, policing, and the securing of justice. He sought to delimit the functions of different agencies involved in the provision of security, and to come up with an integrated approach that would reduce crime and ultimately eliminate impunity (Alvarado 2006: 286). Crime was to be attacked, social and economic development promoted, and the relationship between law enforcement agencies and the general public improved. For this purpose the city was divided into seventy Territorial Coordinates, which were to function as organizational platforms for collaboration between various government agencies and to involve citizen participation. In spite of this initiative, López Obrador remained under political pressure to launch more pronounced and visible measures, so in early 2003 he invited the former Mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, to elaborate his “zero tolerance” approach in New York to the specific circumstances of Mexico City—Giuliani himself preferred the label “fixing broken windows” (Arroyo Juárez 2007: 416). While in New York its introduction could be judged a political project based on criminological knowledge, in Mexico City it could, Mario Arroyo argues (2007), only be a political slogan, since the authorities adopted a solution before they knew the problem. For “zero-tolerance policing” to have any relevance as a crime control strategy and to the rule of law, high police standards are required.21 In the face of an ill-equipped and demoralized police force, such zero-tolerance policing was at the very least highly naïve. Under López Obrador, public anxiety about crime in Mexico City remained. For example, a survey in the capital carried out in August 2003 showed that insecurity was mentioned as the principle problem by 48 percent of the respondents, compared to 12 percent mentioning unemployment. Repeated surveys showed no major shifts in public opinion on this point, but persistently showed that the majority of people considered insecurity the city’s main problem (Data Opinión Pública y Mercados 2003, as discussed in Azaola 2006: 11). Anxiety manifested itself most visibly in a massive demonstration of some 500,000 people in Mexico City in June 2004 against the city’s insecurity, particularly against kidnapping. The responses of the authorities have remained heavily politicized, aimed principally at scoring political points, as the aftermath of the Tláhuac lynching so blatantly illustrated. (López Obrador’s political context is discussed later in this chapter.) Mexican policing in general has remained politicized in various ways. The appointment procedure of the SSP DF Chief of Police is one obvious example: He is appointed by the President on the recommendation of the

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city’s Mayor. The ramifications of his allegiance to the mayor could be seen in the aftermath of the Tláhuac lynching (see chapter 3). The fact that police chiefs are sacked so easily similarly reflects the politicized nature of policing, as does the priority given and importance attached to specific crimes: kidnappings, car thefts, and bank robberies, the kinds of crimes with impact on the powerful and influential segments of society, as opposed to ordinary street crime and assaults that affect the “voiceless” within society. Failure of Planning: Quantity Instead of Quality As (in)security has stayed high on Mexico’s political agenda, societal pressure to improve public security has induced politicians and police chiefs to take initiatives that allow them to be seen as doing something about the problem, characteristic of the way public security policy tends to be formulated throughout Latin America.22 Whether the proposed solutions or measures are actually effective is of secondary concern to political and police leaders, and are in fact usually doubtful in view of a lack of adequate information and analysis underlying the decisions made. As illustration: following the massive Mexico City demonstration against kidnapping in June 2004, police chiefs from different parts of the country participated in a series of meetings on how to tackle the problem of kidnappings. After a few months, a “negotiated deal” was proudly presented as the “solution” to the problem, an outcome, incidentally, which was greeted with the greatest skepticism by both the media and the general public. In any case, in Mexico City, as in Mexico as a whole, specific policies in practice tend to be quickly supplemented—without serious evaluation—by others. An important facet of the country’s crisis of policing is the absence of any properly worked out concept of operational goals on a day-to-day basis. For example, every Mexico City police chief since 2001 has worked under an assumption that increasing the number of police will reduce the public’s sense of insecurity, a premise that public opinion surveys have persistently refuted. A massive police presence is held to somehow deter the occurrence of crime, and a police chief’s characteristic response to an emerging crime problem of any kind nearly always involves pouring in additional officers to deal with it. The period 2001–2005 in fact saw an increase of police from some 60,000 to about 80,000, with little thought given to such questions as how within a three-year time-span 20,000 new officers could be effectively integrated within the police organization (Azaola 2006: 13). Such saturation policing has been largely discredited as an effective crime control strategy, partly due to the so-called “10-for-1 rule.” An increase in the visible presence of police on the streets by just one officer on a continuous basis actually requires ten officers, due to rotating shifts, training, desk assignments, days off, etc. More fundamentally, studies in Great Britain

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and the United States found that while offering psychological assurance to the public, saturation policing has a dislocating effect—the targeted group moves its business elsewhere—rather than a long-lasting beneficial one (Bayley 1994: 50 ff). The current ineffectiveness of saturation policing in Mexico City are easy to see: Some areas have great numbers of police, whereas other areas have practically none. Moreover, in general one can hardly speak of serious patrolling. Particularly in the city center, one can observe large numbers of officers just standing around, sometimes two or three together. It is rare to see them interact with anybody except each other. At most they are involved in occasionally directing traffic (intriguingly, sometimes directing the busy and often chaotic flow of traffic against the operating traffic lights, thus apparently creating more confusion than anything else). Certain quarters are patrolled by an astounding number of police cars. Especially during the evening one may walk in an area with never a police car out of sight. An extreme example of the intensity of patrol vehicle coverage was observed in the course of this study in the Colonia Cuauthémoc, the embassy area of Mexico City. Four police cars slowly drove in a convoy, each with the flashing lights police cars invariably use after dark, first stopping before a traffic light, then turning the corner, slowly disappearing into the dark of the night without apparent involvement in any clear-cut operation. On the whole, police cars routinely drive around aimlessly, sometimes stopping a vehicle for an inspection of sorts. Officers are usually more engaged in conversation with each other when driving around than paying any concentrated attention to their surroundings. In short, the kind of police-public interpersonal interaction that would be associated with community policing is typically neglected. As a general crime control strategy, therefore, the massive street police presence is a failure, and does little to increase public safety. Its impact, particularly on kidnappings, can at best be marginal. Apart from the involvement of police themselves in the kidnappings, the common role of taxidrivers in such events ensures that the intensity of patrolling will not have any discernable impact on their frequency. Thus, it is questionable whether a massive police presence in Mexico City actually should increase the public’s sense of security. In fact, people sometimes informally mention that they find all those patrol cars at night “scary” more than anything else. This is hardly unrealistic: Mexican police are as much a part of the crime and insecurity problem—whether because of corruption, kidnapping, or fear of unjust arrest among the poor and powerless—as part of the solution. Failure of Public Engagement: Community Policing The lack of well-thought-out policies on how to tackle crime and security issues is manifest in the way community policing has been introduced in

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Mexico City in recent years (see chapter 4). Without any evaluation of the initiative set in action in 1997, on March 20, 2003, the start of a program of Policía de Barrio was announced, aiming to establish a bridge of confidence and combined action between citizens, community organizations, and members of the Preventive Police (Arroyo 2003). “Community policing” units in Mexico City work under various headings: Policía de Barrio, Policía de Proximidade, and Policía de Vigilancia, operating in different neighborhoods, and all purportedly set up as part of a community policing philosophy. Under López Obrador, the Mexico City government also supported security meetings at the local delegación level. The aim of these meetings was to bring residents and police together in dialogue to seek how best to guarantee local public security. The results of this effort have been limited, with citizens generally reluctant to speak frankly about police corruption and impunity within their neighborhoods (Davis 2006: 77).23 As a rule, officers in Mexico City working under the banner of “community policing” use patrol vehicles as the predominant mode of carrying out their work. They are chiefly involved in supervisory activities that are hardly distinguishable from those of ordinary preventive policing. With respect to both the number of initiatives and a policing style emphasizing policepublic contacts, community policing has made little headway in Mexico City. In fact, perhaps the most striking characteristic of Mexico City policing is that it is almost totally devoid of any kind of police-public interaction. Police Lack of Mission and Sense of Identity Institutionally, Mexican police are still marred by lack of integrity, honor, and reliability, as well as a shared frame of reference, characteristics which continue to undermine internal trust and social cohesion. Thus, not only does the public have little confidence in the police, but within the different police institutions themselves mistrust is also rampant. Although many officers, as we have seen, have personal friends among their colleagues, others, and in particular their superiors, are seen as potential predators rather than as colleagues (compañeros) who can be trusted and relied upon. The case of the two officers who were not saved from being burned alive after a three-hour lynching ordeal (chapter 2) illustrates how officers themselves are unable to rely on their own organization even in extreme circumstances. Police inaction was a result of opportunistic, self-serving practical and political considerations, and a refusal on the part of many senior police officers to take firm action to rescue their own. This demonstrated for all to see the extent to which even within their own institution officers cannot be sure of receiving required assistance under the most menacing of circumstances. The negative effects of the instructions to limit firearms use, mentioned in chapter 4, are also manifest. It has contributed to a general sense among

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the rank and file that they themselves are without rights, affecting their identity as police. After all, a key instrument enabling police to ensure safety and order, and to respond to the imminent threat of physical harm to a third party, is an ability to do so by means of deadly force, if circumstances require. To undermine this—as illustrated by the police lynching in Tláhuac with colleagues nearby—is to undermine a key function of the police: direct intervention in life-threatening situations. Recruits join the Mexican police predominantly for financial reasons; few really internalize the organization’s mission of providing security and justice, and few will be motivated by a sense of vocation. This applies to the lower as well as the higher ranks, who, despite higher salary levels, quite likely supplement these by alternative income sources. The only issue that really counts for senior judicial police officers, as some contended during one of the group interviews, is for them to keep their job. Not surprisingly, such a state of affairs also applies to the Officie of the Attorney General (PGR). An article in Reforma, January 13, 2001, referred to PGR’s being at a low point due to lack of staff, adequate salaries, professionalism and esprit de corps, and an “enormous amount of corruption.” On September 9, 2001, Reforma reported efforts to send a positive message to agents of the Attorney General’s Office, “an area of the PGR [that] is still one of the most affected by resignations and desertions,” by announcing the promotion of 106 Federal Public Prosecutor agents to various departments within the organization. Yet, a lack of consistent institutional development goes hand in hand with a lack of a sense of mission or police identity, and is compounded by the internal disparities among the rank and file themselves: SSP DF and the federal SSP include some officers who are virtually illiterate and others with much more education and professional training. Figures provided by Mexico City’s Instituto de Formación indicate that 18 percent of the city preventive police had at the most not finished secondary education, 56 percent had completed secondary school education (secundaria completa), and 25 percent had completed or unfinished prepatory studies (preparatoria) or technical/university studies (Azaola 2006: 20). Such divergence inevitably is a powerful impediment to the development of a single professional identity. Furthermore, as officers engage in corrupt and at times outright criminal activities, this creates an atmosphere which makes it relatively easy for police to switch over to “the other side” completely, be it individually or even as whole units becoming part of organized gangs, whether in kidnapping or drugs, as happened in 2005 in the case of an elite antidrug squad, becoming so-called Zeta-enforcers of the Gulf cartel.24 At any rate, internal realities are such that in the long run a sense of mission is difficult to maintain on an individual level. Self-serving con-

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siderations and adaptations, but also frustration and even quiet despair constitute common underlying states of mind among those working within the system. As is the case in Mexican society at large, an officer’s primary motivation is to survive, financially and institutionally.

The Limits of Training to Improve the Quality of Policing They make you do these courses, exams and everything to get a higherranking job [but] the chiefs have already decided whom to appoint, knowing beforehand who is going to be appointed. Everything goes through recommendations; that’s how things are done around here. (Judicial Police officer, thirty-five years old)

“Police with real skills do not have to resort to brutality in their work” (Beato, as quoted by Ward 2006: 180). The potential influence of training therefore is obvious, and the Mexican police training system merits closer scrutiny to evaluate its influence on the quality of policing. In its 2003 Mexico report, CAT (2003: paragraph 219) concluded that the Judicial Police, as well as the Public Prosecutors’ Office under whose authority they operate, were inadequately trained. This results in inefficient and ineffective criminal investigations and discovery of the identity of suspects in only a small proportion of cases. In addition, CAT considered that such inadequate training encouraged the use of torture and coercion to obtain confessions and evidence. With the notable exception of both the federal and DF Judicial Police, on the whole few substantial changes in training have been initiated by federal, state, and local governments. The average duration of police recruit training has remained around four and a half months (Peñaloza 2003). As yet, the content of both recruit and onthe-job training also varies widely between Preventive and Judicial Police in different parts of Mexico. Therefore, even though on the whole there has been some increase in training within the Judicial Police since the turn of the millennium, and it is much more extensive than for the Preventive Police, its overall impact is limited at best. More specific insight into the impact of Mexican police training is not only theoretically complex but also in practice hard to acquire. In our survey it proved impossible to get the views of officers on the value and relevance for their work of specific training courses taken (see chapter 5). At the same time, the problems we encountered covering their training in our survey were revealing, indicating that, on the whole, these courses have little significance for Mexican police. As we have seen, preventive police in particular were unable or unwilling to respond to questions probing their views on different forms of training. This is itself, however, an important finding. In view of their inability to even recall the subject matter of the

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courses, these are unlikely to have shaped police attitudes and behavior to any significant extent. This finding applies to human rights courses especially. Officers who have participated in such courses are no more positive about the effectiveness of human rights for their work than those who did not. Training: Fragmentation and Deficits In recent years within Mexico City’s Preventive and Judicial Police officers alike have been offered the opportunity to increase their general educational level. In itself, this is a positive development, if only because it affords the possibility of breaking down archaic hierarchical relationships and making the rank and file less accepting of the abuse to which they are subjected by senior officers, as already pointed out. Yet, the overall influence of more education on raising the quality of policing, however, is doubtful because the general nature of on-the-job training for both preventive and judicial police reveals a marked lack of coherence and clear-cut vision of the kind of police profile and identity in mind as well as the kind of competencies required for police to be able to carry out their work adequately. This state of affairs is not really surprising in view of the constant turnover in police chiefs in charge of the different police forces. For instance, for DF Judicial Police there is no basic training course on how to carry out a successful interrogation of a suspect, but in 2004 an “electrical engineering skills course” was set up to enable them to repair their own cars. Similarly symptomatic of the lack of vision and coordination underlying Mexican police training is the fact that most training only concerns single topics, even where basic policing skills are concerned. It is true that impressionistic data suggest that the increase in Judicial Police antitorture courses may have had some impact as a sensitizing effort, in spite of great variation in their scope, quality, and setup over the years. However, courses on subjects like ethics and human rights, the law, police powers, and police-public relations are taught in a technical, fragmented, and isolated manner, and no reference is made to the societal and organizational contexts in which they are to be applied. Courses on the Mexican state and its problems are absent altogether, as is training in public security, models of operational policing, or how to carry through a full-fledged criminal investigation. A specific issue here is the relevance of training for the investigative judicial police. In 1997, for instance, the Attorney General of the Republic, Madrazo, acknowledged that the Judicial Police were not really prepared to carry out criminal investigations. Madrazo suggested developing training in methods and procedures that take advantage of new technological advances to “create a truly scientific investigation of crimes that will guarantee effectiveness fully respecting human rights and the principle of legality”

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(Amnesty International 1997: 5). Whether this would in fact do much to reduce torture and other abuses is, however, uncertain. As already pointed out, confessions remain highly regarded as evidence to secure convictions, even if they are occasionally retracted for having been obtained under duress. The likely impact of Preventive Police training on interrogation and other investigative techniques to reduce torture is therefore also highly contingent on both legal and procedural changes concerning the rules of evidence and a changed approach of the judiciary on this front.25 Training under Unfavorable Circumstances For training to have any real influence on police behavior it must be reinforced by management systems and linked to tangible rewards or costs. However, police training at present in Mexico City, and probably in Mexico as a whole, is not in any way put into its wider organizational context. Training—whether specifically human rights-related or not—is not the standard route to promotion in the Mexican police. All police occupational rewards tend to be granted in a framework of favoritism and informal connections. Especially within the Judicial Police participating in courses and further education can sometimes carry rewards, in that officers can be promoted within the organization and achieve increases in their salary, but this is dependent upon the decisions of senior officers. On the whole, participating in courses and training is not for officers the road to personal job success and achievement, and individual efforts to acquire skills and knowledge are likely to carry few personal rewards. As already indicated, qualifications needed to rise in rank may be bought, and whether one in fact rises through the ranks depends on personal ties to those wielding influence, rather than on personal merit and objective qualifications for the job. Thus the relative insignificance of formal training is illustrated by the fact that officers may also acquire claims to needed qualifications and certificates through bribery or the right connections. Irrespective of the quality of initial and on-the-job training, its long-term influence therefore tends to be surpassed or even suppressed by organizational, situational and cultural demands and pressures. No matter how high the quality of training in itself, its impact therefore depends on the wider context of policing. As Bayley (2001) concludes on the basis of a study of the relevant literature, training that is designed to change behavior must be regularly reinforced through tangible rewards or costs, and police performance should be reflected in assignments, promotions, and pay increases. In addition to such wider contextual factors, we suggest that training relevant to legal and human rights can only be expected to have a positive impact if four conditions are met: if it constitutes a core part of police training and retraining; if a certain minimal amount of training is involved; if it is considered

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practically applicable by the police officers concerned; and if police work is carried out on the basis of a widely shared normative frame of reference in which the rule of law is adhered to. Therefore, the limited influence of training should be seen in the social and organizational context in which police officers operate, which is dominated by informal realities. Given these realities, all in all, on-the-job training in Mexico has so far proved to be of little significance as a strategy to increase police adherence to the rule of law and to human rights (e.g., elimination of torture).

THE IRRELEVANCE OF REFORMS AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS Reform vs. Reality Public pressure on the political arena has been a major driving force behind criminal justice reforms in Latin America. Especially in the political arena, but also in the case of senior and politically related police appointments, the different parties may well go through the motions of pushing reforms. Whether they are real and actually work is usually hard to ascertain empirically. The nature of Mexico City’s police reforms during the past decade, and the ultimate failure of most of them, therefore should be understood against the background of the democratization process itself on both a local and a national level. An explicit change of political power occurred first in Mexico City with the election of Cárdenas (PRD) as its mayor in 1997, followed in 2000 by the election of President Fox (PAN) in 2000. Fox was elected in 2000 partially on a reform platform promising to change the criminal justice system. Instigating and carrying out reform, however, requires sustained political commitment in the face of a variety of organizational and political obstacles. Democratization and Police Reforms: From Hope to Disillusionment In general terms, certain Mexican organizational and sociocultural characteristics constitute powerful impediments to certain types of reforms and institutional controls achieving their stated goals. The absence of a rule of law culture and the presence of more or less hidden informal networks and decision-making structures outweigh the importance of formal bureaucratic rules and structures. This means that one cannot take for granted that legal reforms will have the envisaged impact. On the whole, one might assume that the informal realities governing police and criminal justice procedures greatly undermine many reforms (like introducing institutional controls) from having much influence on actual police prac-

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tices, rather than that reforms will be able to change informal realities, as reformers hope they will. Earlier in this chapter we discussed the failure of Cárdenas’ efforts to increase security and reform the police. His Mexico City reform endeavors had been helped by PRD control of the democratically elected Legislative Assembly of the Federal District (ALDF), which meant he could overcome local PRI political opposition to his reforms. In spite of his own party’s control in the city itself, PRD was not as effectively organized and developed as PRI had been. However, at the same time, he was confronted with political and institutional constraints in the form of a national institutional PRI dominance that could be used to thwart local reforms.26 He was also dependent on PRI acquiescence on a national level by possible presidential veto of Mexico City’s budgetary expenditures, and in accordance with the Constitution any appointment of the local police chief had to be supported by the President and approved by the National Congress. Federal police forces tied to the national executive had a history of intervening in Mexico City affairs. Cárdenas also faced a military with strong PRI ties and loyalties, and he increasingly feared exposure to and accusations of corruption and alliances with drug rings.27 Furthermore, as a former PRI member who had crossed over to PRD, Cárdenas was considered by many a traitor to PRI. This estranged him from the police (many of whom still had strong PRI connections and loyalties) and strengthened their unwillingness to assist in his crime-fighting endeavors, especially after several of his high-profile initiatives drew attention to police corruption. On the face of it, the political situation had changed in favor of his successor López Obrador as PRD mayoral candidate in 2000, PRI also being defeated at the same time on the national level with Fox’s election as president as the PAN candidate. Both reformers, at least when they first came to power, appeared genuinely committed to reducing crime, corruption, and impunity. One of López Obrador’s driving political ambitions was to rejuvenate Mexico’s crumbling inner city, for which he freed massive funds for urban renewal. His interest in reforming the police derived from this ambition, to which he saw growing criminality and public insecurity as a major obstacle. A political problem for López Obrador was that many of the poor and those working in the informal economy, who constituted the core of his constituents, had over the years developed illegal business activities, including contraband and drug activities, in complicity with the police. Any serious reform of the local police would therefore also threaten his own constituencies. As a result López Obrador, politically speaking, had little room to maneuver for real reform. Institutional changes under his rule were limited primarily to the replacement of corrupt officers by new police leadership. He renamed police forces to suggest community involvement, and initiated

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some programs to increase citizen participation in reducing crime (Davis 2006). (See chapter 4.) On a national level, President Fox’s concern to initiate reform and tackle the problems of corruption and impunity within the federal police and Attorney General’s office was also severely handicapped. Like PDR on the local level, after winning the presidency Fox’s PAN had only limited available networks within the police and the military to give him leverage. Moreover, corruption in local police forces in the years prior to PAN’s ascent to power had intensified due to growing military participation in both drug trafficking and policing. One of the unforeseen consequences of Fox’s strategy that marred his reforms for restructuring law enforcement agencies was also to drive dismissed police “straight to their original partners in crime . . . often bringing with them the weapons and information they had used before their dismissal” (Davis 2006: 70). Against this background, Fox’s strategy to combat corruption and public insecurity primarily amounted to a centralization of institutions and entrusting leadership to specific individuals close to the president. Yet institutionally PAN remained a weak force within the state bureaucracies, which hindered initiatives to mount effective reforms from within (Davis 2006). Moreover, many of the high-level replacements within the law enforcement agencies and administrators were soon found to be themselves directly implicated in criminal or illegal networks. The problems in this last respect were disclosed most visibly when one of the people working in his office was exposed as a spy for a drug cartel (Hernandez 2003 as discussed by Davis 2006). The rivalry between López Obrador and Fox does much to explain why the latter did little to coordinate his national reforms or support those of López Obrador on the municipal level. Any federal support for local reforms and resulting local successes in improving security would directly benefit PDR and López Obrador in his long-anticipated bid for the presidency in 2006. In short, it is clear that the PRI fall from power on both a local and national level hardly opened a political window of opportunity for reformers to instigate lasting and successful police reforms, as our consideration of the most relevant organizational reforms in the next section will further illustrate. Police Organizational Reforms: A Story of Failure Among the reforms described in chapter 4, by far the most relevant from a human rights point of view was the formation in 2001 of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) to replace the old notoriously corrupt and violent Federal Judicial Police (PJF). This new federal investigative force was originally set up only with new agents. But due to insufficient new recruits,

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it also allowed former PJF agents to join in order to achieve its manpower targets. For some time the force was considered comparatively clean and less corrupt, violent, and criminal. If AFI corruption could by and large be attributed to holdovers from the old PJF, this would leave intact the basic validity of selecting university-educated officers as a viable strategy for reducing police abuses. However, the explosion during the period 2003 to 2005 in the number of investigations of assumed AFI criminal activity indicates that current levels of corruption extended far beyond the remaining former PJF officers. After the setting up of AFI in 2001, matters in fact deteriorated rapidly. In August 2003 PGR reported that 598 AFI agents (Angel Buendía 2003, in Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada 2004b) were under criminal investigation by PGR’s internal Prosecutor’s Department for Public Servants (Fiscalía para Servidores Público). The reason for AFI’s failure to retain its integrity at first sight appears related to the incorporation in the new force of 700 of the former Federal Judicial Police (PJF) officers in the new force. The PGR General Inspector noted that of the 598 AFI officers under investigation, 569 had served under the old PJF, and early in 2004 PGR was looking into the legal possibilities of ridding the AFI of remaining PJF officers (Vanguardia in Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada 2004b). In fact, toward the end of 2005, 1,493 agents were under investigation of whom 457 faced prosecution.28 An AFI source, who wished to remain anonymous, painted an even darker picture, estimating that at the end of 2005 no less than one third (more than 2,300) of a total of approximately 7,000 AFI officers were suspected of corruption or outright criminal activity. Clearly, the apparent involvement of AFI officers in the kidnapping and subsequent summary execution of four supposed Zeta organized-crime gang elite enforcers in 2005, and the large number of agents under criminal investigation and/or facing prosecution, puts in serious doubt the success of the Federal Judicial Police reform for police integrity and reduced police abuse. AFI was not the only institutional reform instigated under Fox to be undermined by corruption. Even PGR itself had to clean its own house. In August 2002, PGR Attorney General Macedo reported that his PGR had initiated 400 investigations involving over 1,000 public servants at all levels of the judicial system, including the public prosecutors, as part of the ongoing attempt of PGR to rid itself of corrupt workers. Indeed, almost every new police agency Fox established or tried to reform was soon marred by corruption, from PFP and the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Health (FEADS) to the latter’s replacement in the Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigation into Organized Crime (SIEDO), which soon after its establishment was infiltrated by corrupt elements (Davis 2006: 73). Ominously, these new law enforcement agencies

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(as well as higher and more important levels of government) have become increasingly subject to drug money and infiltration, either as a direct response to Fox’s battle with the drug cartels, or simply as a manifestation of their apparent ever-increasing power and reach in Mexico. Since 2004 there have been investigations against SIEDO agents. The head of SIEDO, Marisela Morales Ibáñez, in October 2008 announced that “as a result of thwarted operations and a formal deposition that stated that there were public servants who were passing information to the Sinaloa cartel”; investigations in the preceding months had resulted in two senior SIEDO-officers, together with three lower-level officers, being charged with passing information to the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel. They had allegedly been working for the cartel for years, in return for millions of dollars. As part of the same investigation of SIEDO, from July 2008 on, another thirty-five prosecutors and support staff were also fired and subsequently charged over suspected corruption; according to Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, it had been established that between July and October 2006 they had received bribes of between $150,00 and $450,000 monthly.29 A month later the Attorney General announced the arrest of the former chief of SIEDO, Noé Ramírez Mandujano, who led the unit for less than two years before being forced to resign in July 2008. He was accused of meeting twice with a member of the Pacific cartel and taking a payoff of $450,000. In return, Ramírez passed along information about investigations and actions against the cartel (New York Times November 21, 2008).30 Narcoinfiltration indeed turned out to have reached not only high-level police but also the highest levels within PGR. But matters have not stopped there and ramifications even extended to José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who died in a strange plane accident in Mexico City in 2008, along with Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño. Vasconcelos served as the head of SIEDO under the Fox administration and was considered an incorruptible ally of the Bush Administration. PGR reported receiving a legal declaration by a protected witness claiming that Vasconcelos presided over a $35 million payment to SIEDO from the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel in 2006 and 2007 (Ravelo 2009). The rapid spread of suspected police participation in criminal activity even in newly established forces like AFI, FEADS, and SIEDO, all with extensive vetting and screening procedures, shows that under prevailing Mexican organizational and societal circumstances even specially trained officers with a high educational background can easily become involved in criminal activity, corruption, and/or human rights abuses. Particularly the temptations of drug money and big financial rewards offered by organized crime play an important role here, in combination with the apparent ever-increasing infiltration of narcoforces into police and government at all levels.

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The combination of Mexico’s weak state legitimacy with the ideological dimension of corruption—the world seen as an inviting environment from which to extract illegal gains—constitutes a major contributory factor. Recruits nearly always enter the police primarily to earn easy money in a society where the prevailing view is that what is important is that one should earn as much money as possible; the means by which this is achieved are by and large irrelevant. This makes it relatively easy for officers to be swayed by corrupting pressures, whether from inside or outside the police, no matter how rigorously the educational and selection criteria are applied. All in all, Fox’s strategy to reform the police by establishing new centralized police forces was a failure, while at the same time backtracking on decentralized democratic ideals and giving the federal executive greater powers for clandestine operations. The increased corruption and infiltration of drug money into the newly established police forces resulted in the Fox administration’s use of hierarchical, centralized, quasi-authoritarian responses (including the use of highly specialized military personnel) to deal with police and other potential suspects (Hernández 2003, as discussed by Davis 2006). Intrasystemic Controls: Limited Improvements in an Archaic System Our study of institutional control of Mexican police confirms the general picture conveyed in the literature on democratization in Latin America of horizontal intrastate accountability as constituting only a weak force for institutional control of the police there (Mainwaring 2003; Moreno, Crisp and Shugart 2003; O’Donnell 2003). Mexico is still a country where impunity prevails, in spite of a much increased emphasis on human rights and the creation of external control mechanisms such as the national and state human rights commissions where citizens can file complaints. In Mexico, any system of checks and balances leaves much to be desired. This is at least partly caused by the level of corruption on the part of the public prosecutors, judges, and even lawyers, making control from within the system at best marginal. Informal considerations play a major role in decisions whether to discipline or even fire police. Thus, an officer’s informal position in the organization and relations with superiors are at least as decisive for whether infractions—whatever their precise nature—will result in any internal sanctions as for whether any actual infractions were committed. On the basis of complaints filed against their bosses by the rank and file within SSP DF, Antonio Ugalde (2003: 69) concludes that the disciplinary system fundamentally works to preserve the lines of command rather than

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as an instrument ensuring that the police act toward the outside world in conformity with the law. This influences the way such rules and regulations are administered. For example, the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) after investigation of a complaint, tend to be ignored. Or if they are not, they are likely to be pursued by going through the motions so that technically the department responsible cannot be faulted for not having responded. Whether the departmental response actually addresses the problem that the recommendation aims to set right is another matter. A good illustration recounted in the course of this study concerned the recommendation made by CNDH to the General Directorate of Internal Affairs to reduce structural bias and discrimination against female officers within the SSP DF: the Directorate’s response was to invite a specialist to give a lecture on the subject to a large audience of male officers. In any case, although effective internal accountability systems can serve as mechanisms of internal norm setting, making clear what is acceptable and what is not, and as a means for raising police integrity, in this sense they are a manifest failure within Mexico City’s Preventive and Judicial Police alike. In the context of pervasive institutionalized nonintegrity, the formal sanctioning system, which should ensure that officers are justly treated on the basis of general standards applied equally to all, is nonexistent. Moreover, the fact that corruption also extends to senior police prevents internal controls from having any substantive normative and regulatory impact. It is doubtful, for example, whether dismissing officers in large numbers will have much effect, especially on corruption. Newly installed officers become socialized to adapt in one way or another to an institutionalized environment of corruption. Moreover, under the best of circumstances—a system operating with integrity and applied in a just manner—dismissing and otherwise meting out punishments on a large scale is likely to have only a marginal impact at best in reducing institutionalized corruption in the light of the powerful societal corruption-enhancing influences. As pointed out earlier, officers are sometimes dismissed in large numbers. There are a number of reasons why such a strategy is of only limited value in reducing corruption and police abuse. As we saw, decisions to dismiss numbers of police are characterized by arbitrariness. As part of a persistent PRI tradition, there is still an attitude that bosses can at random dismiss whomever they want on the spur of the moment. There is therefore little foreseeable relation between any violations of some sort and negative consequences. In itself, the mere threat of dismissal hardly contributes to norm-clarification, and its deterrent effect is likely to be marginal at best. Its relevance is further limited by the fact that officers dismissed from one force may be reemployed in others. (The General Law of the National Sys-

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tem of Public Security 2008 specifically forbids the higher of personnel fired elsewhere). But even though the National Police Security System (SNSP) has a system in place to prevent dismissed officers from being rehired again by other police, it is often considerably in arrears in its operations and therefore hardly reliable. In addition, many dismissed officers are employed by private security firms, especially when fired from the police for corruption: An estimated 70 percent of all private police are former police officers. Others, however, become full-fledged members of criminal organizations—most notoriously those involved in the kidnapping business—using their expertise acquired in the police. Whether specifically related to this or not, the mass dismissal of DF police in 1999, for instance, was followed by a substantial rise in crime. Yet formally in Mexico the rights of employees are well-protected, and labor tribunals to which a dismissal is appealed tend to come out in favor of the employee. In many Mexican jurisdictions, in fact, courts tend to support officers who have been dismissed.31 The Federal and local courts to whom police dismissals may be appealed are in the same vein reputed to come out often in favor of sacked police, even though the Federal Court tend to be very much behind in judging such cases. That police officers are nevertheless dismissed on a large scale is because only a minority of officers actually appeal a dismissal. In Mexican culture, being dismissed by one’s superiors is not something that most feel empowered to appeal against on the basis of any formal rights. For example, one remarkable feature of the SSP DF’s approach toward officers facing criminal allegations is that their names and their alleged offenses are put on the organization’s website for all to see. In short, for several reasons, the characteristic approach of dismissing police as an internal control strategy is on the whole likely to do little to reduce police corruption and abuse, and also has its severe drawbacks with respect to police officers’ own rights and appreciation. Our survey and interview data presented in the previous chapter provided a bleak picture of the likely impact of police internal institutional controls such as the Internal Affairs Unit and the Council of Honor and Justice. It is doubtful whether Internal Affairs and the Council of Honor and Justice can serve a meaningful role in disciplining police in view of general police corruption and lack of integrity: The reported pursuit and capture of four members of Internal Affairs after they had robbed a taxi themselves illustrates the point (Reforma 24 August 2005).32 Rather than constituting a beacon of integrity in the force, the modus operandi of both bodies is mostly in terms of a discretionary and discredited response to allegations of corruption and other forms of nonintegrity. The picture does not become much more hopeful if we look at what is known about the relevance of other internal institutional controls. “Mexico’s

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experiments in accountability and anticorruption have largely reproduced the broader Latin American experience: the creation of innumerable additional requirements and rigid bureaucratic layers that have diminished both efficiency and fairness without producing a corresponding increase in service” (Varenik 2003: 10). In Mexico, as already pointed out, rules and regulations characteristically serve as a front, the formal values and goals underlying them scarcely considered by those applying them. Mexico’s anti-corruption agency the Ministry of Comptrollership and Administrative Development (SECODAM) and its state-level counterpart, Contraloria Internas, are internal police bureaus whose activities have been geared primarily toward fiscal accountability (rendición de cuentas). Both are judged by Robert Varenik (2003: 10) as ineffective. In short, the internal control mechanisms have a number of defining characteristics that make them unlikely to contribute much to integrity, human rights, diminution of corruption, and abuse of power among the police. Even the work of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has been controversial. Recently, Human Rights Watch (2008) produced a critical assessment of CNDH, highlighting the fact that following any documentation of violations CNDH characteristically do not monitor its recommendations’ implementation, nor does the Commission publish the extent to which the authorities comply with agreements CNDH has reached about its recommendation. Another criticism concerns the Commission’s practice of not publicizing its findings: Neither the victim nor the general public has access to its crucial information. CNDH thereby severely limits the potential impact of its work in deterring future abuses and pressing authorities to reform problematic laws and policies (Human Rights Watch 2008: 5). Further criticisms concern the Commission’s failure to collaborate with other actors engaged in improving the human rights situation. Furthermore, the “conciliation process” often involves the Commission’s signing agreements with government institutions without involving the petitioners and/or victims in any way. A final point of concern noted by Human Rights Watch is the lack of transparency in the functioning of CNDH: independent accountability mechanisms such as Congress, the CNDH Citizen Advisory Council and the Federal Superior Auditor, fail to provide adequate monitoring of CNDH. Furthermore, fundamental criticism of the Commission is that “By failing to create a constructive relationship with all the relevant actors, the CNDH has helped generate an atmosphere of distrust that hinders human rights progress” (Human Rights Watch 2008: 5). In a discussion of the available literature on police human rights violations, Uildriks and van Reenen (2001: 64–920) conclude that the normally moderating impact of internal supervision and disciplining such violations

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may well be confined to police work carried out on the basis of a widelyshared normative frame of reference in which the rule of law is adhered to. Such a conclusion would also do much to explain the limited impact of institutionalized internal control mechanisms in Mexico. From this perspective one could also expect the effects of technical anticorruption initiatives such as introducing fake-proof uniforms and cameras covering large streets in Mexico City to be limited at best, their main effect quite likely being that such corrupt practices are carried out less openly. Thus, in spite of the changed rhetoric, institutional changes, and expressed intentions of Mexican governments, in some respects much has remained the same. Symptomatic of the problems of implementing human rights in this context, the president of the CNDH in 2005 claimed considerable progress in acceptance of human rights by state institutions in principle, but more difficulty in the implementation of concrete recommendations (La Jornada June 6, 2005). Lack of Institutionally Internalized Rule of Law On the whole, the influence of most institutional arrangements in responding to and preventing Mexican police abuses is seriously undermined by a failure to internalize principles of the rule of law, which would entail predictable and restrained government action. A characteristic feature of rank-and-file existence is being treated as virtual “slaves” to their own agency. In most spheres the provision of rights and working conditions regarded as a matter of course in Western and professional police forces (adequate firearms, uniforms, training and courses, regular working hours) are very much left to the personal discretion of their local chiefs. A publication of the Federal District’s Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) offers an analysis of complaints filed during the period October 2001 through June 2003, by SSP members against their police chiefs (Ugalde 2003: 61–69). A startling picture emerges of abuses and human rights violations that ordinary officers have had to endure from their senior officers. Antonio Ugalde, the study’s author, concludes that the lower ranks of SSP DF suffer abuse—insults, intimidation, threats, taunts (burlas), humiliation, and general ill-treatment—on such a scale that these can be regarded as part of their daily existence. Other complaints of abuses are also levelled against senior officers: sexual intimidation of female officers; threatening and pressuring officers to take part in criminal offenses; unjust withdrawal or lowering of salaries and financial compensation; threats and reprisals against officers who report corruption and “irregular conduct” on the part of their superiors; the frequent use of measures such as assignment to distant locations, change of assignment and of shift to threaten officers and

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as a kind of informal punishment. Not surprisingly in the light of our own findings, many complaints concern inappropriate abuse of the disciplinary system as well as arbitrary bonuses, compensations, and rewards (estímulos). Others pertain to tactics senior officers use to get someone fired, such as pressuring lower-rank colleagues to provide statements in support of a dismissal. The list of complaints about violations committed by senior officers, by and large, is a long one, covering the issues raised by the police themselves in chapter 5. Without a doubt, basic rights of the lower ranks are violated on a massive scale. Thus, at present, officers overwhelmingly see human rights as granted to delinquents but used against themselves, rather than having a positive impact on their own lives. As we pointed out earlier, this is crucial. Efforts to ingrain the values of human rights are unlikely to fall on fertile soil and significantly alter working practices if the rank and file themselves feel structurally brutalized and devoid of human rights. We concluded earlier that the activities of such institutions as Internal Affairs and the Council of Justice and Honor, as well those of senior police, on the whole do little to enhance the quality of the police. We attributed this to the minimal connection between concrete violations and their consequences, a state of affairs related to the degree of corruption in control agencies themselves. On a cultural level, however, it is also connected with the aforementioned failure to internalize the rule of law and with the prevailing clientelistic hierarchical relationships.

CONCLUSION Mexico’s democratic evolution includes its normative and institutional as well as operational state systems. It is in this wider societal context that the relevance of human rights with respect to the police should be understood. The social function of the police in an authoritarian state has little in common with that of police in a democracy. In an authoritarian state the principle function of police is to keep the ruling elites in power, with a corresponding emphasis on quelling signs of political and public dissent and disorder. Only under authoritarian rule could the bloody repression of the students revolt at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM) of 1968 have remained without consequences for those responsible, in a situation where state organs are under the direct instruction of and accountable only to the country’s rulers. Under authoritarian rule, political unpopularity and state brutality is of less political and institutional consequence than under democratic rule, where police are accountable to institutional as well as political constellations. In a truly democratic state, the social function of the police and its legitimacy derive more from the extent to which it

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serves the population. Similarly, a lack of police legitimacy in the eyes of the population will be of more relevance and consequence in a democratic state than in an authoritarian state, where power elites can simply impose their will by violence. However, in Mexican policing on an organizational level, there is a lack of managerial competence and a vision for the police role. Personal and self-serving considerations among the higher ranks prevail and override professional motivation and pride. Such a state of affairs is especially reflected in the way in which the likelihood of promotion is heavily influenced by informal connections. Throughout the criminal justice system a fundamentally opportunistic mentality exists, those involved seeking to get as much out of the system as possible for themselves personally. And finally, the inevitable consequences of the absence of a link between individual police performance and rewards should not be underestimated. During the past decade, reforms in the Mexican police and wider criminal justice system have been explicitly intended to modernize the system by reducing police abuse and corruption and enabling police to reduce crime more effectively. Public trust is a key goal in this respect. Such reforms, it is hoped, will establish confidence in the institutions concerned and thus increase public collaboration with police and raise the criminal justice system’s effectiveness. However, reform also presupposes confidence that the reforms are real and will change not only formal but also informal realities. The level of mistrust in Mexican society creates a “Catch-22” situation, on both a societal and an organizational level: It is hard to mobilize sufficient support for reform and change in the face of deeply rooted mistrust, with people’s suspicions running high about the underlying motives, sincerity, and integrity of the reformers. On an organizational level, reformers find it difficult to implement change successfully if they do not have popular support and know the extent and direction of the opposition to reforms within their organization. As Mexico City’s Public Prosecutor lamented during a private conversation, he simply did not know whom within his organization he could trust. In Mexico, informal realities are more predictive of what really happens than are formal structures. This constitutes a formidable weakness, making it difficult for the rule of law and democratic principles to take hold. The predominance of informal realities contributes to a sense of arbitrariness and unpredictability, making rational planning and reforms much more difficult to carry through. Patronage systems permeate relations in the organization and create dependence of the rank and file on senior officers in a system of favoritism instead of institutionalized rights. Such institutional characteristics in Mexico are not exclusive to the police. Similarly, police structural nonintegrity cannot be seen in isolation, but is related to a culture of political, criminal justice, and wider societal corruption. This

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inevitably undercuts the impact of measures specifically aimed at curbing institutional corruption among the Mexican police.

NOTES 1. In 2004 a UNDP report, “Democracy in Latin American: Towards a Citizens’ Democracy,” found that slow economic growth, profound inequalities, and ineffective legal systems and social services together trigger popular unrest and undermine confidence in electoral democracy: 54.7 percent of Latin Americans said they would support an “authoritarian regime” over “democratic” government if authoritarian rule could “resolve” their economic problems. 2. At the same time, corruption is not equally distributed throughout Mexican society. Certain public services such as health and education do not suffer from institutionalized corruption or the same mentality. 3. Klitgaard (1988) is one of the exponents of the institutional approach and famous for his formula C = M + D – A (Corruption = Monopoly power + Discretionary authority – Accountability). As is the case of those proposing cultural explanations of corruption, quantitative empirical studies show positive correlations, but not necessarily causality. Morris (2009) offers an extensive discussion of the literature and empirical evidence available. 4. Research findings on this point vary somewhat. The 1998 Hewlett Foundation/MORI poll found Mexicans remarkably trusting despite the high levels of perceived corruption: In Mexico 43.7 percent of respondents found others reliable, far more than the 22.5 percent in Costa Rica and 19.9 percent in Chile. However, the same 1998 poll found a clear correlation between respondents considering many in government corrupt and considering all people generally unreliable. (For a more extensive discussion on this point, see Morris 2003.) 5. The study was initiated following the consultations in December 2001 on the part of the Mexican Attorney General with the Physicians for Human Rights about training and standardizing protocols for federally employed forensic physicians. This consultation was carried out as part of broader efforts to strengthen judicial and police procedures to prevent torture. As part of this consultation, the researchers set out to survey all federally employed forensic physicians and a sample of those employed by Mexico’s states. 6. The Committee Against Torture similarly referred to the lack of training in torture-related issues of many medical experts, especially among those attached to public prosecutors’ offices and in rural areas (CAT 2003: paragraph 153). 7. In order to meet these international standards, IRCT international experts were formally requested to review the medical report model. See further U.S. Department of State Mexico Country Report on Human Rights Practices, www.state .gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41767.htm. 8. www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/enresearch/ndp/ref/?action=view&doc=mex39540c. 9. U.S department of State Mexican country report 2004. www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/ hrrpt/2004/41767.htm (last accessed March 17, 2009) 10. “Mexican ‘FBI’ investigates 1,500 agents.” CNN.international.com. December 5, 2005. edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/12/04/mexico.drugs.reut.

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11. Associated Press. 2008. “Mexico’s corruption inquiry expands to ex-police officials,” November 7, edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/07/mexico .violence.ap/index.html (last accessed January 8, 2009). 12. The friend spoke of his intention to go to the police to denounce the kidnapping, but it is not known whether he did in fact do so. 13. Information provided in a private conversation. Reforma in 2005 reported the following number of known kidnappings and resulting executions over the past five years: 2001, 3 out of 165; 2002, 10 out of 173; 2003, 5 out of 131; 2004, 9 out of 131; 2005 (December not included), 8 out of 106 (Reforma December 3, 2005). 14. Following the Mexican revolutionary consolidation of power in the 1920s, Davis argues, there should have been considerable scope for transforming the police task of fighting counterrevolutionaries into securing the rule of law. But given the contested post-revolutionary state building this failed to materialize. In Mexico ongoing conflicts between police and the military were dealt with by installing military commanders as heads of police, gradually transforming the police into a body of pro-government loyalists (Davis 2006: 25). An interesting insight into the political dimension of Mexico City police historically is also offered by Picatto, particularly in chapter 2 (2001: 41); the police in the pre-revolutionary period were used by the governor and the city Council as an instrument of social reform, with officers “often caught in the contradiction of serving a project of modernization and responding to the demands of the urban population from which they came.” 15. Montaño’s claims were dismissed by new SSP DF new Secretary Ortego, who argued that Montañó’s dismissal was simply part of an ongoing cleansing of the force. He in fact challenged Montaño to start legal proceedings and prove his claim (“Justifican destitución de mando.” Reforma March 6, 2005). 16. Insiders in Mexico City estimate the number of annual kidnappings in which people are detained in so-called safe houses at around 1,000. These kidnappings in 2004 and 2005 in Mexico City resulted in twelve children and twenty-seven adults being murdered (Reforma). Figures provided by the Citizens’ Institute for the Study of Insecurity (ICESI) for the period 1997–2004 put the total number of kidnappings in Mexico State at around 150 per 100,000 inhabitants annually, rising since 2000 to some 80 per 100,000 in Mexico DF (www.incesi.org.mx/index.cfm?artID=1353), by courtesy of Marcelo Bergman. 17. On the basis of a regression analysis of a data-set complied by the United Nations on crime rates in fifty-two countries between 1995 and 1997, Magaloni and Zepeda demonstrate that the correlation between democratization and the occurrence of violent crime is curvilinear. Both authoritarian countries with low values on the democracy index as well as democracies with higher values showed lower crime levels compared to newly democratizing countries like Mexico with medium levels of democracy (Magaloni and Zepeda 2004: 173). 18. Survey by EOPSAC about perceptions of insecurity in the neighborhoods of Ixtapalapa, Coyoacán, and Cuauhtémoc in Mexico City during the 2000–2003 (EOPSAC), Estudios de Opinión y Participación AC 2004. 19. The number of reported homicides gradually fell, from 977 in 1997 to 709 in 2000, and reported incidents of violence with injuries fell from just over 24,000 to just over 19,000. No information suggests that this trend could be explained by

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changed reporting practices or an alteration in the way these statistics were compiled. 20. Neither Davis (2006) nor Alverado (2006) in their discussion of policing and crime trends during this period in Mexico City specifically address this issue. 21. Arroyo Juárez (2007) lists a host of Mexico’s policing characteristics as in essence insurmountable obstacles for the introduction of zero-tolerance policing: shortcomings in data sources; inflexible politico-administrative divisions; a deficient law enforcement structure; legal limitations of crime investigation (change in the reforms adopted by Congress in December 2008); citizen mistrust; police deviance; little respect for relevant scientific findings; lack of social responsibility and a forward-looking vision; and theoretical/methodological errors in selecting the zero-tolerance strategy. 22. Hinton’s case study (2006) of the origins of many public security plans in Argentina and Brazil are good examples. 23. Survey by Estudios de Opinión y Participación AC (EOPSAC) (2004), about perceptions of insecurity in the neighborhoods of Ixtapalapa, Coyoacan, and Cuehutemoc in Mexico City during the period 2000–2003. 24. Los Zetas operates as a private para-military army under the orders of the Gulf cartel. It was headed by Osiel Cárdenas Cuilar until his arrest in 2003 and extradition to the U.S. in 2007. The current membership is estimated to be around 4,000 members. Its foundation is believed to lie in a group of thirty lieutenants and sublieutenants who deserted the Mexican military’s Special Air Mobile Force Group (GAFES) to the Gulf Cartel in the late 1990s. Their training in locating and apprehending drug cartel members, presumably done at the military School of the Americas in the United States, has enabled them to carry out more complex operations and use more sophisticated weaponry (Cook 2007: 7). 25. For a further elaboration of this issue see the discussion in chapter 4 on the proposed procedural changes in the Constitutional and Judicial Reform Bill of 2004, and the legislation adopted by Congress in 2008. 26. Compare the extensive analysis of Davis on this point (2006). 27. In December 1996 General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, head of the National Anti-Drug Agency, was accused and convicted of alliances with a notorious drug ring and of organizing the abduction, torture and murder of rival drug traffickers. 28. “Mexican ‘FBI’ investigates 1,500 agents,” CNN.internationalcom, December 5 2005. edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/12/04/mexico.drugs.reut. 29. Kristin Brickner “High-ranking SIEDO officials detained; they were working for the Beltrán Leyva cartel,” The Narcoshpere (narcosphere.narconews.com/ notebook/kristin-bricker/2008/10/high-ranking-siedo-officials-detained-they-wereworking-beltr%C3%A1n-ley, October 28, 2008). 30. Ironically, a year before his arrest Ramirez had given an interview in which he described how drug trafficking organizations were able to buy off local police forces to obtain the intelligence they needed to operate. 31. If an officer is judged to have been dismissed unfairly, the award will be the equivalent of three months’ salary per year for a number of years to be determined, and the equivalent of twenty days of salary yearly thereafter. 32. The newspaper report included a large photograph of the capture of one of the officers involved, and—as is invariably the case in such instances—the full names of all four officers.

7 Police and Justice Reforms, Security and Human Rights

It is impossible to change [because] everybody thinks differently, which makes it difficult to try and change the whole system. (Preventive Police officer, thirty-five years old)

In 2003, a consultant team from the Giuliani Partners Group, headed by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, was paid $4.3 million by a consortium of Mexican businessmen to develop a set of recommendations to reduce crime in Mexico City, as already reported. Built around the “broken windows” theory that emphasizes the importance of cleaning up the streets and dealing with minor crimes to keep neighborhoods livable, the resulting GPG report made no less than 146 recommendations. It proposed a broad range of police reforms for Mexico DF. It recommended the creation of a Police Commission with technical staff and community representatives to monitor anticorruption systems and receive complaints of corruption. An Internal Affairs Unit independent of the regular police structures was to be set up and manned by specially selected, high-quality police officers. An “Integrity Officer” was to be appointed for each district as a decentralized liaison to a central Integrity Unit to be created as part of Internal Affairs. Other key proposals included streamlining police divisions, improving the collection of crime statistics, more use of technology, and decentralized decision-making, as well as giving municipal Preventive Police increased powers. In addition, it recommended that police officers should have to pass drug and lie-detector tests, and be given new uniforms and an increase in salary. If all of the recommendations were introduced, the report claimed, the crime rate would decrease by 10 percent. 219

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Predictably in a Mexican context, however, almost no recommendations were followed. Only the easy part, a more repressive approach to low-level “nuisance offenses,” was implemented in August 2004 with the introduction of the new “Civic Culture Law” (see chapter 6) thus legitimizing a basically repressive approach toward the poorest populations. Reformers tend to look upon criminal justice system reforms as starting points for changing structural realities. A change of formal structures, they believe, will induce a change in people’s way of thinking, and when they realize that realities have actually changed, they will inevitably have to change their behavior as well. The idea, in short, is that a changed legal and administrative structure will result in a changed social culture. The question is, however, whether this is indeed the case in the Mexican cultural context, and we shall have to look at the different proposed and enacted reforms in the light of Mexico’s cultural heritage, to gauge whether such an axiom is tenable. The principle of the rule of law is a weak force in Mexico, and legal guarantees tend to carry little weight in the light of the pervasive lack of confidence in the integrity of the system as a whole, as we have seen (see chapters 3 and 6). In consequence, people look for practical solutions (notably bribes) to get themselves out of trouble rather than relying on legal procedures and guarantees. This being the case, the issue to be addressed is what possible impact is to be expected from the different Mexican legal reforms. Are effective legal reforms—that is to say, reforms that achieve their stated goals—actually possible in a system that suffers from so much lack of integrity, a criminal justice system where the primary orientation of its members is their own individual and group survival and advancement, and where arrests and threats of fines are to a large extent a means to secure bribes rather than an impartial application of the law. It is clear that such a state of affairs makes the impact of many reforms at best uncertain. Institutional reform of the Mexican police has on the whole been manifestly unsuccessful. The success of police reforms hinges on several preconditions that are clearly absent in Mexico. Indeed, since 2006, Mexico has been caught up in a cycle of drug-related violence and widespread disillusionment with the democratization process. While the election of President Vincente Fox in 2000 was greeted with considerable optimism as a major step toward full democratization along with police and institutional reforms, by the time the presidential election of July 2006 was held nearly total cynicism reigned: PRI, PRD, and PAN candidates was all regarded with deep suspicion by most people. Indeed, the parliamentary elections of July 2009 saw a triumphant return of Mexico’s largest political party, the PRI despite a historically low voter turnout.

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DRUG CARTELS, CORRUPTED POLICE FORCES, AND THE MILITARIZATION OF PUBLIC SECURITY Mexican drug gangs near the U.S. border are breaking into police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops, which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war. “You’re next, bastard . . . We’re going to get to you,” an unidentified drug gang member said over the radio. The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping “narcocorrido” music, over the airwaves. “No one can help them,” an officer named Jorge said of the threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car. Sure enough, two hours later the two dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads.1

In another such attack gunmen killed two officers in Tijuana and then played drug ballads over the police radio, just as officers were reaching the scene of the first killing. As part of their psychological warfare against the local Tijuana police force, cartel members have been using a decoder to access the police radio frequency and flagged the murder of police in advance, using a transmitter linked to a CD player and microphone to transmit the narcocorrido music and the treats. Concern about crime and violence throughout Mexico has been increasing ever since the mid-1990s, but by the end of 2008 the fear factor clearly hit civil society, the criminal justice system and political arenas alike. Illustrating the depth of the problems that Mexico is now faced with, on February 21, 2009, the police chief of Ciudad Juárez, Roberto Orduño Cruz, a former major in the army, resigned from the force. His resignation followed death threats against him, and was precipitated by a commissioner of his force and his two bodyguards dying in their car in a hail of bullets. This killing was followed the next day by banners put up in the streets demanding Orduño’s resignation, warning that a police officer would be killed every forty-eight hours if he did not. Within two days, an officer and prison guard were shot: Orduño resigned the same day. His predecessor had fared little better, fleeing the border to El Paso in Texas after receiving death threats (he was arrested in El Paso in January 2008 on charges of marijuana trafficking). In response to Orduño’s resignation, at a meeting of Mexico’s National Security Council with local and state authorities on February 25, 2009 it was decided to pour in an additional 5,332 soldiers into Ciudad Juárez on top of the 2,026 already stationed there in 2008. This new move followed as part of the government’s “Joint Operation Chihuahua Plan” to deploy a total of 8,500 army troops and 2,300 federal police in the city. In contrast to the military surge of 2008, in 2009 the military were given authority over the local police, the municipal commerce department, as

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well as the state prison, where on March 4 the orchestrated murder of twenty-one prisoners by fellow inmates had taken place, widely presumed in collusion with prison authorities. On March 16, 2009, the city’s Mayor, José Reyes Ferriz, announced the names of several retired or active-duty military chiefs to be put in charge of security in the city. The militarization of policing, already underway under the presidencies of Zedillo and Fox, gathered in full force with the escalation of drug-related violence in 2005. In 2006 Calderón launched “Joint Operation Michoacán (Operativo Conjunto Michoacán) as the first of such military dominated operations. Around 6,500 soldiers and police in the state of Michoacán set up of roadblocks and checkpoints, occupied key areas where drugs were sold, and executed search and arrest warrants against individuals linked to drug trafficking (Meyer 2007). This military involvement was a direct result of the fact that local and state police forces for so long have been deeply mistrusted and considered unsuited for controlling the cartels because of the existing collusion between them. In illustration, in 2004 the head of SIEDO announced that members of the Chihuahua State Judicial Police (PJE) had carried out disappearances and killings for the Juárez cartel; thirteen PJE officers were arrested as a result, four of them still at large by the end of that year.2 Suggesting some successes in Mexico’s war against drugs, from January to September 2007 the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported substantial increases in the prices of drugs such as cocaine. However, rather than being defeated, the drug cartels went on the offensive: The murder of the acting federal police chief, reportedly ordered by the Sinaloa Cartel, on May 8, 2008, at his home in Mexico City was illustrative of the brazenness of this offensive. The arrest the following week of a federal police officer accused of involvement in the murder proved a reminder of the infiltration and involvement of organized crime within the police itself; indeed investigators later revealed that it was the arrested officer who had sent the assassin, and that he was also involved in the murder of the head of federal police’s organized crime division a week earlier. In all, that week saw the murder of five other high-ranking police chiefs. On May 15, The New York Times reported three police chiefs seeking asylum in fear for their lives, and the murder of more than 200 officers in the year and a half since the offensive against the drug cartels had started. But matters were still to get substantially worse. In 2008, around 530 officers were killed as the result of cartel violence. Mexican media talk about “executions” rather than killings because of their style: Victims are usually bound, tortured and shot through the head at close range, sometimes even beheaded. Some killings involved officers working for rival cartels; some have been killed in shoot-outs or murdered for refusing to cooperate and others at random, simply to instill fear in the police. These killings include

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the highest ranks of the police: In May 2008, the acting chief of the federal police, Edgar Millán Gómez, in charge of antidrug operations throughout the country, was ambushed by several men when he entered his apartment in Mexico City with two bodyguards, dying of eight shotgun wounds: Six people with links to the Sinaloa Cartel were arrested, with a federal police charged with having led the assassination (New York Times May 5, 13, 2008).

DEALING WITH ORGANIZED CRIME Ni un paso atrás (Not one step back). García Luna (interview in New York Times Magazine, July 13, 2008)

The issue of how to cut the cycle of violence connected with the Mexican drug cartels and organized crime is of obviously of considerable relevance, but inevitably can only be touched upon here. On a general policy level, what is required is a shift in U.S. policy away from the “war against drugs” approach. This has clearly failed over the past thirty years, and is increasingly recognized by serious observers as a “war” that cannot be won.3 What is more, just as the U.S. prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s was a driving force behind the spread of organized crime there, the prohibition of narcotic substances has done much the same for the development of the drug cartels in Mexico. Whether a “war on drugs” can ever be won, in Mexico or elsewhere, in the face of the economic and social forces underlying its own internal logic and dynamic, is highly doubtful. Notwithstanding some successes in arresting important traffickers and locally achieving some reduction of the level of cartel killing—as seems to have been the case in Ciudad Juárez after pouring in of additional military mid-march 2009—the recent experiences mostly resemble the failure of the military with Mexican police operations during the 1990s: escalating violence and police involvement in organized crime. Ironically, confronting organized crime under the Calderón presidency by increasingly drawing on the military, has actually fomented an ever more brutal and ruthless escalation of cartel violence. As a result of military operations and successes in recent years in arresting leaders of various cartels, these have become increasingly fragmented and even more violent and ruthless, including the brutal torture of victims before executing them. The government’s high-level strikes transformed the cartels from hierarchical organization, with commanding figures in charge, to organizations where the more brutal and unsophisticated mob elements try to muscle their way up in the organization, and lower-level groups fight for turf to fill the power vacuum (Cook 2007 1–2; The New York Times May 25, 2008; The New York

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Times Magazine July 13, 2008). The increase in violence has taken place between the members of rival cartels, but also against police and even innocent citizens, simply to create an atmosphere of terror: A turning point in this last respect was the throwing of a hand grenade on September 15, 2008, in Morelia, the capital of Michoacán into a crowd of people celebrating Mexican independence, which killed eight people. The attack was presumed to have been carried out on the orders of the violent La Familia gang who instead accused the rival Zetas gang (The New York Times September 25, 2008).4 In 2005, cartels also started to put videos of executions on You Tube, in the words of García Luna, head of Mexico’s new federal police, “truly brutal,” being part of the media war against the government, meant “to grab the headlines and persuade the Mexican people that resistance is futile” (The New York Times September 25, 2008). Following the arrest of Aroldo Ruedo Medina, the top operative of La Familia in July 2009, cartel members attacked the police station where Ruedo Medina was held. After failing to liberate him, presumably in retaliation for the arrest, La Familia attacked police stations in at least eight cities throughout Michoacán, killing three federal police officers, two soldiers, and wounded eighteen officers. A few days later, twelve off-duty federal police officers were ambushed, tortured and shot through the head, and their bodies dumped on the side of the highway. Within a week ten police officers from the town of Artega were arrested for suspected involvement in the slayings, and 5,500 troops and police were sent to Michoacán, La Familia’s center of operations (Grayson 2009). The Militarization of Security: Some Issues The growing involvement of the military in the war against the cartels is problematic on a number of fronts. Calderón has continued to publicly maintain that military involvement is only temporary. During an interview with the Associated Press in February 2009 he expressed the hope that the military would have quelled the drug violence by 2012, and that matters could then be handed back to local police.5 Anecdotal evidence in various media reports around that time suggested that many citizens in cities like Ciudad Juárez feared that this would simply mean the return of the cartel gunmen. But the gunmen returned even before the withdrawal of the military. By the summer of 2009 public support for the involvement of the army in antinarcotics operations was dwindling in the face of the increase in drug-related murders again after a brief lull. During the first six months of 2009 there were 3,247 murders compared to 1,935 in the same period of 2008 (Economist July 11, 2009). Some Mexican human rights groups fear that militarization of policing will block from incorporating a broader community input and involvement and will avoid the social issues underlying the problem. Besides, the Constitution does not allow military personnel to act outside their bases during peacetime or permit soldiers to assume civilian functions like run-

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ning a police department. Well aware of this issue, Mexican legislators have argued that the level of cartel violence, combined with police corruption, has left no alternative but to call upon the military to assist. But this does not detract from the illegality of the military operations as such. Equally important has been the corrupting influences to which the military, traditionally held in high regard and relatively corruption-free in Mexico, have been exposed as a result. Worries have grown in Mexico that the more the military becomes involved in the war against the cartels, the more susceptible it will be to their corrupting influences. In March 2009, twelve active-duty soldiers were arrested in the central state of Aguascalientes and charged with working for the Zetas. In the preceding two years, 2007 and 2008, the CNDH received 1,602 complaints against military personnel, in at least eight cases finding documented evidence of illegal detention, torture, and excessive use of force. For the period January 2006 through November 2008, the Mexico City-based Miguel Augustín Pro-Juarez Human Rights Center (PRODH) found that throughout Mexico police authorities had handled more than 300 complaints against military to military officials for investigation and possible prosecution.6 The temptations of the kind of money that can be thrown at whoever within the state is targeted by the cartels who have done much to undermine the integrity of police, the military, prosecutors, the judiciary, and inevitably also political elites. Indeed it has fomented further social and institutional mistrust. Ultimately, it has become clear, no individual or institution can unequivocally be trusted, simply because anyone can be involved: young and old, men and women, higher and lower ranks of the police. It has also increasingly become clear that all layers of government have been infiltrated: “The alarming reality is that many public servants in Mexico are serving both the taxpayer and the trafficker” (The New York Times November 2, 2008). In consequence, social and institutional trust has been eroded even more than was already the case, making trust one of the major, albeit more abstract, casualties of the war against drugs. In the face of public criticism regarding the lack of response to public officials’ ties to the cartels, during 2009 there have been increasing numbers of arrests of public officials and politicians, but few have been followed up by actual charges; in May ten mayors were arrested on suspicion of collusion with La Familia. However, making extensive use of arraigo detentions, these arrests have been criticized as a largely symbolic exercise and “fishing expeditions.” “Instead of investigating to arrest, they are arresting to investigate” (Ernesto López Portillo in The Economist June 18, 2009). Bringing Cartel Violence Under Control Clearly, facing the drug markets and cartels head on has caused major collateral damage, and is now widely judged a war that cannot be won on such

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terms. With the demand for drugs from the United States for now being what it is, a war against drugs in a particular region will simply shift the flow of narcotrafficking elsewhere. To reduce it, U.S. demand for narcotics needs to be curbed. If this proves impossible, as well it may, a radical rethinking of the approach toward narcotics—treating narcotics as a medical and social rather than as a crime issue—will be inevitable in order to undercut the market forces behind the narcotrade. Calderón’s plan “Let’s clean up Mexico,” to be discussed shortly, has already signalled a shift in orientation. Such a shift has been strengthened even further. Following a government survey that found that the number of drug addicts in Mexico had almost doubled in the past six years to 307,000, early in March of 2009 Calderón proposed legislation that would decriminalize the possession of small quantities of cocaine and other drugs for addicts who agreed to undergo treatment (The New York Times March 10, 2009). Two years earlier a similar proposal provoked strong opposition from the United States and was eventually dropped. However, even a complete legalization of narcotics would be unlikely to break cartel activity, since it would probably merely shift its business to other criminal activity, notably kidnappings and extortion rackets, as has already been evident in 2007 and 2008.7 Reported extortion threats to federal police have skyrocketed from around 50 in 2002 to some 50,000 in 2008 (Stevenson 2009). In response, the federal authorities initiated a nationwide antiextortion program, including a national database to track protection rackets and a promise to protect all willing to formally complain about extortion practices. But the effectiveness of the program and the impact of the law approved by Congress in April 2009 to allow the government to seize properties and money from suspected drug traffickers and other criminal suspects before they are convicted are questionable.8 As recognized by the Obama administration, effective measures are required to stem the flow of money and arms from the U.S. into Mexico: According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives 90 percent of the guns used by Mexican drug cartels originate in the United States; to stem the flow of arms requires much stricter gun regulation by the United States, an issue there that is a political minefield. Indeed, it is to be feared that in the foreseeable future the problem of cartel violence, trafficking, and kidnapping will continue to be largely intransigent, and it is unrealistic to foresee the demise of the cartels and their corrupting social and institutional influence any time soon. Recession and rising unemployment offer the cartels an increasing reservoir of potential recruits. Mexico’s assetseizure laws are weak and have little effect on money laundering practices contributing to the cartel’s ability to operate successfully. At best, a realistic scenario could foresee a gradual containment and subsequent reduction of the problem. It is against this grim background that we now probe some of the experiences of police reform in Latin America.

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CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS FOR POLICE REFORM IN LATIN AMERICA AND MEXICO Throughout Latin America various paths to police reforms have been followed with different types of actors (police, government, international organizations, civil society) leading reform efforts for the development of new more democratic and modernized police and judicial institutions. None of these appear to be superior over the other, but the chances of success on a broad spectrum of police reform increase with the inclusion of multiple actors from these different sectors (Ward 2006). Reiterating Christopher Stone and Heather Ward’s conclusions (2000), Paulo de Mesquita Neto argues that the success of police and judicial reform in Latin America ultimately depends on overcoming authoritarian legacies, and limiting improper interference by the police, judiciary, military, political parties, and interest groups; crucial also is the development of internal and external controls for ensuring the accountability, accessibility, and responsiveness of the system (de Mesquita Neto 2006: 167). Therefore the organization and mobilization of civil society, he contends, are essential for advancement of police and judicial reform, and specifically for strengthening external control. In countries like Argentina and Brazil, but also in Mexico, pressures in this direction have pushed the governments to initiate reforms. Put in charge of the new Mexican federal police in 2007, García Luna approached this issue by removing hundreds of commanders throughout the country and replacing them with his own handpicked men (see chapter 4). But this has still left thousands of potentially corrupt officers of the old SSP within the new force. With the Intelligence Agency and the Interior Ministry under both Fox and Calderón having been stripped of their extensive networks of informants, according to many “the new federal police force not only lacks the intelligence it once had, but is full of disgruntled officers and commanders who have lost their positions or, in some cases, their sources of graft” (The New York Times May 26, 2008). Overall in Latin America reforms are characterized by failure rather than success; Brazilian President Lula’s blueprint for reform of the security sector proposed during the 2002 presidential election was particularly ill-fated.9 As in the case of the reform process in Argentina and Brazil, the Mexican reform experience during the 1990s was both politicized and inconsistent. Clearly, Mexican difficulties in introducing grand-design reforms have been replicated elsewhere in Latin America and point to the difficulties of successfully implementing any type of comprehensive police and criminal justice reform in the face of Latin America’s social and political characteristics. Police reforms can, in principle, take place on a federal, state, and perhaps even on a municipal level, and the impetus for and the effectiveness

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of carrying through police reforms throughout Mexico will therefore vary. This is an important point, as illustrated by the experience with separate police forces in federal Argentina, where states/provinces have considerable autonomy (Ungar 2009). In Mexico, despite being a federal system, on the other hand, as part of its national tradition the central state has continued to be the main reference point, with decisions and changes on the federal level commonly being replicated at the state and local level. Similarly, while our discussion of Mexican police reform has focussed on both the federal and Mexico City DF level, reforms in other states have also taken place, as Rodolfo Urbalejo’s outline of reforms to professionalize the police in Baja California illustrates (Urbalejo 2003). Mexican states vary in their levels of violent crime as well as in the performance of their law enforcement institutions, and the prospects for their future crime control and institutional improvement differ accordingly (Magaloni and Zepeda 2004). Without glossing over possible variations between state and local levels, a number of conditions, however, generally inhibit reform of Mexican police forces. In Mexico, Diane Davis (2006: 60) points out that police reforms have resulted in a proliferation of interorganizational conflicts. Although this conclusion probably over-generalizes the effects of many disparate types of police reforms, it clearly is valid with respect to “grand-design” reforms. Problems of vested interests and internal and political opposition to the development and successful implementation of police reforms are compounded by the absence of competence and adequate analyses, the power of informal realities, and the degree of mistrust between police agencies. Such a state of affairs should shape our thinking about the kind of reforms relevant and feasible in Mexico, specifically Mexico City. With commitment, leadership, and quality in Mexican police management being in such short supply, compounded by a serious problem of malfeasance, the question remains as to what kind of reforms might be successful under such conditions. As we have seen, the impact of social disorder and violence in Mexico is another issue of importance. The prediction of Dirk Kruijt and Kees Kooning that have clearly materialized in the Mexico of 2009 is the public’s fears accompanying personal insecurity in Mexico. This clearly poses a major obstacle to a consolidation of Mexican democratic institutions and limits the kind of police reforms that are possible and relevant under current conditions. In fact, Davis (2006: 82) tells us to, “Forget democratic deepening; forget bettering the quality of democracy; forget the nuts and bolts of police reform.” Her pessimism is certainly understandable, particularly if we consider the relevance for Mexico of Armony’s conclusions (2004: 7) discussed in chapters 1 and 4 about Argentine society.

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Against such a background, and on the basis of the findings of our own study and the relevant literature, in this chapter we shall look at the appropriateness and (im)possibilities of various institutional and legal reforms and controls, assess the justice reforms introduced in 2008, and further discuss the explosion of cartel-related violence and kidnappings. We shall then suggest an agenda of additional strategies and reforms that can offer most hope for police improvement in the face of Mexico’s current social and institutional realities.

MEXICAN POLICE REFORM: SOME APPROACHES In Reforming the Mexican Administration of Justice David Shirk and Alejandro Ríos (2007: 5) and John Bailey and Wayne Cornelius (2007: 489) point out that there is no generally accepted policy wisdom for reform to follow, but rather that there are multiple diagnoses and recipes for action. The main theme running through this book has been that the fundamental issue facing police and criminal justice reforms, whatever their precise content, is deep-running public mistrust in combination with a deep-rooted lack of integrity, both on a societal and an institutional level. Whichever the precise goals at stake—the modernization of the justice apparatus, its greater efficiency and effectiveness, greater due process rights, reduction of human rights violations, or increasing public security—inevitably all endeavors will be bedeviled by the question of how the deeply ingrained lack of institutional and social trust and integrity affect their chances of success. The most eye-catching police and justice reforms obviously are of the type grand-design legal and institutional reforms initiated unsuccessfully by Fox, and then later with greater success by Calderón. But reforms and changes of Mexican police institutions have also evolved more low-key and on a piecemeal basis, for example, in the domain of recruitment, training and individual assessment. Such reforms involve a broad internal organizational orientation aimed at improving the quality of policing, especially by professionalizing the police, sometimes with external accountability but also with explicit community orientation, seeking improvements in public security and the quality of policing by changing the style of policing for greater community involvement. Vertical Accountability: Civil Society Mexicans complain bitterly about the ills of their society, not just specifically about the police. Events can easily elicit complaints and then just as quickly be forgotten, as people do not expect they will change anything.

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Such cynicism is certainly not groundless, and is at least partly related to the characteristic power- rather than solution-orientation of the authorities. For Mexico’s institutions to evolve along democratic lines, an altered dynamic between civil society and those in power is essential. Civil society has, in various ways, the ability to induce policing reform and raise human rights issues. As already discussed, Mexican civil society has clearly been of influence in the development of external institutional police accountability (see chapters 4 and 5). In Mexico, CNDH and the state/DF human rights commissions form the most relevant and fully external police control institutions and mechanisms for responding to allegations of police abuse in spite of the flaws in the work of CNDH, discussed especially in chapter 6, insofar having had little success in promoting the value of human rights among police. They are institutions not suspected of corruption, and complaints registered with them by citizens are treated seriously and can even result in specific recommendations for improvement. Institutions of civil society continue to expose abuses, putting pressure on state institutions to address specific policing issues. For instance, the highprofile Citizens’ Institute for the Study of Insecurity (ICESI) has developed a massive public relations campaign on police corruption, including publicizing names of police officials known to be involved in illegal activities. In 2006 and 2007 the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights gave detailed accounts from Oaxaca of police brutality in responding to demonstrations by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and the Coalition of Indigenous Teachers of Oaxaca. Institutions like the Institute for Security and Democracy (INSYDE) stimulate and mobilize intellectual debate as to how policing and judicial issues and problems are best addressed. At the same time, the fact that people increasingly complain about a whole variety of alleged abuses also means that there is constant pressure on the authorities to be accountable. This undoubtedly has contributed to the diminution of torture during the second half of the 1990s and the first years of the new millennium, at least with respect to the institutionalized abuse that used to occur; public complaints are also relevant as an incessant pressure on the authorities to evolve toward the rule of law. In 2008 human rights groups strongly opposed and helped to persuade legislators to strip from the legislation a controversial provision to extend powers to allow searches without warrant in emergencies and cases of hot pursuit, fearing that these provisions would be widely abused. Most Mexican social movements, NGOs, and community organizations have a strictly local base and operate in isolation from one another. There is generally little coherent vision within Mexican civil society as to the kind of reforms and changes that can realistically be expected to offer hope in the face of the intransigent political, societal, and institutional chaos that have dented the initial hopes for benefits from the democratic transition.

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Particularly striking is that those stressing the crime problem as the main issue hardly ever refer to the police as part of the crime problem or to issues of police corruption, let alone any coherent approach or solution proposed to the links among these problems. Another point affecting the impact of civil society relates to the kind of arguments put forward. Human rights groups tend to emphasize that there should be less impunity of police. This is not irrelevant, but structurally unlikely to be achieved or to be implemented given Mexican institutional and societal characteristics. Equally, simply seeking to improve the mechanisms of current institutional accountability is likely to produce limited results in view of the amount of institutional corruption undermining any real internal and intra-systemic control and a rule of law culture. For potentially useful measures to become more relevant for regulation of police conduct and increase police legitimacy a process of wider institutional change is required and a political climate in which the values of the rule of law are really considered worth striving for. On the whole, the influence of Mexican civil society to set a politically and socially relevant reform agenda has been limited. One reason undoubtedly is that the impact and success of institutional and legal reforms are difficult to predict. Informal realities tend to trump formal arrangements, and the creativity of citizens, public officials and politicians alike, is apt to circumvent changed formal circumstances and so lead to reforms seldom achieving their expressed goals. The limited influence of civil society, in particular in failing to secure the desired outcomes of reforms, is further complicated by the sheer complexity and unpredictability of the reform process. In addition, there has been confusion and uncertainty as to what works and which are the most important goals to achieve: public security or the rule of law and adherence to human rights standards. By the start of the new millennium there had been a clear shift in reform orientation, with NGOs and citizen organizations increasingly pushing an anticrime rather than a human rights agenda. An illustration is the strong financial support given by the business community to the Giuliani research group and its plan, and generally there has been increased citizen activist support for hard-line measures. Some organizations in Mexico City have started working with police departments and have been involved in placing greater restrictions on individual liberties. In short, “The emphasis has shifted from police reform to criminalization, with human rights issues shunted to the sideline” (Davis 2006: 78). Integrating Human Rights and Public Security Strategies: Engendering Trust Reforms and strategies to increase public security can be judged on the basis of their relevance to increasing security, as well as institutional integrity

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and adherence to human rights. But as argued in chapter 1, of overriding importance is their potential for addressing the mistrust that so characterizes Mexican society. Judged by this criterion, the broad national security strategy, “Let’s clean up Mexico” (Limpiemos Mexico) outlined by Calderón in July 2007 could be relevant. The strategy involves three broad goals: (i) to increase safety in the public domain as part of a joint effort between local government and society focusing on the construction or improvement of safe public spaces; (ii) the creation of a “safe school program” aimed at creating a culture of crime prevention and a safe school environment; (iii) a national antidrug-addiction program, focusing on prevention and treatment, and aiming to set up 300 specialized medical centers. Characteristic of the three programs are the envisaged collaboration between different levels of government, the conjunction of diverse social action efforts, as well as the importance attached to the “construction” and participation of civil society. The character of this strategy stands out positively in that it amounts to a broad and integrated strategy to increase security. The collaboration envisaged between government agencies and civil society could contribute to the formation of mutual trust in tackling the targeted problems communally. But of course for such a plan to have any chance of success requires a minimum of basic integrity and trust in and among the different authorities and the public at the outset. As discussed, public trust is dependent on certain societal characteristics and on the functioning of state institutions. In Latin America, most governments have been struggling to achieve legitimacy in the process of transition from authoritarian to more democratic forms of governance. Particularly under such circumstances, public trust and state legitimacy are heavily dependent on the level of institutional integrity and the degree to which the state is able to fulfill its promises, for example, by providing an acceptable level of crime control and security. For Mexican reforms to have any chance of improving the quality of policing and adherence to human rights, they must in some way help to reestablish trust and convince a skeptical if not antagonistic public that the police do in fact have something meaningful to offer. One way or another, the police need to find a way to overcome the public’s profound suspicion that they are incapable of providing any kind of relevant service to society, especially in the domain of public security. The nature of policing in Mexico City characteristically involves a massive police presence, with officers working in settings of anonymous police-public relations, which, by and large, precludes any diminishing of the present degree of public mistrust of police. Without increased public confidence in the policing system, any hope of improvements in police legitimacy, police-public relations, and public security are largely illusory.

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Mexico’s crisis of policing and the inability of police to provide public security on the basis of the current policing philosophy, ironically, provide new impetus for seeking a policing model able to integrate both security and human rights. Judged by its own goal (bringing the perpetrators of crime to justice), the traditional response of the Mexican police and criminal justice system to crime and insecurity has been a manifest failure. It is clear that the present orientation of Mexican policing toward providing security is in need of revision, from both a human rights and security points of view. A study by Center for Development Studies (CIDAC 2003) found that 96 percent of reported Mexican crime went unpunished between 1996 and 2003. The study concludes that, more than Mexico’s prevailing socio-economic conditions of poverty and inequality, the main cause of the currently high crime levels lies in the fact that the perpetrators of these crimes are rarely caught and punished. Be that as it may, simply expanding the punitive model in itself can be expected to do little to improve security and public trust: From 1995 to 2005, Mexico’s prison population already more than doubled to over 200,000 crowded into prisons built to hold less than 160,000, 80 percent of those sentenced not even having seen the judge who handed it down. Mexico’s criminal justice systems offer harsh punishments to petty criminals—on top of the innocent being sentenced or having to bribe their way out of trouble—whereas high-profile criminals and those with influence can be expected to go free. At the very least, therefore, for the Mexican justice system to serve any meaningful role in reducing both violent and nonviolent crime requires its reform. This brings us back to the constitutional and justice reforms adopted in 2008.

THE 2008 REFORMS OF THE MEXICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM In June 2008, President Calderón ratified legislation intended to fundamentally reform Mexico’s justice system. Article 20 of the Constitution was amended to establish an array of due process rights for both victim and defendant, accompanied by related changes in the Criminal Procedure Law. New legislation introduced oral trials, established the presumption of innocence for defendants, and obligated prosecutors to present their evidence in open court. The involvement of the judiciary is to be extended: Each case will be assigned a judge who is to follow the entire legal process through to the sentencing stage, with judges explaining their decision to defendants. Victims and witnesses are to be given the opportunity to present evidence,

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and added protection is to be offered for witnesses willing to testify in trials of suspected members of drug trafficking gangs. Although there was no reform to make the prosecution system more independent of the executive, as Fox sought to do in 2004, the prosecutor’s role is due to become substantially different, if only because of losing its central role within the system in deciding whether sufficient evidence has been gathered, having to present findings and defend conclusions in front of a judge, and even being cross-examined by the defense. Magaloni (2008: 4) concludes that because prosecutors will have to publicly defend their cases this provides pressure to professionalize their work. The new system will thus create incentives to avoid some of the current bad practices for which the prosecutorial system is known: arbitrary detentions, fabrication of evidence, and particularly keeping defendants incommunicado. According to a study by Center for Economic Investigation and Instruction (CIDE 2004), 70 percent of those indicted have been held incommunicado by the prosecutor. The central feature of the reforms of 2008 was the introduction of oral trials specifically to protect human rights. Key elements in this transformation from a written to an oral system lies in the introduction of an accusatorial system. The reform requires that for the prosecutor to prove that the defendant is guilty, he will have to present the evidence in a public hearing in front of the judge, defendant, defense attorney, and the public in general. In transforming Mexico’s criminal justice system from trials that are essentially laborious and paper-based into a more adversarial system, defendants would receive the full benefit of the due process rules established under the new law. The Unpredictable Outcomes of the 2008 Reforms It is tempting, as many do, to regard the police and criminal justice reforms passed by Congress in 2008 as something of a watershed. On the federal as well as the state level (where some 95 percent of all crimes are processed) the legal framework has been set in place to modernize Mexico’s criminal justice system, moving toward the kind of system characteristic of democratic governance, and putting structural safeguards in place to bring adherence to human rights standards and values one step closer. An adversarial element in the present secretive inquisitorial system, in opening up the criminal procedure, should have considerable significance for human rights. Whether it will help reduce some of the human rights abuses the current system facilitates is difficult to predict. Its introduction would, however, not only shorten the criminal procedure as a whole and make the system more efficient, but might even constitute a structural powerful mechanism advancing the principles and values of the rule of law.

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It might indeed turn out be a watershed of sorts. Being top-down granddesign, however, it will require sustained political, institutional, and certainly also financial commitment. Bailey and Cornelius in 2007 argued that the lack of a stable governing and political coalition in Mexico points to a “political deficit” that would need to be addressed as a prerequisite to successful reform. President Calderón seems to have overcome this deficit as the first step required to overhaul the system. But accompanied by enormous financial cost, the actual implementation of this reform requires maintaining long-term political coalitions and commitments. Under Mexican political conditions this inevitably remains in doubt, as the PRI’s victory in the 2009 parliamentary elections clearly illustrate: The PRI won 233 seats, and together with its coalition Green Party PVEM (17 seats), secured 50 percent of congressional seats. Implementation of any future reform in coming years requires this coalition’s collaboration, e.g., the funds required to implement the 2008 judicial reforms still need to be budgeted and allocated. Whether and how fast the old inquisitorial practices will actually be replaced is clearly uncertain. There are enormous costs involved, estimated by the Federal Judicial Council at up to two billion dollars, which at the time of the ratification of the judicial reforms had not yet been budgeted. Judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers will have to be retrained. A whole new judicial system will have to be set up, and suitable courts built. But the introduction of oral trials in federal and state legislation is clearly a major breakthrough, as is the explicit recognition of the “presumption of innocence.” Nevertheless, having surmounted its major initial legislative hurdles far from assures the actual implementation of the accompanying broad and far-reaching institutional reforms called for. Institutional agreement and commitment remain necessary to bring about the kind of institutional reform required to modernize Mexico’s archaic criminal justice apparatus along the lines envisaged. As Bailey and Cornelius (2007: 493) point out, Mexican state agencies and justice system are conditioned by decades of operating under authoritarianism, and thus capable of effectively resisting the optimistic democratic logic of reform. Beside uncertainty caused by the long-term political and institutional commitment required for the reform process to be successfully completed, another crucial issue is what the reforms will mean in terms of changed institutional practice. As a constitutional guarantee the presumption of innocence will only have significance if the principle becomes ingrained within the institutional culture of prosecutors and the judiciary, and followed up by organizational procedures and measures to enforce this principle in actual practice. Similarly, the evolution from an archaic inquisitorial system toward an accusatorial oral one requires a complex transitional process of

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institutional reforms: the precise institutional outcome and the timeframe involved—in spite of the completion date being set for 2016—are difficult to predict. In view of the caseloads the federal and state justice systems have to deal with, it is predictable that even when the new system has eventually fully evolved, only a small proportion of criminal cases will actually end up in an open oral trial. Most cases will either be settled by plea-bargaining, dismissed, or not proceeded with at all, as is currently the case, for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons. Mexican legislators have also acknowledged that relatively few cases will in fact end up in open court. One of the intriguing questions then becomes which cases will have their day in court, and which cases will not. It is highly likely that this issue will be settled in the actual day-to-day practices within the system, albeit under newly introduced legal rules and checks and balances, rather than on the basis of strictly set and observed criteria. With informal Mexican realities and corrupting influences so characteristic of the way the current system operates, it would be surprising if the current informal practices—like accused bribing their way out of trouble—would simply wither away under the new system. Under the present system the decision whether or not to prosecute is marred by corruption, is very much influenced by the personal connections and networks of defendants, and by whether they are willing and able to bribe their way out of being prosecuted. The question remains what the impact of the new system could be if it is not accompanied by the development of a general culture within the public prosecutors’ office in which rule of law principles are adhered to. The fact that 93 percent of those caught up in the system are those accused of petty crimes and those otherwise caught “red-handed” by police (CIDE 2004), Magaloni and Zepeda (2004) specifically attribute to lack of expertise, ability, and manpower within prosecution departments investigating more complex cases. These issues are therefore also in need of being addressed if prosecutors are to reduce their unevenhandedness and bias in circumstances and the persons prosecuted. Some hope for improvement derives from the fact that the discretionary/arbitrary powers of public prosecutors are reduced through increasing the involvement of the judiciary at the various stages of the process. Nevertheless, an important issue that remains is the degree to which defendants are likely to benefit from the new rules will largely depend on the kind of new informal practices that will emerge and the susceptibility to corrupting practices of the functionaries involved. The 2008 Reforms and Torture In spite of some improvements, torture, according to two studies discussed earlier, is still all too common (Bergman et al., 2003; Heisler et al.,

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2003). If only for this reason, therefore, the amendment of Article 20 of the Constitution in 2008 is of considerable significance: Confessions are now inadmissible as evidence unless they are made directly before a judge. This reform is a central legislative change to remove perhaps the most important incentive for officers to abuse detainees. However, the scope of these human rights and antitorture provisions can be severely undermined by significant exceptions, notably in cases of “organized crime,” a modification of the Constitution that allows for legislation to exempt such cases from due process guarantees. This creates a large class of criminal suspects for whom basic constitutional guarantees do not apply. A second restriction applies to cases involving offenses on a proscribed list and denies judges the power to decide whether a defendant should be provisionally released pending and during a trial. Both restrictions undermine the application and explicit recognition of the principle of the presumption of innocence. Even though under the old system a number of articles stipulated that confessions cannot serve as the sole basis for a public prosecutor to charge a defendant, and that a confession would not be valid if other evidence showed it to be false, Mexican courts have continued to accept confessions resulting from coercion, violence, and torture on a massive scale, as we have noted in chapter 3. The reason is that the courts lay the burden of proof for the alleged torture on the defendant, who has also to show that the accused’s initial declaration was false and that the later revised version of events is true. For a retraction to nullify an earlier confession, it must be backed up by evidence that this confession was the result of torture. A court could call for further investigation into the matter, but the burden of proof characteristically has fallen upon the individual alleging torture (CAT 2003: paragraph 203). Citing the principal of “procedural immediacy,” courts have generally allowed such initial confessions made to prosecutors as evidence even if retracted at a later stage (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights 2001: 196), as already indicated. In theory, the Committee against Torture (2003) concludes, the presence of defense counsel or “trusted person” should be sufficient to prevent torture. In practice, this is insufficient, as we have reported (see chapter 3). A suspect’s counsel is not present during police interrogations, but only later when the defendant provides his statement to the charges to the public prosecutor. By that time, many are afraid to say they have been tortured. With lawyers often appointed by the court, detainees commonly do not know or trust them, understand their role, nor meet them in private. In many cases they never see them again (CAT 2003: paragraph 155). Moreover, in torture cases there often appears to be complicity between officials from the Public Prosecutor’s Office and judicial police, with officials not only aware of the torture in question but sometimes even witnessing it, yet

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rarely taking action against those compliant (CAT 2003: paragraph 145, 146) (see chapter 3). What is evident, at any rate, is that the old system structurally rewarded torture as a means to secure confessions that may be used to convict someone. When considering the likely impact on torture of the proposed changes in Article 20 of the Constitution and other related reforms, we should recall from chapters 3, 4, and 6 the circumstances under which torture is used to secure confessions. The findings of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) survey in 2004, reported that in 83 percent of documented torture cases it was used to secure convictions. If these figures are representative one could assume that the use of torture for the purpose of securing confessions is likely to decrease significantly when confessions must be made before a judge to have validity. Therefore, on the whole, changing the evidentiary value of confessions made other than before a judge is likely to reduce torture insofar as it reduces reliance on confession-related evidence. There is then simply less reason for the police to torture to obtain a confession. The legislative reforms adopted by the Mexican Congress in December 2008 specifically sought to address the practice of police threatening, pressuring or torturing suspects into confessions by adopting the Federal Procedure Code under which law officers are required to quickly register all detentions—under the old law this had to be done within two days of the arrest—detainees thus no longer held “incommunicado.” Even so, under the new system both opportunity and reasons to torture, or exert lesser forms of abuse, will continue to exist. First, a torture-initiated confession may still serve to convince the public prosecutor’s office to put the arrested on trial. Prosecutors do not generally take the trouble to ascertain whether a confession made to police has been made voluntarily and, even when they order an investigation into the causes of detainees’ injuries or allegations of torture, they do not necessarily feel constrained from using such contested confessions as grounds for putting a suspect on trial (CAT 2003: paragraph 201). In the second place, unwilling to confess before a prosecutor but returned to a detention cell for further interrogation and mistreatment, a detainee can be forced to sign an incriminating statement prepared by the police,10 or to make a subsequent confession in front of the judge. Both practices could well continue under the new system. Even though formal confessions do not have evidentiary value if not repeated in front of a judge at a later stage, under any system these confessions during the early stages of an investigation constitute a prized asset for criminal investigators, whatever the formal system and rules of evidence. In Mexico this especially applies since, as mentioned earlier, 93 percent of arrests are the result of people caught “in the act,” rather than as the result of prior investigations; relying more on other types of evidence to replace confes-

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sions requires the kind of expertise and investigative manpower difficult to envisage in Mexico in the near future. However, most torture and other types of abuse perpetrated by Judicial Police do not appear to be confession- but rather information-driven. The CAT-Committee in 2003 (paragraphs 137, 167 and 185) concluded that most torture takes place during the initial stages of a judicial investigation in order to obtain information quickly and easily for use later in criminal proceedings; this occurs notably in cases involving homicides, sexual offenses, kidnappings, robberies or federal offenses such as drug trafficking, violation of the Federal Firearms and Explosives Act or membership of armed groups.11 The motives underlying the use of torture are, however, even more wide-ranging. Whereas judicial police are those primarily responsible for information- or confession-driven torture, preventive police are responsible for abuse taking place in the context of public order activities or delitos flagrantes arrests. The Committee concluded that before bringing them before the Public Prosecutor, preventive police frequently beat and threaten detainees, predominantly to punish or intimidate, whether they resist arrest or not. Many of such cases were considered cruel treatment by the authorities in question, but in the view of the Committee members, however, often amounted to torture as defined in Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture. Under all of these circumstances torture or cruel treatment is unlikely to be reduced as a result of the reforms. Reform versus Organized Crime That current developments in Mexico are clearly unfavorable for reform has become clear from the impact of the war with the drug cartels. The attention now required to rein in the level of violence raging in Mexico—particularly in the border areas causing most U.S alarm, but also elsewhere throughout the country—is connected to the drug cartels, and the seemingly ever-increasing role of the military, the risk is of course very real that this will inevitably divert attention away from these reforms, especially on the federal level. The kind of money the cartels are able to throw at targeted officials is formidable and difficult to resist, especially if accompanied by the kind of threats that characteristically encourage cooperation. In a number of high profile cases even the highest police chiefs have turned out to be “on the payroll” of drug cartels. To tackle this problem, Calderón in 2007 announced “Operation Clean Up” as part of the government’s declared campaign to rid law enforcement of corruption from organize crime. In 2008 the army and the federal police (AFI) initiated legal proceedings against 752 police officers suspected of involvement with the narcocartels in 16 states; 536 involved municipal and state police in the state of Mexico.12

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The corrupting influence of the cartels is likely to persist in the foreseeable future—particularly on federal courts, which have jurisdiction over federal crimes pertaining predominantly to organized crime activity—not only affecting the effectiveness and efficiency of the criminal justice system in its intended preventive and repressive capacity, but undoubtedly also putting the enforcement of the new formal due process guarantees under severe pressure. Even worse is imaginable. In December 2008 the United States Joint Forces Command put Mexico on par with Pakistan, considering it a weak and failing state that needs to be watched carefully. In another report toward the end of 2008, retired U.S. army general and former drug czar Barry R. McCaffrey saw Mexico on the edge of the abyss, possibly turning into a narcostate in the coming years.13 Clearly, under the persuasive powers of drug money the integrity of the whole system suffers and the significance of formal guarantees introduced to increase due process rights are undermined. In a more optimistic scenario, the corrupting influences of organized crime would be restricted predominantly to the federal courts, leaving the integrity of the state courts largely untouched. Indeed, in addressing the implications of the Calderón overhaul of the judicial system, Magaloni argues that because the focus of the federal government is likely to be on the battle with the cartels rather then overhauling the federal justice system, more can be expected from the reforms on the state level, where the justice systems were clearly in need of “dramatic improvement and reforms that would assure citizens that they could trust their work” (Magaloni 2008: 2).

THE SOCIETAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT The question of what influence new formal rules and structures will have brings us back to the issue of the causes of corruption. In short, one strand maintains that levels of corruption are largely determined by the institutional opportunities offered, and introducing additional checks and balances diminishes corruption and the use of arbitrary unfettered power. From this perspective, it is the institutional environment that determines whether a culture of corruption will persist. The other strand instead proposes that it is the culture which determines institutional practice. If the first proposition is true, there is reason to be optimistic about the future of the new Mexican system, institutionally ensuring a reduction of corruption and an improvement in due process. If the second stand is correct, the likely effect would, at best, be smaller. As discussed, empirically this issue remains unsettled (Morris 2009), making the impact of the Mexican reforms on corruption by police difficult to predict.

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The influence and violence of organized crime still varies greatly across Mexico. This does allow for less spectacular and more low-key developments and initiatives that may for now offer the most realistic hope for keeping Mexico’s social and institutional fabric as intact as possible, and preventing it from turning into a failed state. Before proposing a possible agenda of relevant police and security reforms and initiatives, we shall return to some of the themes discussed in this book. Mexico’s unrule of law has consequences for setting a relevant reform agenda on a variety of fronts, be it in terms of the nature of policing, social accountability and the role of civil society, or external and internal accountability. One important issue is what may be expected of democratic and other forms of external accountability in a society in which informal and clientelistic relations tend to trump the formal rule of law, most fundamentally that of the laws applying equally to all citizens. The greatest challenge to the creation of democratic accountability and rule of law in Mexico, Alberto Días-Cayeros and Beatriz Magaloni (forthcoming) conclude, is the response of citizens and politicians alike to the changes in the legal, political, and social environment they face: Officials often manifesting discretionary and arbitrary behavior and citizens finding new ways of circumventing the law rather than abiding by it.14 In part, such a general attitude can be attributed to the culture of corruption discussed especially in chapters 5 and 6, associated with the opportunism that appears ingrained in Mexican public life. Such a culture may well have its historic roots going back to colonization by the Spaniards, when people depended for their own survival on a pretended acceptance of an imposed religion and code of conduct. This may have contributed to a culture in which citizens interpret the law to suit themselves as each situation arises (López Portillo Vargas 2003a: 103). Corruption in Mexico is endemic and institutionalized, and is daily experienced by the public in its relations with government institutions. From this point of view, corruption and irreverence toward the law can be interpreted as a form of protest against the injustice and impunity characteristic of Mexican society. For those academics, politicians, and policymakers alike who see “a culture of corruption” as the source of the problem—rather than the outcome of institutional life—re-education of Mexican citizens tends to be seen as the most appropriate route toward increasing civic and rule of law values and democratic accountability. Apart from this historical dimension, a weak internalizing of the rule of law and civic values appears inherent in and characteristic of societies in transition from authoritarian rule to democratic governance (Uildriks and van Reenen 2003; Wintrobe 1998). In Democratic Accountability and Rule of Law in Mexico (Dias Cayeros and Magaloni forthcoming) several

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authors analyze Mexico’s problems in precisely these terms. The crux of the argument is that disobedience and endemic breaching of the law by officials and citizenry alike are a consequence of Mexico’s emerging from hegemonic one-party rule, rather than a reflection of a specific and unchanging political culture. As such, obedience to the law before the start of Mexico’s transition from one-party rule arose more from fear of negative consequences of noncompliance than from an internalized belief in the legitimacy of laws themselves. In Mexico, Días-Cayeros and Magaloni point out citizens characteristically interacted with the authorities utilizing deceit and suppression of information about their activities. To the extent that they were able to avail themselves of the incompetence of bureaucracies or prevailing corruption, this enabled them to protect themselves against encroachments by the state. Although new democratic conditions now offer formal redress against state infringements, as yet no workable new equilibrium has emerged between civil society and the state that would allow the principles of the rule of law to be internalized as part and parcel of the nation’s identity. There was, of course, a socio-economic dimension to the increase of crime during the mid-1990s. But our findings in chapter 5 also lend support to such a “democratic transition perspective.” As our survey showed, police widely experience their no longer eliciting fear. As yet this has not been replaced by democratic values and attitudes that form an integral part of policing based on democratic legitimacy, or by collaboration arrangements implicitly based on trust.

SETTING A MEXICAN POLICE REFORM AGENDA Certainly the corrupting influences on those joining the Mexican police are formidable, and the degree of institutionalized corruption in all sectors of the police inhibits institutional controls from furthering institutional integrity. Even the setting up of completely new, supposedly “clean” police forces, and the reforms undertaken under Fox have by and large done preciously little to improve matters on this front. Under these circumstances—but even if civil corruption can in part be seen as a form of protest against a corrupt institutional and societal system—increased institutional legitimacy, the strengthening of the rule of law, and a “new equilibrium” between civil society and the state are only foreseeable in response to a manifest increase in the legitimacy and integrity of the criminal justice system. Again the issue remains how such improvements are to be achieved, or whether any improvements are in fact possible at all in the foreseeable future. Increasing the rights and treatment

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of the rank and file within the police themselves undoubtedly is of considerable significance here. When considering the direction in which the Mexican police and justice system should evolve in, an important issue is how to deal with deeprooted noncompliance with the law and how civic virtue and the rule of law can replace more opportunistic considerations and lawlessness. Irrespective of whether the root causes of noncompliance lie in a “culture of corruption” or is more immediately connected to the demise of one-party rule, simply increasing the realm of the criminal justice system and augmenting penalties in dealing with noncompliance has all the negative consequences of enlarging an ever-increasing prison population. Furthermore, rather than having a deterrent effect, such an approach can be counterproductive, increasing the stakes for those systemically involved in criminal activity. Indeed, as Magaloni and Zepada Lecuona (2004) have shown, there are no indications that higher penalties reduce murder rates in Mexico, even though there may be some effect on robberies. But there is an even more fundamental flaw in seeking increased compliance with the law through greater penalties: The politicized nature of Mexican policing means that the likelihood of being subject to formal punishment is dependent on a deadly cocktail of unpredictability, institutional ineffectiveness and incompetence, and arbitrary or corrupt decisions by the various criminal justice actors. One of the fundamental problems of reform and improvement for Mexican police and the justice system as a whole is, as we saw, the predominance of informal relations and structures, which has undermined the effectiveness of most accountability systems. Internal and intrasystemic Mexican institutional control mechanisms have been seriously flawed since their inception in the 1990s, and in any case have suffered from considerable corruption and favoritism. While the wider justice reforms offer some hope for improvement, the impact of present accountability systems regulating police conduct and otherwise redressing various forms of abuse is limited at best. Improvement on this front requires that two related issues be addressed: increasing the rights of the police rank and file along with reform of the police disciplinary system. Rank-and-File Police Rights Improving the rights of the rank and file vis-a-vis senior police is a change that falls outside traditional thinking about police reform, but one that is imperative for the development of a more democratic and human rightsbased police organization. In fact, a precondition for police internalizing human rights values is that their own rights be respected as well. Improvement of the rights of individual officers is important not only for its own

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sake, but also because one cannot realistically expect police to become more sensitive and human rights-oriented toward suspects and citizenry if their own rights are structurally violated on a large scale in their own working environment. The heavy involvement of rank-and-file police in corruption and other abusive practices should not distract us from the fact that ordinary officers themselves are also deeply frustrated by the poor quality of the service they are supposed to provide. People largely join the police for monetary reasons and seldom because of a sense of mission. Nevertheless, being brutalized themselves on a massive level, many officers are very resentful of the way they are treated, bemoaning the general inefficiency of their organization as well as their inability to be of any real service to society. Significantly, a desire for more rule of law and for guidance and instruction as to how police should act were important topics during the group interviews with judicial police (see chapter 6). Mexican police in recent years have increasingly recruited officers with higher educational backgrounds. As seen in chapter 5, the more highly educated officers can be expected to be less accepting of the traditional arbitrary treatment and unquestioning loyalty and obedience characteristically demanded in traditional police hierarchical relations.15 Given that police suffer a variety of abuses on the part of their own bosses, including discretionary application of the existing disciplinary system, improvement of police rights should be forthcoming from two directions: reform of the disciplinary system and involvement of the National Human Rights Commission. Reforming the Police Internal Disciplinary System A significant part of human rights violations against police by their superiors can be blamed on the current Mexican police internal disciplinary systems, and these require a fundamental revision. The disciplinary code should allow senior officers much less discretionary scope: The sanctions that may be applied for specific offenses should be formulated much more precisely, and senior officers should have less power to assign the seriousness of a particular alleged offense. An officer must also be granted the possibility of appeal to an independent body within the organization with respect to the evidence on which the judgment is made and to the severity of the penalty. Concerning Mexico City’s preventive and judicial police, the LSPDF addresses the issue of unjust punishment by making it possible for the Police Council of Justice and Honor to punish high-ranking officers for repeatedly handing out unjustified disciplinary sanctions to subordinates (Article 52, par. XI). The problem here, as Ugalde points out, is that this provision has

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remained a dead letter, and that the norm for the Council has remained that officers’ superiors are entitled to take any measures against subordinates they consider necessary (Ugalde 2003: 61–69). To give lower-ranking officers more rights not just in law but in practice requires the creation of an autonomous body within the police as a court of appeal dealing with allegations of unjust punishment. In modern democratic societies, police unions negotiate their working conditions and basic rights, including working hours and equipment. As a result, officers are not so dependent on discretionary decisions taken by senior police. Unions in Mexico, however, are notorious for their corruption, so if police unions were in fact set up—Mexico’s police are still not unionized—it would be realistic to expect them to fall prey to institutionalized corruption, too. Since 2000, police have increasingly started filing complaints with Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission against their superiors: By 2005 some 25 percent of the complaints against police are made by lower-ranking police officers themselves, even though those who do complain may face internal retributions. On both the state/DF and federal level, the commissions’ role could become even more important by consistently following up on their own recommendations and by offering continued support to officers who suffer internal police repercussions. In view of the human rights implications of such allegations, there is no fundamental reason a priori why such appeal should not be heard by the national and state/DF human rights commissions instead of the police Council of Justice and Honor. Ugalde concludes that when officers abstain from complaining about human rights violations to which they are subjected, it is because of insufficient protection and a risk of being fired as a result of the conflict with their superiors (Ugalde 2003: 61–69). To minimize such risks, it could be helpful if officers would be allowed to file complaints anonymously if the allegations concern the institution in general. Police chiefs, when their organization is under investigation from the commissions, have tended to see this as a political attack because of the commissions’ supposed political affiliation with a particular party or leader, and senior officers are reported to intimidate the rank and file regularly about not filing complaints. Nevertheless, in spite of this probably inevitable response, the mere fact that lower-rank police have dared to stand up to their superiors more often than in the past can be regarded as a positive if modest move toward more democratic internal police relations based on human rights and the rule of law. At any rate it would be a major breakthrough if on an institutional level police complaints became standard and appropriate for the human rights commissions to hear and pursue, and a more positive outlook on human rights could develop among the rank and file as they come to recognize the

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relevance of human rights to them personally. The commissions could thus become a significant and noncorrupt counterbalance to the rampant and uncontrolled discretionary powers of police chiefs, and thus contribute to the gradual evolution of the police from a formal and hierarchical organization toward one based on more democratic and human rights principles. Increasing the role of the various human rights commissions, as the main institutions where police can register complaints against senior officers would also serve another purpose: It is likely to alter police attitudes toward the commissions themselves, seeing them as institutions that do not necessarily work against but on behalf of police, empowering the lower ranks and encouraging changes and possible reforms from within the police. In spite of possible internal recrimination and retaliation against police who seek their assistance, the commissions could serve an important role in making police working conditions transparent and open to external scrutiny. In this way both internal injustice and general wrongs could be addressed, breaking through or sidestepping existing power structures. In effect it might encourage what could be referred to as bottom-up reforms, with the human rights commissions serving as catalyst. Appointment, Training, and Promotion Senior Police I would like to get ahead in the police because of the courses I followed and not because of personal connections within the force. (Preventive Police officer, thirty-six years old)

The corruption and widespread lack of quality among higher Mexican police ranks is another need if the overall quality of the police and adherence to human rights values are to improve. Unlike any modern police force, an archaic and corrupting element of Mexican police organizations is the system for appointment and promotion to senior positions. Reform in this area has the potential to increase trust on an institutional level within the police organization, by making arbitrary treatment by one’s superiors less of an unavoidable and inescapable fact of organizational life. At present there is no formal system that links police courses and certificates with promotion. (Out of a total of 129 courses offered by Mexico City’s Technical Institute for Police Training in 2003 to 29,000 officers, only four “promotion courses” were offered, with a mere eight officers passing.) What does exist is a system in which police chiefs link training and promotion if it suits them. Officers are thus perceived by police themselves as largely promoted on the basis of personal connections rather than qualifications and merit, exemplifying prevailing institutionalized police corruption and arbitrariness. Such a system seriously undermines police morale

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and the human rights of lower-ranking police. Indirectly it also impedes internalization of human rights values by the police. Reforming the appointment and promotion system should therefore constitute an integral part of any serious endeavor to improve the quality of the Mexican policing system. The fact that this has not been put into effect casts doubt on the political will to instigate real reform. In itself this is not surprising. Reforms are especially likely to meet resistance when they encroach on vested interests, such as job security or hampering the possibility of illegal financial gain such as bribes and other payoffs. Reforms to address informal promotion practices would definitely encroach on such vested interests. At least within the DF Preventive Police there are signs that the old informal promotion system is under review. The Integral Public Security Program introduced in 2004 proposed to “form a police career service that allows promotion through courses, eliminating every element of corruption or discretion, thus resulting in a more dignified police, to achieve a greater professionalization and higher salaries.” Nevertheless, a central question remains as to what promotion system would be truly effective. To achieve this, an independent board could be set up to decide upon promotions, where officers would apply and compete for specific positions. The procedure would need to be guided by objective criteria, possibly in combination with integrity tests: In 2008 the government ordered more lie detector tests for officials in delicate positions in general, in combination with increased background checks. Appointment of Senior Officers Traditional police reform takes the importance of improving police management as axiomatic; the appointment and promotion of senior officers themselves is thus a central issue, as well as in its own right. Current practices reinforce one of the institutional characteristics that most undermine the development of a democratic and human rights-oriented police: a network of corrupt, incompetent and self-serving senior police. As discussed in chapter 5, our survey indicates that 47 percent of the rank and file of Judicial Police and 27 percent of Preventive Police considered the incapacity of senior police an important impediment to the police functioning adequately (Question 12, Response 7). In fact, both our survey data and our interviews clearly indicate that a large majority of ordinary police officers (especially judicial police) consider that, to reduce corruption and improve the quality of policing, a change in senior police is required. What is needed, in the opinion of the rank and file, are senior officers who really care about the quality of the police and are competent enough to actually

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improve matters—in the light of the increase in the number of killings of police since 2006, this competence should also include an ability to deal with the issue of security for police. For the higher ranking officers as well as those who will be responsible for specific geographical areas, aspiring officers should have to set out their vision and plans for policing a particular area. One possibility is to limit tenure in higher police posts to a four- or five-year period, renewable on the basis of performance during that period. During informal discussions with us, senior officers contended that appointing senior police with a more professional nonpolice background has been an important factor in reducing corruption, a conclusion that is not possible for us to validate. But even if this were in fact the case, there are clearly limits to appointing those with a nonpolice background as part of an effort to clean up the police, although this was a key approach adopted in setting up the New Federal Police in 2007. Arguably such “new” police are less socialized into patterns of corruption, but competent management and control of the rank and file also requires an understanding of the intricacies of police work. Senior officers who lack credibility with their own subordinates have only limited possibilities to influence police behavior through persuasion rather than by formal sanctions. On the whole, despite signs of improvement with respect to corruption, suggested by our survey of police in 2005, senior police are perceived by subordinates as lacking in both managerial capabilities and integrity. With corruption clearly having worsened over the past years, it remains beyond doubt that senior Mexican police are as much part of the problem as the solution for raising standards of police integrity. Rank-and-File Police Training In our Mexico City survey, 68 percent of preventive police and 45 percent of judicial police indicate that they consider training one of the three most important “change agents” to reduce the level of abuse of power (Question 21, Response 1); for DF preventive police it is the most important “change agent,” and for the DF judicial police second most important, after the replacement of senior officers. On the face of it, the importance attached to training by the rank and file is curious in light of police officers’ notorious scepticism about new training programs, almost universally regarded by police as irrelevant to what they encounter on the job (Bayley 2001: 20). This is probably in part a reflection of their own experience with training as recruits. Their interest in training, however, is less surprising if we recall the symbolic significance police officers attach to being allowed to participate

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in training courses, namely, as an indication of being valued by their organization and superior officers. Most training—for both preventive and judicial police—is nevertheless rather haphazard and lacks internal cohesion, as we have observed in chapter 6. Even for judicial police, who receive considerably more on-the-job training than their preventive police counterparts, training mostly involves single sessions integrating normative and cognitive knowledge with practical skills. To have any real effect training—particularly in physical training and operational skills—also needs to be offered with much greater frequency and adequacy, as well as followed up by the police agency itself in terms of assignments, promotion and pay increases. For DF judicial police in particular, another serious omission in training programs that needs addressing is the absence of integrated training in general investigative and specific interrogation techniques. For training to have any long-term impact on professionalization of the Judicial Police with respect to democratic and human rights principles, it should be geared to the kind of practical problems with which police are faced in the course of everyday policing. The instruction of judicial police should therefore include methods enabling them to obtain reliable information as part of their investigation without feeling the need to resort to violence. In addition to offering a normative perspective, it is equally important for their training to include skills and techniques on how to deal professionally with difficult, obstructive, and noncooperative suspects and witnesses. The relevance of training as a means of improving the quality of investigative work, however, is somewhat undermined by the fact that the federal and state judicial police do not have operational independence, but instead fall under the authority of the public prosecutor’s office; on both the federal and state levels at present public prosecutor offices constitute part of the executive branch, making both the investigation and prosecution of crimes open to political pressures. As yet it remains to be seen whether the changes originally proposed by the Fox administration to make the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (PGR) independent of the executive will also be proposed by the Calderón administration and pass Congress, and if so what this will mean in reality. Furthermore, real investigative work constitutes only a small part of the work of the judicial police. Complex criminal investigations are the exception. In any case, additional training of nonspecialized police is likely at best to make a limited contribution toward transforming the police into an institution guided by the rule of law. All in all, the importance of additional training for judicial police falls a long way behind other reforms required in order to foster policing more in accordance with democratic and human rights standards.

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For the Preventive Police in particular, limited resources and facilities make any substantial increase and improvement of on-the-job training more or less an illusion. Real improvement on this front would require huge increases in financial as well as manpower resources, which demands a long-term organizational and political commitment difficult to envisage; simply increasing the numbers of police is more likely to score media points for politicians and police chiefs.

The Future of Police Training There are two general points to make as to the future of police training. In the first place, there is little point in offering training, either in general or specifically for human rights, if not carried out on a regular basis in integrated curriculum. The whole police curriculum—both for new recruits and on-the-job training—must organize the various courses into a single overall perspective. And thought must be given to the kind of skills, capabilities, and functions that the different police institutions should be expected to fulfill in Mexican society. Developing the political will for such a development is an essential point needing no further elaboration here. As Neild (1998) has pointed out, human rights training particularly should be an integral part of police training, rather than provided as an add-on course marginal to the core body of police instruction. This means that human rights issues should play a role in all aspects of police training, such as the use of force, search and arrest procedures, and interrogation techniques. Moreover, the teaching should not take place by verbal instruction alone but especially through practical and role-playing exercises, placed in the context of the circumstances under which officers actually work. A second general point about human rights is connected with the lack of “police identity” that so characterizes current Mexican policing. Officers must be provided with a broad education that inculcates an identity as police and a clear sense of the police mission to uphold the fundamental principles of the rule of law, such as that all people are equal before the law. These principles stand in stark contrast to actual Mexican societal realities, of course, but imbuing officers with them would be an essential ingredient for generating and democratizing a new idealism in the police, as well as for the development of democratic and human rights-based police institutions. So far, on-the-job training in Mexico has proved of little significance as a strategy to increase police adherence to the rule of law and human rights (e.g., elimination of torture). In the near future such improvements seem unlikely, as this requires the kind of professionalism and integrity within the police that clearly is not present today.

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Professionalization In setting an agenda of reform that is specifically relevant for Mexico City—and depending on local circumstances, in other regions in Mexico as well—an important issue is the relevance of police professionalization as a broad approach to reform, at least in terms of increasing adherence to human rights and the rule of law on the one hand, and increasing personal and public security on the other. As discussed in the theoretical introduction to our study (chapter 1), Martha Huggins (1998) warns against the dangers of this model, contending in particular that such an orientation allows for perpetuation of the power and privileges of the few, by transforming the police into an institution that is falsely seen as impartial and apolitical, composed of public servants supposedly upholding neutrally the rule of law, rather than the interests of the privileged. For Mexico the risk of a false perception that professionalization will overcome class privilege is clearly limited: Attempts to modernize the Mexican police have failed by and large—as already discussed of some 54,000 officers assessed in 2008, less than half were deemed suitable as police—and the police, on both local and national levels, lack any basic legitimacy with the public. A more serious consequence of Mexican professionalization reforms is the “crime-control orientation,” which Martha Huggins (1998: 14) points out is commonly associated with professionalized policing. Professionalization as a primary orientation for reform, in short, entails the risk of the police losing contact with the public—whatever contact it may still have—which very much characterizes police-public relations in today’s Mexico City. Marcus Moloeznik (2006: 176, 186) indeed considers the professionalization of the Mexican police since 1994 as having been characterized by the “punitive model which inherently rejects citizen participation.” Between 1994 and 2000 this resulted in a more than 80 percent increase of the overall Mexican prison population, with the same upward trend continuing thereafter. Mexico City’s prison population rose even more dramatically, from 7,700 in 1993 to some 30,000 in early 2005 (Azaola 2006: 14). For professionalization of Mexican police to have any meaning requires that issues of accountability and integrity be adequately addressed. The issue of institutionalized corruption is crucial here, and Harriott’s conclusions about police reform in Jamaica on this point are equally valid for Mexico. Most campaigns against institutionalized corruption tend to be futile in the light of the entrepreneurial character of corruption, which provides the social and financial resources for police to resist sanctions effectively, and indeed may well amount to little more than “efforts to offer a few scapegoats for sacrifice and exercises in victimization and revenge.” (Harriott 2000: 69).

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Whether professionalizing the police as a broad approach can in fact have a substantive impact on the level of institutionalized nonintegrity in police forces in countries such as Mexico at present is clearly doubtful. Drug cartels exert their seemingly ever-expanding corrupting influence, infiltrating not only the security and justice sector, but far beyond within much of the rest of the state apparatus. As discussed, even the impact of the institutional changes envisaged by the far-reaching reforms of 2008 is uncertain. Equally hard to foresee at present is how the Mexican police can be fundamentally depoliticized, a crucial issue if professionalization is to take place for transforming the police into autonomous forces working on the basis of the rule of law.

COMMUNITY POLICING Forms of “community accountability” in many neighborhoods and regions could be meaningful to help bridge the police-public divide. On a municipal or even more decentralized level, this would entail a structure for general public feedback on various policing matters, by which a senior officer could be held publicly accountable for the quality of policing (or lack thereof), or at least required to be answerable in general terms to the views and experiences of the neighborhoods under his authority. A more radical idea would be to devise some kind of participation from the neighborhood in the selection of local police chiefs. Under prevailing circumstances the latter is probably an idea mainly within long-term relevance. However, whether such forms of accountability could in fact become meaningful in Mexico will be contingent on political will, and a shared political understanding that a move forward in Mexican policing requires that it be depoliticized. The fact that on the federal level broad political consensus was reached about the wider criminal justice reforms in 2008 offers some hope. But drug-related crime and violence also comes into play: In those regions in Mexico marred by organized crime violence, meaningful “community accountability” will probably be difficult to introduce successfully because of their informal power and the fear they generate. This brings us to the issue what community-oriented policing, as a more democratically inspired style of policing, can bring to Mexico City and beyond, both institutionally as socially. As a policing style focused primarily on establishing personal contacts within communities, more than traditional reactive policing styles, community policing has the potential of involving citizens in issues of security, forming working relations with the authorities, as well as generating social and institutional trust. However, its introduction probably also requires some basis of public trust in the

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authorities in the first place, leaving the question of whether there is indeed sufficient social trust for it to be a realistic option under current Mexican circumstances. For the answer we need to consider the preconditions under which community policing could be successful. In their scope and origins, the nature of community policing initiatives in Latin America varies greatly. In Chile, citizen participation tends to be mobilized by state agencies themselves, and public and police authorities make explicit efforts to frame and institutionalize any more spontaneous citizen participation. In contrast, Catalina Smulovitz (2006) in her comparative case study found citizen participation to be more spontaneous, albeit not always continuous, in Brazil and Argentina. Myra Bunivic (2004) concludes that in Bogatá, Colombia, public security has been used as just one component of a broad social strategy designed to improve social cohesion and the quality of life in that city; in addition, there has been an explicit commitment on the part of police units to overcome bureaucratic rivalries that prevent a coordinated response to violence and crime, using standardized procedures, data-sharing networks, and a focus on results. Finally, much attention has been given to maximizing participation of local communities in Bogotá for prevention of violence, for instance by means of neighborhood crime-monitoring committees, whose activities encourage cooperation between community police officers and local residents (Bunivic 2004). Virtually all of these preconditions are as yet in short supply in Mexico City and in Mexico as a whole. Mexico’s prospects for widespread introduction of community policing under current circumstances are also bleak in the light of Frühling’s conclusion that in high crime areas the public willingness to cooperate with the police is by definition less (Frühling 2006). More and more of Mexico, and Mexico City, are rife with crime. As discussed in chapter 6, community policing initiatives have as yet yielded only limited results in Mexico City, primarily due to citizens’ deeprooted suspicions concerning the integrity of the police and the fallout from their views about or experiences with police corruption and impunity. With these experiences in mind, in the short-term, further developing community policing along these more formal lines, either in Mexico City, or for that matter in Mexico generally, can be expected to yield few results. Especially in the more troubled parts of Mexico City, prevailing levels of public suspicion of both the police and the whole state apparatus offer little hope for such formal types of community policing. More fundamentally, this type of approach and formal structure is unsuitable for addressing one of the central characteristic of the Mexico City’s policing woes, namely the near total absence of any type of normal informal police-public relations and contacts. It is this issue, we contend, that needs to be addressed most directly, if community policing is to have any relevance in Mexico City.

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Toward Personalized Policing Given public distrust of the police and the absence of any informal policepublic interactions, there is an alternative concept of preventive policing, perhaps more relevant for improving public security and reducing police human rights abuses; this would require a fundamental change in policing style from the prevailing model of foot and especially car-patrolling in favor of personalizing police-public relations by making individual officers responsible for the safety of specific streets. There are good reasons to believe that, compared to a more anonymous policing style, “personalized” policing allows for the development of interpersonal public-police relations that will result in less excessive and illegal police use of force, and probably also reduce violence against police. The idea of personalizing policing in this way is based on the axiom that individual officers and members of the public interacting informally on a regular basis offers the possibility for developing, to use Luis Roniger’s term (1990), of “focalized trust,” that is, trust that is limited and awarded only to specific individuals. This being the case, some prevailing stereotypes could be broken down at the interpersonal micro-level, allowing at least certain neighborhood inhabitants to develop some trust in some particular police officers: Knowing someone does not necessarily result in personal trust, but in Mexico to be able to trust someone presupposes knowing that person for a considerable period. Trust is a key concept when considering the feasibility of opportunities and impediments for “personalizing” policing. Trust encourages policepublic interactions, facilitating the growth of confidence if not in the police as a state institution then at least in individual police and of police legitimacy more broadly, or at least the justification for that specific policeman’s presence and actions. At the same time, trust itself is a prerequisite for personalizing policing. On the local level such support is required and has to be sought in these localities where suspicions or specific problems (drugs, organized crime, revolutionary movements) are particularly acute. We suggest that personalizing policing has a number of advantages in establishing personal ties to members of the public. It has the potential to diminish police abuse as well as to provide greater security, since personalizing the structure of policing is one way to increase public trust, if not in the police as a state institution then at least at the level of an individual officer. First of all, policing styles that focus on establishing personal ties and relations between police and the public are likely to allow for greater voluntary public assistance for the police. Potentially, more proximate and direct policepublic contacts can significantly improve police access to local information on security matters, since they can lead to less confrontational attitudes on the part of both the police and the public toward policing in general and police investigations in particular. Thus personalized policing can provide

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greater public security and increases residents’ factual and subjective feelings of local security, thereby augmenting police legitimacy. Personalizing policing as a strategy also has the potential to diminish police abuse. It makes an insular police workforce more outward-oriented, shifting the bulk of daily police work from essentially police-police to police-public interactions, thereby concomitantly providing opportunities for greater societal acceptance of individual officers and diminishing the isolation of the police. This model of policing intrinsically compels officers to take more personal responsibility for the creation of a satisfactory working environment, since it depends to a large extent on their ability to build personal networks with the public. Police working in this way are more likely to be influenced by the demands and pressures of the communities in which they are located, their working experiences in turn making police likely to become more community-oriented. Furthermore, officers will probably be less exposed to corrupting influences from elsewhere within the police organization, and structurally this mode of policing is likely to afford fewer occupational opportunities for large bribes. Another advantage is that officers can more easily be held individually accountable for misdeeds, and public dissatisfaction with the police service rendered and attempts at extortion or corruption can more easily be attributed to specific individual police officers, and as such more easily addressed. Finally, the model reduces the need for car patrolling, which itself constitutes such an important modus operandi for police in securing bribes. Of course, the personalized model is less suitable in those areas where trust in police and their legitimacy are absent altogether and the police are unable to convince the population that the police can be of local benefit. In fact, it is to be expected that corruption and other failures of police integrity will continue to undermine their legitimacy to a greater or lesser extent in the foreseeable future. In particular, a drastically personalized policing style entails the risk of information acquired by individual police being drawn upon and misused by corrupt police, and facilitating the development of informal alliances with the local “criminal element.”

Personalizing Public Security for Mexico City Making individual officers responsible for the safety of a particular area is a model implicitly employed already by private security firms, not only in Mexico City but throughout the Third World, particularly in wealthy neighborhoods. A study presented to the Asamblea Legislative of the Federal District (DF) in early 2004 reported over 600 registered companies in the DF alone, employing more than 21,000 people (Pansters and Castillo Berthier

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2006: 37).16 In some streets in Mexico City residents pool their resources to pay a firm to guard the street twenty-four hours a day, for which purpose a little shelter is set up on the street. In this way all residents can know personally the guards ensuring safety on the street and, at least equally important, the person in charge knows most of the guards and everybody on the street. Such an approach could be expanded to include giving preventive police a more active and investigative role under a variety of circumstances (e.g., burglaries, vandalism) and could be applied in both rich and poor neighborhoods. This idea parallels the so-called Koban Model of Japanese policing, which involves a fine web of police boxes (koban).17 In most developed and industrialized societies such a highly decentralized policing model is not feasible because of the number of police it requires. In Mexico City, however, it would invert one of the great weaknesses of its police, namely, providing useful employment for a large reservoir of superfluous, poorly trained, less-qualified police with no other obvious and meaningful role on a day-to-day basis. It would also force police officers to be more oriented outside the police in being more interactive with the local population. Currently in Mexico, the likely reaction of the public in response to a police request for name and address is not to cooperate, for fear such information will be misused. This being the case, we contend that reform of institutional police arrangements must go beyond the normal top-down approach (legal changes, organizational restructuring) to address the mistrust toward and within the police as an institution. As far as the Preventive Police are concerned, a more personalized policing model is a reform that can be expected to alter working practices due to the changed role officers would play on a day-to-day basis. Rather than being heavily dependent for its success on senior police, it is a reform that would instead reduce their role. Personalizing security by preventive police as a partial replacement of the current overreliance on anonymous motorized policing, will not be a panacea for all of Mexico’s policing woes. Policing will always remain multi-faceted, with Judicial Police, car patrolling, and specialized branches also playing a role vis-a-vis a variety of crime and security concerns: For example, it is difficult to see how a personalized police security web could do much to reduce the security risks from kidnappings or problems of drug-related and other organized crime. Police lack of accountability and malfeasance will persist in one form or another, as under any model of policing. A reminder that personalized policing can be expected to give rise to problems of nonintegrity can also be found in the many complaints about private security firms since statistics were first compiled on this front by Mexico City officials in 2002 (Davis 2006: 77). This state of affairs has in part been attributed to the fact that private police firms are often composed of ex-military or ex-police, who transfer their sense of impunity and

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their human rights abuses to their new posts (Davis 2006: 77). Nor does a personalizing of policing solve the problems of police alliances with the Mexican political parties and partly related interagency strife, nor make the police more democratically accountable. At the same time, however, it would not make any of the current apparently intractable problems in these respects any worse. At least the risks involved do not appear to be any greater than those of the prevailing policing system. Gradually introducing personalized security has the potential to address some of the current fundamental flaws in policing. Insofar as it is indeed able to increase trust on the micro level and thereby increase the public’s sense of personal security, this would be a step forward in comparison to the current situation and might even increase the legitimacy of police in a democratic Mexican society. Indeed, it is possible that any criminal alliances and abuse of knowledge that a more personalized model would facilitate might well be more easily traced, and the officers involved more readily held accountable.18 Nevertheless, any form of more personalized policing should seek to minimize the possible corrupting influences on police stationed in one particular location by moving officers every two or three years, reducing the risk of individual officers being exposed to specific local corrupting influences for too long. Success in introducing a personalized police security system to improve public security and trust will depend on the manner and wider context in which it is introduced and the extent to which it can be embedded in an effective accountability system. At least some basic guidance for the rank and file must also be worked out and implemented in terms of the competence and legal powers of the officers concerned and on how to operate in ways enabling them to build up contacts and to gain trust with locals. In short, some form of training would be required to empower them with the necessary tools and personal skills required—such as people skills, knowledge about securing houses, basic crime investigation skills, and ideally some basic mediation skills—to be able to take on a new police role. Two other issues are also of concern. First of all, a drastic reorientation and restructuring of policing is likely to meet with substantial police opposition, especially as it runs contrary to vested interests. Corrupt police chiefs benefit from the present reliance on motorized policing, since it offers ample opportunity for existing institutionalized corruption (such as bribes to avoid sanctions for alleged traffic infractions). In the second place, tactically the intricacies of introducing such a model on a community level will be manifold. Introduction of personalized policing under the best of circumstances is inevitably a long-term process. Under the worst of circumstances—where there are populations deeply hostile to the police—it must be carefully planned and monitored as part of a gradual process of overcoming resistance from highly suspicious communities (compare Frühling 2006: 47–48). It would

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also have to take place in conjunction with other organizational reforms, and become part of a transitional process by which the police becomes more problem- than personal power-oriented.

CONCLUSION Latin America has seen the kind of development more compatible with Armony’s conclusion (2006) that civil participation fails to breed generalized social trust in an adverse social and political context, rather than with Putman’s more optimistic view of the relationship between civic engagement and democratic governance. As a society characterized by great inequality, in which a small set of people are extremely rich and some 60 percent live in poverty, such reflections are clearly relevant for Mexico’s predicament. In its current form, the country’s social structure does little to provide social and public security, and some of its social characteristics are clearly unfavorable for the country’s democratic development, particularly in the light of Armony’s analysis of the failure of civil engagement in Argentina’s social and political conditions. Such is indeed the conclusion drawn by David Corrochano (2005) about the state of Mexico’s democratization process. He identifies clear advances in decentralization and innovation in politics, especially in the fight against poverty, the transformation of the bureaucratic system, increased access to justice, and fiscal and energy reforms. Nevertheless, none of these institutional reforms have succeeded in generating a climate of trust, and he considers the ability of Mexican civil society to achieve any real change to remain in doubt. Rather than addressing the issue of civil engagement and its relationship to democratic governance in Mexico, however, he has looked at the impact of Mexican civil society in terms of “social capital.”19 In those terms, Mexico is characterized by an inequality in the distribution of informal social capital, but also by a fragmentation of formal social capital and a civil society characterized by deep conflicts and fractures. During recent decades, Mexican society has clearly seen an evolution toward more complex and autonomous civil participation, an evolution which stemmed from the development of articulated urban movements during the 1970s and 1980s. The 1980s in particular saw the emergence of an ever-increasing number of organizations responding to human rights issues, particularly torture and other excesses committed by judicial authorities. As Olvera Rivera (2004) points out, in the 1990s these gradually developed into different citizen movements and NGOs that emphasized solidarity and human rights values. Nevertheless, Corrochano’s empirical study found that their membership is limited, and the trend may well in fact be toward an abandonment of the public domain in favor of the privacy of the family.

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However, in terms of its potential for democratic participation, the most fundamental limitation of Mexican society, Corrochano concludes, lies in Mexico’s socio-economic inequality, with an unequal distribution of social capital in income, but particularly also from education and differences in ethnicity. Such differences between the poor and middle classes affect their relative capacity to mobilize resources and effectively influence and protest against the political system, for example by communications, the media, elected representatives, and others. Furthermore, in societies that are increasingly polarized socio-economically, and in terms of political means, Godoy points out, law, and particularly criminal law, “become central staging ground for struggles to define citizenship, justice and order” (Godoy 2006: 11). This characterization clearly applies to Mexico’s democratization process. In today’s Mexico, insecurity prevails, both socially and physically. This insecurity can be understood as a problem of social disintegration, as the circumstances leading to the police lynching in Tláhuac illustrated. At present there is an ongoing battle between different social forces, which can be characterized as a search for a new equilibrium, a new all-encompassing legality. The present formal institutional systems have been unable to create adequate conditions and services to satisfy the needs of the majority of the population. For them, these do offer neither a frame of reference nor personal security; instead, citizens are faced with the realities of other subsystems in which they function and live; informal commerce, migration, organized crime—particularly narcotrafficking—all constitute alternative survival systems. There have been more or less democratic elections for many years, and 2000 for the first time saw the election of a PAN candidate, terminating seventy-one years of PRI-dominance. Mexico is still a long way from being a fully fledged democracy, lacking as it does a democratic culture: Few people have internalized the fundamentals of democratic rules and the rule of law. Nonetheless, there is widespread political will to create democratic institutions and formulate reforms to create the conditions necessary for human rights to be adhered to. The Mexican evolution since the early 1990s from an authoritarian democratic state toward more institutionalized democratic rule, no matter how difficult and tentative this has been, inevitably means that the police will have to reform in order to adapt to the new emerging political and societal circumstances. This will need to be accompanied by institutional and normative systems that will emerge as a result of the demands put upon the police by the new power constellations and the requirements of the rule of law to which a democratic regime is expected to adhere. The explosion of violence coming from the drug cartels, and the high degree to which law enforcement agents have been targeted clearly makes the outcome of this process harder to predict.

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In the meantime, in order for police reforms to be relevant, a central element should be their potential to increase social and institutional trust. To focus on institutional reforms and controls without a fundamental reorganization of the role of the police within society, we surmise, is unlikely to result in a way out of the current crisis in policing. Police training and accountability systems should be improved in a direction that integrates human rights and democratic values within the institutions themselves, if Mexico is to successfully carry through a democratic transition beyond the simple electoral level. On a strategic level it has been argued in this chapter that a far-reaching de facto decentralization of the police would make it possible to eliminate some key characteristics perpetuating Mexico’s crisis of policing. But the issue remains as to how—and indeed whether—such a decentralized model of policing can be introduced at all under current Mexican conditions. Its best chance would probably be to initiate some low-key experiments in specially selected neighborhoods. Within the current precarious social and democratic equilibrium, experimenting with the model could well be appealing to some police chiefs and politicians, given the failure of present policing models and the total lack of public legitimacy accompanying them. Not so long ago security in Bogotá seemed an equally distant prospect, but it took only one man to kick-start a turn-around. Perhaps, in Mexico, too, it just requires a single person with vision to seize upon the idea and consider it likely to pay political and security dividends. Whether any reforms work will depend on their strength vis a vis the kind of informal realities that will develop within the new structures. The crucial question is whether they will help to shape and alter the informal realities of the police and justice system, or whether the weight and corrupting influence of these realities will largely prevent reforms from having much positive influence. This question remains especially pressing in the face of Mexico’s increasing cartel stranglehold of society and escalating cartelrelated violence against each other, against the police and military, and against the public.

NOTES 1. “Mexico Drug Gangs Threaten Cops on Radio, Kill Them,” Reuters, February 6, 2009, Robin Emmot. 2. www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41767.htm (last accessed January 15, 2009). 3. Three former presidents from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, as part of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, publicly urged the U.S. to

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change its war against drugs, arguing that it is does little more than cram prisons and stoke violence (“Latin America ex-leaders urge reform of US drug war” February 11, 2009. www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN11358345 (last accessed June 7, 2009). 4. Possibly started as a small group of armed men going around the streets to protect their children from meth with an amalgam of rightwing vigilantes, rural self-defense militia, former military and police personnel, La Familia is a relative new-comer amongst the cartels, having first made the headlines on September 5, 2006 when twenty masked members stormed into a nightclub, tossing five human heads on the dance floor (Gray 2009). 5. Carl Traci “Mexico President hopes to quell drug violence by 2012, news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090227/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_drug_battle (last accessed February 27, 2009). 6. The military justice system is widely held to lack the independence necessary to carry out thorough investigations, and characterized by a general absence of transparency, Human Rights Watch (2008) point out that the ability of military prosecutors to investigate army abuses is further undermined by a fear of the army. Such fear, the organization points out, is widespread in rural communities and inhibits civilian victims and witnesses from providing information to military authorities (hrw.org/en/node/79216) (last accessed March 19, 2009). 7. Indeed some of the cartels virtually act as a parallel state. Notably La Familia is known to extort “taxes” from businesses, [it] pays for community projects, controls petty crime, settles local disputes, and gives loans to farmers, businesses, schools and churches, thus seeking to build a social base. In its home state Michoacán, La Familia is believed to be Mexico’s biggest manufacturer of methamphetamines and is involved in the transport and sale of cocaine, selling of pirated DVDS, smuggling of people to the U.S. and running a “debt-collecting service” as an annex extortion racket. They have solidified their power structure both through infiltration within the police and among politicians and public officials; some twenty municipal officials have been murdered by La Familia, including two mayors, presumably because they could not be bought by the cartel (The Economist July 25, 2009). Federal authorities believe that La Familia factually controls half of the municipalities in the state. 8. The cartels have created elaborate systems to avoid property seizures. According to federal police they move money quickly through storefront check-cashing and wire-transfer services. In some areas they have also become so omnipresent that they take a cut out of every transaction (Stevenson 2009). 9. Responsibility for Brazilian police reform had been entrusted to Luiz Eduardo Soares, the National Security Secretary. Proclaiming his independence from the ruling party, Soares called for reform of the penal code and the unification of police forces. He soon found himself isolated and vilified after he had announced that states which did not elaborate detailed multiyear plans to reform police forces would have federal funds withdrawn, and he resigned just ten months after his appointment (Hinton 2006: 198). 10. Such a state of affairs was reported to the Committee by a number of detainees it interviewed (CAT 2003).

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11. The 1999 report of the Tamaulipas Human Rights Commission similarly concluded that torture was not so much used to obtain confessions, but instead as a means of obtaining evidence (CAT 2003: paragraph 139). 12. “Ciudad Juarez Militarized” Frontera NorteSur, March 17, 2009. news. newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e9768f4fe936719627af8 a73dd0adbb5 (last accessed July 16, 2009). 13. “Mexico is Applauded For its War on Cartels” www.signonsandiego.com/ stories/2009/may/13/1m13drugs231418-mexico-applauded-its-war-cartels/ (last accessed July 16, 2009). 14. This attitude even extends to civil matters. “In Mexico, illegality appears to be a constant. We live in habitual legal uncertainty and insecurity. The strategy which dominates relations between citizens is that of noncompliance with agreements” (Zepeda Lecuona as cited by Kossick 2004: 719). 15. Probably connected to such a development, in the past few years, as noted earlier, there have been regular reports of sometimes even violent protest and rebellion by police against their senior officers, illustrated by a picture in Reforma in January 2006 of two policemen kicking their senior officer lying on the ground. 16. Figures offered by the Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Distrito Federal (SPP DF) suggest a rapid increase in the number of private security officers working registered private security firms, from 43,000 in 2003 to 75,000 in 2005 (Azaola 2006: 12). 17. Police boxes in rural areas are called chuzaisho. Japanese police activity centers around the chuzaisho and koban. In Tokyo, the official minimum complement for each koban is twelve officers (three officers and a supervising sergeant on each of four-hour shift rotations). The officers patrol the neighborhood on foot or bicycle, respond to calls of distress, and assist detectives or national agents in their investigative projects. The koban itself also serves as a resting point or temporary headquarters for special agents and the few officers who drive patrol cars. 18. Under current circumstances, Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission would be one venue for accountability, or else local authorities to whom the local police could be held accountable; whether at present much could be expected from the police Internal Affairs Unit is rather doubtful. 19. Corrochano uses the concept both with reference to “the totality of social relationships a given individual is able to mobilize” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1995: 8) and the theoretical perspective that treats social capital as a central resource for economic and political development through collective action (Kliksberg 2000).

Appendix A Research Methodology

Carrying out police research in a country like Mexico raises numerous methodological issues. Some of these pertain to any police research and others to police and policing issues specifically in Mexico. The two collaborators of this book brought together their expertise as police researchers. Niels Uildriks has carried out police research in many different countries, and Nelia Tello Peón has had vast police research experience in Mexico. This enabled us to combine our wide variety of insights and to proceed methodologically as efficiently and soundly as the Mexican context allows. A first decision made was not to ask for formal police permission and collaboration in the research. In Mexico such permission would likely be hard to get, and at best take a considerable time to arrange. Therefore, we instead decided to apply our principle research methods—surveys and individual interviews—by directly seeking their cooperation from the individual officers themselves. For this purpose we deliberately selected female students of the Escuela de Trabajo Social at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; we anticipated that police officers would be more willing to talk to them than to male interviewers.

DEVELOPING THE RESEARCH TOOLS As our principle method we developed a questionnaire and surveyed 1,100 officers. The surveys were administered to the rank and file but also to some lower-rank senior officers immediately in charge of the rank and file (some 10 percent of judicial police, less than 5 percent of preventive police). The 263

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survey was complemented by open interviews of sixty randomly selected officers to add additional understanding and depth to the data provided by the survey. Developing the survey was time-consuming. Four pilot tests were administered for viability and reliability. The initial design format of the survey followed the conventional design for eliciting the views of respondents on a range of relevant topics: a set of statements to which officers could agree or not. The first pilot of agree/disagree statements demonstrated that these would not provide any useful information. Within the Mexican culture closed questions formulated as statements customarily tend to elicit agreement on the part of respondents as their primary reflex. The response to the initial pilot made clear that this was also the case here. We concluded we had to develop a design that would oblige respondents to think before making a choice. We also had to take into account earlier Mexican police research, which had demonstrated that Mexican police tend to be lazy intellectually and have a short attention span in dealing with surveys. This meant we had to limit the length of the survey. Our solution lay in developing a survey in the form of a multiple-choice test that integrated the important elements of the first pilot questionnaire. In doing so, we used previous knowledge of the way officers think, drawing in part on the earlier group interviews with preventive and judicial police carried out by Elena Azaola in 2003 and 2004. This allowed us to quantify already existing insights in a more precise way. Some questions obliged officers to choose two or three alternative responses from a wide range of options, which offered a broad insight into their experiences and evaluations of their work problems and issues we sought to measure. We anticipated this would provide more qualitative insight on various work and policing issues and precise differences in this respect between judicial and preventive police. A second set of multiplechoice questions was tested in a separate pilot. It asked respondents to choose the most pressing problems in their work. The second, third and fourth pilots were held to modify these questions and potential answers so that officers understood them properly. Each pilot revealed a number of changes that had to be made. In particular, we had to limit our ambitions as to the number of topics and details we could probe, most notably those concerning different courses and forms of training. The reason for this was revealing in itself: Officers were unable to remember and were generally unwilling to talk about specific parts of their basic training. Most important, we sought to formulate the questions and answers in a simple way to ensure that they could be understood by all respondents. Inevitably this resulted in some loss of nuance. We consider this, however, inevitable in a Mexican context, and have sought to redress the balance by

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the qualitative interviews. At the last stage of its development Elena Azaola also contributed to restructuring and in “simplifying” the survey. Interviews The principle objective of the interviews was to obtain narrative accounts and personal experiences on the issues involved. This enabled us to gain deeper insight into officers’ working realities. Concerning the interviews, a choice had to be made between a semistructured or more open type of interview. Initially, we developed a more structured format in which the questions broadly followed the format of the survey but adding more why and explanatory types of questions. However, this type of interview, as our pilot indicated, did not generate much additional information, failing to inspire officers to reveal more insights than those emerging from the survey. It was also apparent that a fair number of questions were not properly understood by the officers interviewed in this way. We therefore chose a more open interview, in which a variety of topics could be discussed: How do the police see themselves, and in relation to society? Which aspects of their work do they like and which do they dislike? How do officers relate to their chiefs and to the group they work in? What kind of experiences and knowledge do they have about the Council of Honor and about Justice and about the Internal Affairs Unit? How do officers spend an average day? What are the main differences between police work now and five years ago? What basic and on-the-job training do police receive nowadays? In putting together the survey we included questions that in retrospect should have been formulated differently. Question 21 (which of the following aspects do you consider to have contributed to, or could contribute to the diminution of abuse of power, use of force and corruption within the police?) was designed to gauge the number of officers who believed there to be an overall decrease in human rights violations (specified as police abuse of power, abuse of force, and corruption). In a later version, the question was expanded with “or could contribute.” From a methodological point of view this addition was wrong, creating confusion in the interpretation of the answers. However, in a Mexican context the confusion was in fact less than we feared. From the accompanying comments it was clear that the only thing the rank and file really thought had changed was that senior officers had become somewhat less corrupt. Thus in general the responses concerned the area officers considered of importance to diminish changes in abuse of power in the future. But although interesting in its own right, this information was only of marginal relevance for the purposes of our study.

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Of a different nature was the accidental adoption in our judicial police survey of an old test version intended to assess the factors of most importance in determining an officer’s decision to make an arrest. In the old version, one of the choices was “having proof of a crime or arresting in flagrancia.” As the obviously “socially desirable” answer, it predictably drew all the responses away from the options we suspected were in fact more important reasons influencing arrest decisions, but which put police motivation in a less favorable light. Due to an administrative mix-up this option was still offered in the judicial police survey eventually administered; it drew 79 percent of the response from judicial officers.

SOME OTHER METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES Approaching officers on the street without formal police authorization is an unconventional approach, but it posed no problems. Invariably when approached by female student interviewers and explained the purpose of the research these police did participate. Plainclothes judicial police often driving around in ordinary cars were harder to identify. A considerable number were therefore approached in the buildings of the Public Ministry. Overall, some clear differences in responses between preventive and judicial police were evident. Feeling socially inferior, preventive police would typically treat the female UNAM university students with male gallantry. Their response would characteristically be very open and frank, almost naively so, not only to the more morally neutral but also toward the more sensitive questions, not hesitating to offer a negative opinion about their organization. This greatly contrasted with the responses of judicial police. With a much higher educational background they were characteristically more guarded in their response to the sensitive questions. Such questions tended to draw a more defensive response, and these police would be less inclined to show the young female interviewers their institution in a “bad light.” In contrast to the preventive police, feeling socially superior to the students, their general attitude was also different. They demonstrated a more macho attitude, clearly invoking a sexual element in their interaction with them, for example addressing them with terms as “baby,” “woman,” “darling.” The language used was generally much cruder. There were also other differences in response. Whereas preventive police would generally be more talkative about their frustrations in everyday (police) life, judicial police commonly only spoke in response to the questions they were specifically asked. Interpretation For a proper interpretation of the police response to our survey, we assessed which questions drew more guarded and which less guarded responses. In

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a special session with the interviewers we specifically discussed their experiences and opinion about the police responses to each question. With some questions particularly there was a clear distinction between preventive and judicial police responses. About some issues, the latter appeared more defensive, seeking not to show their institution in a bad light, which we took into account in interpreting and analyzing the survey data by carefully ascertaining the nature of the overall response of the two groups of respondents to each of the questions. The higher-ranking officers (up to sergeant level) all sought to provide a positive image of their organization, their response to the more sensitive questions, in that sense, therefore being interpreted as “nontruthful.” Many questions drew an unreserved immediate answer and this was taken as an unambiguous reflection of the respondent’s point of view. In contrast, in some responses, interviewees presented a more positive view than they probably held. Various clues such as body language and informal remarks were taken as indications on the basis of which this could be inferred; long thinking before giving an answer and—in case of sensitive questions—justifications for a specific answer was interpreted as reflection of nontruthfulness. More weight was therefore ascribed to responses to sensitive questions that elicited a more negative rather than a more optimistic view. The extent of critical opinion expressed would be generally seen as the degree to which interviewees would dare to express such an opinion, with true levels probably lying higher, sometimes significantly so. Sometimes our interpretation of specific survey data was also influenced by other relevant information indirectly obtained from other sources. Geographical Distribution We sought to include a wide variety of neighborhoods in Mexico City, focussing in particular on its periphery, the areas where ordinary police work mostly takes place. The following district areas were selected, where the survey was administered to judicial police (indicated by a J) and/or preventive police (indicated by a P): Colonia Doctores (J); Benito Juarez (J); Ampliación Miguel Hidalgo (J and P); Colonia la Jora (J); Fllavora Obvegón—Avenida Mexico (J and P); San Agustín Ecatepec Edo. de México (J); Ajusto Coyocán and Coyoacán (J and P); Xochomilco (center) (J); Iztapalapa (city center) (J); Delegación Halpan (country club) (P); Col. Napoles (P); Col centro (P).

GROUP INTERVIEWS CARRIED OUT BY ELENA AZAOLA I was allowed to participate as an observer during five lengthy group interviews with judicial police carried by Elena Azaola. These interviews were carried out at the request of Mexico City’s Public Prosecutor to find out

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the experiences and views of the rank and file concerning their work in the Judicial Police, which were significant also for the design of the survey. One of the more remarkable features of these group interviews was the informal atmosphere and sense of camaraderie that almost invariably developed during the two and a half to three hours of group discussions. As a result, these discussions provided a wealth of information that could be used, especially in choosing the answers that respondents could select from each of the questions: The responses offered in the survey were very much based on the views expressed during these group interviews. Whereas the group interviews provided a wealth of information on the differences in experience and views within the Judicial Police, it was also clear that the differences usually involved variations in nuance and emphasis rather than in substantive views. Indeed, the wide conformity of experiences and views among judicial police about their work experiences was perhaps one of the more striking findings of the interviews. Not surprisingly, there was a varying degree of openness on issues raised concerning the more shady aspects of police work, such as corruption and involvement of some of the branch’s members in kidnappings: Some groups were very closed on such matters, others were surprisingly open. Characteristically, the initial response in the interviews was rather sullen, but then gradually changed, the participating officers becoming animated as they developed a sense of solidarity and of broadly shared experiences. Such a quick change in atmosphere was probably due to the unusual opportunity to share and discuss their experiences with genuinely interested outside parties, sharply contrasting with their experiences with the public and an organization pervaded by mistrust and gross indifference. The five group interviews were extensively evaluated immediately afterwards with Elena Azaola, and served as a focal point for analyzing and discussing the state of policing in Mexico DF in general.

Appendix B Survey

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Appendix C Open Interview Protocol

Entrevista a profundidad a los policías. Se trata de profundizar con ellos sobre diversos temas: cómo es ser policía–como se percibe a sí mismo como policía de una sociedad como esta-, que es lo que mas le ha gustado, que es lo que mas le disgusta, como se relacionan con sus jefes y con su grupo de trabajo, si han tenido o han oido de alguna historia de del tribunal de honor y justicia o de asuntos internos. Que es lo que hacen en un día normal de trabajo, que platiquen las últimos experiencias con detenidos. Si tienen mas de 5 años en la policia cuáles son las principales diferencias entre cuando comenzo a trabajar y ahora. Cómo lo capacitaron al principio y cuáles fueron los cursos de actualización que ha tomado, cuando y en donde, porque esos cursos y no otros; son obligatorios, cuestan; qué pasa sino toman cursos de actualización, Para qué les sirven en el trabajo. Qué se tendría que hacer para que de verdad hubiera mas seguridad. La metodología propuesta es obtener una historia de vida del policía, como policía: Antecedentes, familia, amigos, incrementos en el sueldo, problemas, satisfacciones, preparación, trabajo cotidiano, violencia. Se trata de que cuente historias al respecto de los diferentes temas, que primero enuncie y después ponga ejemplos concretos.

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Index

abbreviated process, 122 abuse(s), 20, 30, 31, 82, 87, 99, 100, 101, 120, 121, 123, 164, 169, 170, 202, 203, 211, 213, 215, 230, 238–239, 243, 244, 257, 261; disciplinary system, of the, 214; force, of, 114, 147, 158, 159, 265; human rights (see human rights); physical, 20, 36, 80, 82, 85, 110–112, 172, 181, 183; police (see police); power, of (see power); sexual, 28, 123 access to justice, 6, 101, 258 Acciones de Inconstitutionalidad, 98 accountability, 4, 13–20, 22, 23, 26, 29, 32, 91, 93, 95, 98, 101, 108, 110, 112, 121, 209, 212, 227, 241, 251, 252, 262n18; community, 252; democratic, 15, 16, 241; external,14, 30, 229, 230, 241; horizontal, 13, 14, 286; independent, 120, 164, 212; institutional (see institutional); internal, 15, 30, 108, 110, 114, 168, 210, 241; internal—system(s), 110, 168, 210; mechanisms, 6, 17, 26; police (see police accountability); selective police, 23; social, 13, 14,

93, 241; system(s), 17, 21, 82, 108, 118, 167, 168, 243, 257, 260 accusatorial: principles, 69; (oral) system, 69, 122, 234, 235 AFA (Federal Anti-Kidnapping Agency), 105 AFI (Federal Investigative Agency), 31, 38, 44, 50, 59n26, 63–66, 68, 87n2, 101, 104, 105, 109, 116, 122, 124, 158, 173, 178, 186, 187, 206–208, 239 Aguascalientes, 85, 225 Aguiar, José, 178, 183, 275 Ahnen, Ron, 15 ALDF (Legislative Assemble of the Federal District), 46, 193, 205 Alpert, G., 34 Alverdado Mendoza, Arturo, 76, 190, 192, 195, 218n20 America’s Watch, 128n27 Amnesty International, 33n2, 77, 78, 82, 84, 86, 100, 105, 11, 183 Amparo: Law, 100, 101, 127n8; proceedings, 62; suits, 98 Andvig, Jens Chr., 17 anti-torture: courses, 119, 202; provisions, 237

293

294

Index

arbitrary, 8, 12, 16, 141, 168, 171, 172, 177, 179; arrest, 75, 86, 129n31; conduct/behavior, 6, 175, 241; decisions, 87, 143, 168, 234; detention(s), 74, 80, 86, 234; dismissals, 47; power(s), 78, 236, 240; treatment, 140–142, 244, 246 Arellano Gault, David, 126n3 Argentina, 3–5, 19, 22–24, 26, 27, 218, 227, 228, 253, 258 Arias, Enrique Desmond, viii, 32 Armony, Ariel, 4,5,10, 175, 228, 258 arraigo, 77, 109, 225 arrest, 44, 47, 63, 71, 72, 74–77, 81, 86, 105, 121, 127n15, 139, 140, 148, 153, 178, 184, 186, 187, 190, 191, 194, 198, 220, 222, 223, 225 238, 239; arbitrary (see arbitrary); execute an, 75; house, 77; internal (see internal); judicial—warrant, 74; powers of, 75, 86; procedures, 250; quotas, 190; warrant(s), 74, 75, 78, 99, 184, 222 Arroya, Manuel, 89 Artz, Sigrid, Atenco, 120, 124 authoritarian, xii, 1, 2, 4–7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 19, 23, 87, 140, 172, 193, 227, 217n17, 232; policing, 7, 23; post—era, 9, 10; post—societies, 6; regime(s), 5, 7, 11, 12, 33, 89, 216n1; rule, 3, 29, 90, 94, 101, 214, 216n1, 241; state, 214, 215, 259 authoritarianism, 69, 176, 235 averiguación, 91 Ayres, R., 10 Azaola, Elena, vii, 32, 45, 55, 58n17, 59n30, 108, 109, 114, 121, 128n20, 132, 137, 141–144, 150, 152, 155, 156, 159, 168, 169n8, 178, 179, 181, 188, 196, 197, 200, 251, 262n16 Bailey, John, 3, 11, 34n6, 66, 192, 229, 235 Baja California, 69, 106, 178, 228 bank robberies, 109, 110, 197

Bayley, David H., 3, 4, 12, 25, 198, 203, 248 Bardán, Cuitláhuac, 130n33 Baron, Stephan, 5 Bastelaer, Tierry, 33 Bátiz Vásquez, Bernando, 40 Beato F., 22, 201 Belo Horizonte, 22, 28 Bennett, Dick, viii, 15, 16 Bergman, Marcelo, 72, 75, 83, 84, 95, 128n22, 174, 180, 181, 217n16, 236 Berthier, Hector Castillo, 148, 184, 192, 184, 195, 256 Bogotá, 28–30, 253, 260 Bolivia, 8, 16, 53 bonuses, 95, 155, 160, 214 Borón, Antillo, 7 Bourdieu, Pierre, 262n19 Brazil, 5, 15, 18, 19, 22–24, 26–28, 30, 34n11, 128n25, 218n22, 227, 253, 261n3, 261n9 bribery, 23, 115, 146, 149, 176, 203 bribes, 94, 110, 137, 147, 148, 150, 151, 154, 155, 160, 169n10, 176, 183, 206, 220, 247, 255, 257 Brotherhood, the, 184, 185 Buvinic, Mayra, 28 Caiden, Gerald, E., 16 Calderón, President Felipe, vii, xi, xii, 62, 63, 68, 69, 122–126, 130n33, 177, 186, 222–224, 226, 227, 229, 232, 233, 235, 239, 240 Call, Charles, 23 Cámera de Diputados, 58n20, 181 Cano, Ignacio, 15 Cárdenas, Cuautémoc, 194–196, 204, 205, 218n24 Caribbean, 15, 30 Carpizo, Jorge, 118 cartel(s), 77, 125, 127n17, 167, 168, 172, 184, 185, 206–208, 209n24, 221–224, 226, 239, 240, 252, 259, 260, 261n6, 261n7, 261n8, 262n13; activity, 226; Beltrán Leyva,

Index 208, 218n29; Gulf, 185, 186, 200, 218n24; gunmen, 221; Juárez, 184, 222; killings, 223; Pacific, 208; Sinaola, 187; stranglehold of society, 260; violence (related), 127n17, 222, 223, 225, 226, 229, 260 casa de seguridad, 187 CAT (Committee Against torture), 3, 79–85, 88, 120, 180–182, 201, 216n6, 287, 237–239, 262n10, n11 CDHDF (Human Rights Commission of the Federal District), 114, 120, 121, 129, 180, 213 CFPP (Federal Code of Criminal Procedure), 75, 79, 80, 85, 125 Chabat, Jorge, 66 checks and balances, 14, 87, 209, 236, 240 Chevigny, Paul, 9, 15, 18, 25 Chiapas, 59, 69, 106 Chihuahua, 69, 77, 184, 211, 222 Chile, 2, 3, 5, 24, 26, 28, 216, 253 CIDE (Center for Economic Investigation and Instruction), 180, 234, 236 Cisneros, Jorge, 42 CITCC (Inter-secretarial Commission for Transparency and the Combating of Corruption), 102, 127 citizen(s), 3, 12, 29, 34, 63, 91, 94, 148, 155, 218n21, 231; participation, 27, 29, 92, 196, 206, 212, 251 citizenry, 49, 177, 242, 244 citizenship, 6, 16, 91, 259 Ciudad Juarez, 107, 178, 179, 221, 223, 224, 262 civic/civil, viii, 3, 4, 11, 16, 22, 33, 62, 91–93, 98, 175, 179, 188, 241, 242, 258; Alliance, 90, 91, 95; Culture Law, 162, 179, 220; Engagement, 4, 24, 175, 258; society, 3–11, 14, 23, 24, 53, 90–92, 94, 97, 120, 121, 221, 227, 229–232, 241, 242, 258 CJF (Federal Judiciary Council), 96, 98 CNDH (National Human Rights Commission), 118–121, 129, 157,

295

169, 180, 210, 212, 213, 225, 230, 238 CNSP (National Public Security Council), 102, 103 coercion, 77, 79, 80, 82, 101, 181, 201, 237 Colazingari, Sivia, 17 Colombia, 24, 26, 28, 252, 261 community, 1, 3, 7, 26, 28, 37, 41, 42, 53, 54, 107, 118, 199, 205, 224, 229, 230, 231, 257 complaints, 20, 21, 25, 29, 39, 87n2, 101, 110–114, 118, 120, 121, 125, 129,129n29, 31, 139, 168n1, 170n11, 209, 214, 225, 219, 229, 230, 245, 246, 256; against police, 20, 34, 112, 245; rank and file, by, 209, 213, 214 Concha, Hugo, 99, 126n4 conciliation process, 212 confession(s), 9, 68, 78–82, 86, 100, 179, 181, 201, 203, 237, 238, 262n11; coercion or duress, 86, 237; driven, 78, 81, 239 Congress, 67, 68, 74, 75, 77, 88n9, 95, 96, 99, 102, 103, 119, 121, 123–126, 129n28, 147, 177, 193, 205, 212, 218n21, n25, 226, 234, 238, 249 Constitution, 14, 58, 63, 67, 73–76, 79, 81–83, 86, 94, 95, 98, 99, 101, 122, 123, 205, 224, 233, 237, 238 constitutional, 66, 73, 94, 97, 98, 126, 218n25; amendments, 66, 87, 98, 118, 136; Bill 2004, 218n25; changes, 69, 86; powers, 85, 97; reforms, xiii, 83, 90, 93–96, 98, 119, 123, 125, 126n5, 223; rights, 82, 98, 100 Consulta Mitofsky, 192 contextualization process, 182 control, xii, 2, 6, 13, 15, 17, 18, 24, 30, 77, 90, 92, 94, 95, 99, 102, 117, 121, 127n14, 123, 143, 151, 152, 154, 174, 189, 194,195, 204, 205, 209, 214, 248; accountability— system, 82, 110; crime, 196–198,

296

Index

228, 232, 251; democratic, 120, 167; dictatorial, 7; external, 15, 90, 11, 118, 158, 209, 227, 230; institutional, xiii, , 90, 112, 132, 133, 160, 161, 171, 189, 209, 243; institutionalized, 115, 118, 131; internal, xiii, 18, 102, 104, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 126, 151, 152, 159, 168, 173, 211–213; police, 146, 159, 166; police (mis)conduct, of, 112, 168; police, over the, 14, 18, 120, 124; convictions, 20, 71, 78, 119, 185, 203, 208 cooperation, 5, 10, 12, 13, 28, 65, 100, 129, 239, 253, 263 Córdova, Edgar, 42 Cornelius, Wayne A., 11, 34, 192, 229, 235 Corona, Norma, 129n27 Corrective (disciplinary) punishment, 109, 114 Corrochano, David, 1, 258, 259, 262n19 corruption, xiii, xiv, 1, 12, 14, 16, 17, 23, 28, 30, 31, 34n8, 35, 53, 54, 66, 70, 72– 74, 83, 91–94, 102–106, 109, 113, 115, 124, 127n10, 132– 134, 143, 146–159, 167, 169n7, n10, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, 183– 185, 190, 184, 198, 200, 205, 206– 211, 213, 215, 216n2, n3, n4, n11, 215, 219, 225, 230, 236–248, 251, 255, 265; anti—agency/campaigns/ drives/initiatives/operations/ systems, 17, 212, 213, 213, 219; culture of, 241, 243; entrepreneurial character of, 17, 251; institutional/ institutionalized, 121, 151, 153, 178, 216, 216n2, 231, 242, 245, 246, 251; new, 17, 167; police, 133, 146, 147, 149, 151m 154, 155, 183, 184, 194, 199, 205, 211, 225, 230, 231, 246, 253, 257; political, 127n10, 176; rampant, 150, 153 corrupting influences, 167, 168, 225, 226, 236, 239, 240, 242, 252, 255, 257, 259, 260

Costa Rica, viii, 2, 30, 216n4 Council of Honor and Justice, 112, 113, 139, 159, 160, 173, 211, 214, 244, 245, 265 Covarrubias and Associates, 83 CPPDF (Federal District Criminal Procedure Code), 76, 79 credibility, 44, 48, 91, 92, 129 crime, xii, 3, 7–11, 25, 26, 29, 53, 58n22, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76, 79, 80, 109, 122, 124, 164, 172, 178, 183, 186, 190, 192–197, 206, 218n20221, 226, 231, 233, 251, 253, 261, 266; control, 119, 122, 228, 232; control strategy, 196–198, 251; drug-related, 62, 252; fighting, 3, 12, 19, 99, 205; high—areas, 27, 108, 253; increase in/explosion of/rising/spiralling/upsurge in, 3, 8, 99, 102, 192, 193, 195, 242; investigating/investigation, 105, 158, 218, 257; levels, 10, 175, 195, 217n17, 233; monitoring, 28, 253; prevention/preventing, 24, 25, 48, 102–104, 144, 196, 232; problem, 177,197, 231; rate(s), 27, 30, 78, 109, 192, 195, 217n17, 219; reduce/ reducing/reduction, 21, 27, 195, 196, 205, 206, 215, 219; reported, 70, 73, 191, 186; responses to, 62, 253; street, 62, 197; tackle, 190, 196, 198; violent, 192, 217n17, 228, 233 criminal, 14, 20, 62, 68, 70, 84, 103, 116, 134, 185, 193, 194, 257; act, 76, 195; activity/activities, 124, 125, 195, 207, 208, 226, 243; allegations, 110, 211; case(s), 62, 73, 78, 130, 144, 153, 190, 236; Chamber of the Supreme Court, 88n11; charges, 34, 47, 69, 71; code(s), 62, 63, 75–77, 79, 80, 85, 86, 113, 125; element, 121, 166, 195, 255; institutions, xi, 24; investigations, 25, 70, 77, 79, 80, 82, 105, 111, 119, 153, 172, 188, 201, 202, 207, 238, 249; justice, viii, 11, 12, 21, 87, 125, 169,

Index 171, 204, 215, 235, 243; networks, 145, 206; offense(s), 62, 63, 74, 109, 113, 213; organizations, 64, 184, 211; practices, 8, 146, 172; procedures, 74, 79, 82, 86, 100, 110, 122, 179, 181, 204, 234; proceedings, 58n20, 66, 69, 71, 74, 81–83, 119, 122, 234; process, 70, 83, 84, 99, 100, 179; reform(s), xi, xii, xii, 2, 3, 11, 22–24, 57, 90, 227, 229, 234, 252; statistics, 103, 219; suspects, 82, 110, 168, 181, 226, 237; system(s), v, vii, xiii, 3, 6, 14, 19, 20–22, 30, 61, 63, 65, 69, 72, 78, 83, 85, 87, 94, 100, 112, 118, 121–123, 147, 167, 168, 174, 193– 195, 204, 215, 220, 221, 233, 234, 240, 242, 243 criminality xiv, 34, 54, 84, 193, 194 Crisp, Brian F., 209 Cuauhtémoc, 89 Cuevas, José Luis Figueroa, 43–46, 50, 58n18, 65, 66 curriculum, 117, 122, 250 Dammert, Lucía, 3 danger, 28, 58, 125, 134 Davis, Diana, viii, 2, 24, 29, 92, 126n2, 147, 150, 192–194, 199, 206, 207, 209, 217, 218, 218n26, 228, 231, 256, 257 DEA, 105, 106, 222 decentralization, 2, 93, 95, 258, 260 DEDH (Human Rights Executive Directorate), 112 defense, 68, 70–72, 83, 84, 88, 130, 234; counsel, 72, 75, 79, 82, 84; lawyers, 69, 72, 83, 135; Public— Act (LFDP), 130 delegación, 37, 199 delito flagrante, 63, 65, 158 Del Villareal, Oscar Espinosa, 193, 194 Del Villareal, Samuel, 194, 195 democracy, xii, xiii, 1–8, 10, 17, 19, 21, 24, 34, 89, 90–92, 94, 175, 194, 214, 216n1, 217n17, 259; “— in Latin America: towards a Citizen’s

297

Democracy”, 216n1; ideologies of, 12, 189; illiberal, 6; Latin American Commission on Drugs and, 261n3; National Accord for, 90; Platform of Civic Organizations for Democracy, 92; toward, 89, 97; quality of, xi, 228; uncivil, 6, 7 democratic xi, xii, 1, 2, 4, 7–9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 25, 26, 29, 34, 54, 73, 90, 91, 99, 167, 209, 216n1, 227, 228, 230, 235, 242, 245, 249, 259, 260; accountability, 15, 241; conditions, 16, 146, 242; control, 120, 167; culture, 173, 259; development, xi, 5, 89, 96, 126, 258; evolution, 92, 214; governance, 4, 5, 17, 33, 232, 234, 241, 258; institutions, 6, 10, 11, 14, 17, 24, 32, 108, 228, 259; order, 1, 17, 168; police (force/ organization), 4, 24, 126, 227, 243, 247, 250; practices, 26, 69, 172; principles, xi, xii, 3, 6, 13, 19, 22, 87, 168, 215, 246, 249; process, 2, 96, 101, 168; public life, 90, 91; regime, 15, 259; rule(s), 93, 94, 259; society/societies, 12, 13, 15, 16, 33, 90, 245, 257; state, 214, 215, 259; transition, xi, 6, 11, 12, 17, 93, 188, 191, 230, 240, 242, 260; values, 2, 7, 91, 140, 167, 242, 260 democratization, viii, xi, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 33, 34n6, 90, 92, 94, 95, 143, 172, 174, 193, 204, 209, 217n17, 220; police, of, 22, 188; policing, of, 4, 9; political, 3, 4, 90; process, 2, 4, 8, 17, 18, 22, 26, 87, 93, 95, 99, 101, 106, 167, 168, 172, 177, 193, 204, 204, 220, 258, 259; project, v, xiii, 32, 89 desafuero, 58n20, 191 desencanto, 7 detention, 51, 63, 69, 74, 76, 77, 80, 82, 83, 100, 109, 110, 117, 125, 180, 181, 188, 238; arbitrary, 80, 86; pre-trial detention, 82, 181; preventive, 68, 77; trial, 111, 180 Diamond, Larry, 7, 15, 173

298

Index

Diaz-Cayeros, Alberto, 95 dictatorial, xi, 7 Dillon, Samuel, 95, 129, 194, 195 disappearances, 1, 100, 184, 222 disciplinary, 244; punishment, 114, 139; system(s), 138, 209, 214, 243, 244 discipline, 26, 64, 140, 152, 209 discretion/discretionary, 61, 72, 78, 88n6, 125, 138, 143, 179, 211, 213, 241, 244–247; powers, 18, 74, 75, 86, 152, 236, 246 distrust/mistrust, v, 13, 24, 29, 35, 53, 55, 167, 171–175, 177, 187, 199, 212, 215, 218, 225, 228, 229, 232, 254, 256, 268 Doig, Alan, 16, 175 Domingo, Pilar, 6 drug(s), 17, 57n10, 94, 106, 110, 123, 127n13, 156, 183, 184, 193, 205, 221, 224, 226, 261n5l; anti—addiction program/unit(s)/ operations/squads, 41, 105, 106, 200, 223, 232; measures, 97, 109; money, 195, 208, 209, 240; related crime/criminality, 62, 194, 252, 256; related violence/killings/ murders, 123, 124 220, 222, 224; ring(s), 205, 218n27; tests/testing, 108, 109, 177, 219; traffickers, 73, 106, 127, 147, 184, 194, 226, 234; trafficking, 28, 39, 49, 62, 65, 67, 68, 81, 104–106, 184, 206, 218, 222, 239; war, 128, 221, 261 due process, 7, 9, 14, 89, 125, 127n16, 234, 240; guarantees, 237, 240; rights, 9, 123, 229, 233, 240; Dunham, R., 34n8 Ebrard, Marcelo, 36, 42, 44–48, 50, 52, 54. 89, 109, 114, 115, 128n20, 186, 190 education, 7, 14, 19, 28, 116, 117, 142, 161, 200, 203, 216n2, 241, 250, 259 educational, 133; background, 31, 142, 143, 149, 150, 160, 167, 208, 244;

criteria/level(s)/standards, 133, 143, 202, 209 El Paso, 221, 223 El Salvador, 16, 26, 124 Elizondo, Héctor Ortiz, 175 EOPSAC (Study of Public Opinion and Participation), 17n18, 218n23 EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army), 40–42, 51, 58n11 equitable, 90, 114, 122 ethics, 66, 116, 117, 162, 202 Evaluation and Certification Program, 103 evidence, 12, 20, 41, 68–79, 81–86, 99, 107, 103n35, 111, 157, 172, 180, 181, 183, 186, 194, 201, 203, 225, 233, 234, 237, 238, 244; prosecution/prosecutor’s, 83, 84, 130 examinations, 116, 182; medical, 82, 110, 111, 172, 181–183 execution(s), 8, 33, 80, 217n13, 222, 224 favors, 139, 148, 150, 152, 155, 176 FBI, 64, 105, 216n10, 218n28 FEADS (Federal special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Health), 105, 207–208 Federal, 58n22, 64, 130; Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Torture (LFpPST), 79, 82, 86, 110, 182; Organic Public Security Law, 113; Public Security Secretariat (SSP), 36, 38, 39, 43, 45–47, 58n15, n3, 65, 75, 87, 103, 104, 109n13, 113, 147, 161, 200, 213, 227 federalism, 16, 95 Field, John, 5 firearms instruction/training, 115, 117, 162 Fix Feirro, Héctor, 72, 73, 98 flagrante delito, 63, 65, 71, 76, 158 force, use of, 57, 115 forensic doctors/physicians, 82, 110, 111, 180, 181–183, 216n5 Fox, Jonathon, 91

Index Fox, President Vicente, viii, xi, xii, 1, 14, 43, 45–48, 52, 54, 58n20, 62, 65, 85, 90, 93, 100, 102, 103, 105, 122, 158, 168, 191, 204, 206–209, 220, 222, 227, 229, 234, 242, 249 fragmentation/fragmented, 2, 56, 173, 190, 195, 202, 223, 258 Franco-Barrios, Adrián, 126n3 Freeman, Laurie, 65, 105, 106, 108, 127n15, 128, 153, 187 Frühling, Hugo, 2, 3, 25–30, 113, 253, 258 Fuentes Díaz, Antonio, 8 Fukuyama, Francis, 10 Fundación Mexicana para la Salud, 192 Fyfe, James, 15, 16 Garces, Nario, 38 General: Directorate of Internal Affairs, 113; Law of the National System of Public Security (LGSNSP), 102, 103 Giuliani, Rudolph, 190, 196, 219, 231 Glebbeek, Marie-Louise, 22 Godoy, Angelina Snodgrass, 6–9, 12, 53, 259 Goldstein, Daniel M., 8, 32, 53 Goldstein, H., 34 Góngora, Genaro David, 96 González Ruiz, Samuel, 193 González-Fabre, R, 176 government, 1–4, 13, 19, 23, 24, 26, 52, 54, 56, 58, 67, 92, 93, 95, 98, 102, 107, 108, 118, 124, 126n6, 128, 208, 224–227, 232, 247; action, 175, 213; agency/agencies, 21, 27, 118, 196; effectiveness, 11, 26; efforts, 146, 147; federal, 47–49, 51, 54, 62, 96, 98, 100, 124, 146, 240; local, 54, 232; initiatives, 24, 99, 111; institutions, 5, 212, 241; interests of, 126n6; Mexico City, 54, 92, 103, 190, 199; Statute of—and Organic Law of the Federal District, 62; Statute of the Federal District, 58; Survey(s), 56, 226; reforms, 180; workers, 128n22 GPG (Giuliani Partners Group), 219

299

Grayson, George W., 224 Great Britain, 21, 197 Grootaert, Christian, 33n1 Guadalajara, 120, 183 Guatemala, 3, 8, 9, 24, 26, 28, 53 Guerrero, Manuel Alejandro, 2 Guerrero Amparán, Juan Pablo, 126n3 Guerrero, State of, 69, 106, 118 Guerrero state police, 128n27 Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona, 71, 72, 74, 78, 84, 85, 97, 152, 179, 193, 217, 228, 236, 262n14 Gutiérrez, Alejandro, 44, 45, 50, 184, 218n27 Gutiérrez, Vivo J., 176 Haiti, 15, 24, 26 Harriott, Anthony, 17, 18, 23, 25, 29, 251 Heisler, Michele, 82, 111, 180, 181, 236 Hernández, Gloria, 38, 41 Hernandéz, Rosalva Aida, 175 Hernandéz, Vicente, 206, 209 Hewlett foundation/MORI poll 1998, 216 hierarchical, 22, 26, 29, 49, 106, 138; relations(hips), 132, 138, 139, 142, 152, 202, 214, 244; (social) structure, 11, 175 Hidalgo, 59 High Court of Judges (TJS), 73 Hinton, Mercedes, 3, 18, 19, 23, 34n11, 261n9 Hooper, John, 176 horizontal networks of association, 11, 90 HRW (Human Rights Watch), 72, 86, 88n4, 99, 120, 121, 128n25, 178, 212, 261n6 Huggins, Martha, viii, 8, 12, 18, 19, 188, 189, 251 human rights, v, vii, viii, xi–xiii, 1, 2, 4, 9, 12, 15, 19, 20, 21, 28, 32, 33, 49, 62, 80, 86, 87, 89, 99, 100, 101, 105, 112, 116–118, 119–126, 133, 136, 160, 162, 164–166, 172, 179,

300

Index

180, 202–204, 209, 212–214, 216, 219, 233, 234, 237, 244–247, 250, 260, 262n11; 10 Basic—Standards for Law Enforcement Officials, 33n2; abuses, xiii, 3, 26, 32, 69, 85, 86, 93, 100, 105, 121, 136, 157, 170, 208, 234, 254, 257; adherence to, 160, 162, 232, 251, 259; agenda, 122, 231; attitudes about/towards, 163, 165; -based policing, 35, 250; commission(s), 101, 112, 118–121, 164, 165, 169, 180, 209, 230; course(s), 117, 128n25, 162, 163; Executive Directorate (DEDH), 112; Federal District— Commission (CDHDF), 55, 84, 114, 119, 121, 125, 157, 165, 180, 213, 245, 262n18; issue(s), 99, 101, 108, 120, 121, 124, 129n31, 133, 157, 230, 231, 250, 258, 202; Juarez—Center (PRODH), 225; National—Commission (CNDH), xiii, 118, 119–121, 129n28, 136, 157, 164, 165, 180, 212, 213, 238; National—Program (PNDH), 100; organizations, 99, 125; oriented policing, 57, 133, 247; Physicians for, 216; principles, xiv, 3, 9, 22, 26, 87, 168, 172, 173, 246, 249; protect/protection, 86, 118; standards, 3, 19, 20, 21, 30, 33n2, 100, 231, 234, 243, 249; UN Office of the High Commissioner for, 100; UN Special Rapporteur for, 180; value(s), 120, 140, 165, 167, 168, 214, 230, 243, 246, 247, 258; violations/violate, 6, 9, 15, 19, 20, 32, 64, 75, 80, 99, 101, 108, 118, 120, 121, 128n25, 129n31, 146, 147, 174, 213, 229, 244, 245, 265 Husted, Bryan W., 176 ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), 33n7 ICESI (Citizens’ Institute for the Study of Insecurity), 71, 217, 230 IFE (Federal Electoral Institute), 130

Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 104, 106, 115, 207 INCD (National Institute to Combat Drugs), 105 impunity, 1, 3, 6, 19–21, 74, 75, 101, 108, 121, 128n22, n27, 151, 153, 171, 185, 188, 196, 199, 205, 206, 209, 231, 241, 253, 257 incommunicado, 75, 80, 234, 238 incompetence, 144, 153, 242, 243 India, 174 independent/independence, 4, 5, 11, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 34, 49, 55, 67– 69, 72, 73, 91, 95, 96–98, 100, 101, 111, 112, 121, 125, 126n6, 129, 138, 142, 164, 167, 182, 183, 188, 212, 219, 224, 234, 244, 247, 249, 261n6, n9 inefficiency, 54, 91, 244 inequality, 5, 12, 91, 233, 258, 259 informal, xi, 5, 15, 17, 19, 21, 72, 92, 138, 145, 153, 158, 185, 203, 204, 209, 214, 215, 236, 247, 248, 252, 255, 258, 259; connections, 203, 215; economy, 179, 205; local alarm system, 36, 41; networks, 136, 146, 175, 184, 204; police reality, 146, 176; police-public interaction/ relations, 131, 253, 254; realities, 19, 71, 204, 205, 215, 228, 231, 236, 259, 260; relations(hips), 145, 241, 243 information system, 102, 103 infractions, 113, 179, 209, 257 inquisitorial, 69, 87, 235; system, 68– 70, 72, 122, 234, 235 insecurity, xii, xiv, 1, 7–9, 14, 27, 53, 54, 71, 85, 102, 171, 174, 191–193, 196–198, 205, 206, 217, 218, 228, 230, 233, 259, 262, 275 institutional, ix, 1, 2, 32, 53, 54, 90, 91, 95, 120, 126, 127n13, 129, 143, 164, 143, 151, 173, 175, 190, 200, 205, 214, 226, 228, 230, 235, 240, 241, 243, 256; accountability, 14, 231; approach, 176, 216n3; arrangement(s), 16, 112, 213;

Index change(s), 28, 29, 205, 213, 231, 252; control(s), xiii, xiv, 14, 69, 112, 132, 133, 145, 146, 148, 159, 171, 173, 204, 209, 242; corruption, 216, 23; external—control, 112, 115, 118; external—police accountability, 230; internal—controls, 108, 115, 132, 173; level, xi, xii, 3, 87, 90, 93, 140, 148, 172, 190, 229, 245, 246; mistrust/distrust, 8, 53, 171, 173, 174, 225; police internal control mechanisms, 126, 132, 160, 161, 189, 243; practice(s), 17, 119, 167, 235, 240; reality/realities, xiii, 31, 110, 174, 229; reform(s), 94, 167, 172, 207, 220, 229, 231, 235, 236, 258, 260; systems, 21, 30, 69, 242, 259; trust, 10, 16, 34n5, 225, 229, 252, 260 institutions, xi, xii, 3, 5, 6, 10, 15–19, 21, 24, 27, 29, 32, 55, 56, 57, 66, 91, 95, 100, 102, 104, 108, 118, 127n10, 148, 164, 169, 173–175, 206212, 214, 215, 230, 246, 260; control, 94, 230; criminal justice, xi, 24; democratic, 10, 11, 14, 17, 24, 32, 108, 228, 259; enforcement, 168, 192; Mexican/Mexico’s, 171, 175, 230; security, 102, 171; state, xii, 11, 14, 16, 22, 23, 51, 53, 55, 120, 125, 147, 146, 173, 175, 177, 213, 230, 232 Instituto de Formación, 200 INSYDE (Institute for Security and Democracy), viii, 230 integrity: institutional, 9, 22, 29, 231, 232, 242; lack of, 199, 211, 220, 229; non-, 88n12, 210, 211, 215, 252, 256; tests, 247 Inter American Commission on, 178, 180 internal, xii, 3, 12, 14, 18, 29, 42, 54, 55, 67, 69, 90, 93, 97, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 126, 132, 137, 142, 143, 148, 168, 190, 199, 200, 211, 212, 215, 223, 229, 245, 249; Affairs, 89, 113, 159, 160, 210, 211,

301

214, 219; Affairs Unit, 89, 112–114, 159, 211, 219, 262n18; chaos, 35, 136; control(s), 5, 104, 108, 110, 113–115, 152, 158, 159, 173, 210, 227, 231; control mechanisms, xiii, 16, 102, 112, 114, 126, 159, 212, 243; control system(s), 18, 114; disciplinary system, 102, 244; institutional(ized) arrangements/ controls/mechanisms, 14, 16, 115, 122, 211, 213; police control(s), 86, 114, 152, 159; police opposition, 23, 29 International: Commission of Jurists, 70, 71, 74, 84; Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 117n13 interrogation(s): 8, 73, 77–79, 82, 83, 203, 237, 238; technique, 249, 250 intimidation, 72, 77, 213 investigate/investigation, 21, 40, 41, 43, 59, 46–48, 50, 52, 57n10, 65, 67, 69, 70, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 85, 89, 92, 100, 102, 112, 114, 117, 119, 147, 190, 194, 207, 208, 225, 237, 238, 245, 249; allegations, 118, 182, 183, 261n6; allegations police (abuse), 112, 117, 118; criminal/criminal cases/crimes, 63, 64, 70, 77, 117, 129, 153, 188, 190, 202, 207, 218n21; complaint(s), of, 111, 120; drugs, 39, 40; PGR, 46, 47; preliminary, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 83, 108; techniques, 25, 117; torture, of, 82 isolation, social/societal of the police, 132, 135, 137, 145, 146, 167, 255 IRCT (International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims), 111, 216n7 ITFP (Police Technical Training Institute), 116, 161 Istanbul Protocol, 182, 183 Iztapalapa, 127n18, 142, 267 Jamaica, viii, 3, 18, 23, 30, 251 Joint Operation, 221, 222

302

Index

Judicatura/judiciary, 4, 62, 68, 71, 73, 84, 85, 96–99, 101, 126, 126n5, 130n33, 173, 203, 225, 227, 233; Federal—Council (CJF), 96 judicial, 24, 68, 74, 75, 85, 98, 101, 125, 172, 194, 216n5; abuse (see abuse); checks, 74, 80; civil service, 98; corruption (see corruption); independence, 69, 95, 98, 126n6; institutions, 5, 22, 24, 94, 227; investigation, 81, 104, 239; order, 86, 175; police, viii, 32, 59n25, 61, 64, 74, 76, 77, 79–81, 85, 104, 112, 126, 132, 135–159, 161, 162, 165, 167–169, 178, 180, 181, 183, 185, 187, 200, 202, 237, 239, 244, 247–249, 258, 263, 264, 266, 267; reform(s), vii, xi, 22, 24, 64, 74–76, 78, 87, 90, 97–99, 123, 125, 126, 227, 235; system, vii, 6, 11, 62, 96, 100, 127n7, 174, 207, 235, 240; verdict(s), 70, 177 jurisdiction, 44, 62–64, 65, 98, 123, 170n11, 182, 200 Kahn, Tulio, 29 Keefer, Philip, 5, 11, 16, 175 kidnapping(s), 35, 39, 53, 54, 62, 81, 106, 109, 172, 185–188, 192, 195, 197, 198, 217n13, n16, 226, 229, 239, 256, 268; police participation/ involvement in, 185, 188, 198 Klesner, Joseph, 173 Klitgaard, Robert, 216n3 Knack, Stephan, 5, 11, 16, 175 koban, 256, 262n17 Koonings, Kees, viii, 7,10 Kossick, Robert, 59n29, 85, 88n12, 93, 96, 99, 126n6, 161, 262n14 Krishna, Anirudh, 5, 33 Kruyt, Dirk, 7, 228 La Porta, Rafael, 176 La Rioja, 22 Lagos, Martha, 177 Lawson, Chappel, xi, 23, 93

Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 69, 70, 75, 81, 84, 88n11, 127n8, 157, 169, 181, 182, 237 legal, 2, 4, 14, 18, 25, 33, 33n2, 48, 65, 67, 68, 71, 75, 83, 91, 98, 100, 104, 107, 113, 118, 123, 129n32, 135, 139, 203, 207, 208, 220, 233, 234, 241, 257, 262n14; council, 82, 83; defense/defender, 83, 130; proceedings, 77, 135, 217n15, 239; profession(s), 72, 161; reform(s), 1, 62, 64, 73, 85, 204, 220, 229, 231; Reform Bill, 62; rules, 49, 236; system, 7, 93, 99, 126, 174, 216n1 legality, 14, 73, 74, 78, 80, 90, 129, 259; detention and treatment of detainees, 74, 80; principle of, 105, 202 Legislative Assembly of the Federal District, 46 legitimacy, 2, 11, 12, 17, 18, 53, 87, 90, 92, 93, 107, 118, 129n32, 232, 242, 251, 255; institutional/institutions, xii, 53, 242; lack of, 53, 260; police, xiv, 30, 92, 135, 171, 172, 177, 214; public, lack of, 53, 260; public state institutions, xiii, 53; regime, 11, 16; state, 209, 232 Lemgruber, Julita, 15 LFcDO (Federal Law against Organized Crime), 64 LFDP (Federal Public Defenders Law), 83, 130 LFGF (Law of the Federal Office of the Prosecutor General), 129n32 LGSNSP (General law for the National Public Security System), 102, 103 lie detector(s), 177; tests, 194, 219, 224 López-Aylló, Sergio, 56, 126n5 López-de-Salines, F.R., 11 López-Montiel, Angel Gustavo, 185 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 1, 45–50, 54, 58, 190, 191, 196, 199, 205, 206

Index López Portillo, Ernesto, viii, 103, 225, 241 López Portillo, President José, 93, 184, 255 Los Pedregales, 174 LOSDF (Organic Law for the Secretariat of the Federal District), 66 loyalty/loyalties, 133, 138, 139, 142, 146, 168, 176, 185, 194, 205, 144 LPFP (Federal Preventive Police Law), 65 LSPDF (Public Security Law of the Federal District), 112, 139, 244 Lula, Luis Ignacio, President of Brazil, 23 Luna, García, 124, 147, 223, 224, 227 Luzani, Telma, 176, 177 Lynching(s), v, viii, xii, xiii, 8, 35, 37–57, 58n16, 59n30, n31, 66, 103, 134, 135, 144, 171, 189, 191, 196, 197 Macaulay, Fiona, 15 Macedo de la Concha, General Rafael, 47, 105, 106, 207 Madraza, Federal Attorney General, Jorge, 105, 127n13, 202 Madrid, de la, President Miguel, 93 Magaloni, Beatriz, 71, 74, 78, 84, 97, 179, 217, 228, 236, 240–243 Magaloni, Laura, 75, 99, 126, 192 Mainwaring, S., 14, 15, 209 Manero, Alejandro Gertz, 194, 195 Manin, B., 13 mano dura, 7–9, 14, 24, 30 Maravall, J.M., 13, Martinez de Murguía, Beatriz, 150 McCaffrey, Barry R., 240 media, 5, 13, 14, 42, 43, 49, 52, 59n1, n25, 89, 91–93, 140, 150, 152, 178, 185, 186–191, 197, 222, 242, 242, 250, 259 medical, 20, 77, 119, 196, 226, 232; certificates, 181, 182; evaluations, 111; examination(s), 82, 110, 111, 172, 181–183; experts, 111, 181– 183; report(s), 111, 216n7

303

Medina Mora, Attorney General Eduardo, 208 Medina, Arnoldo Ruedo, 224 Mena, Fátima, 37, 46 de Mesquita Neto, Paulo, 5, 6, 22–24, 227 methodological issues, 133, 263 Mexico City, vii, xi–xvi, 1, 8, 30–32, 35, 40–42, 46, 48, 50, 54, 56, 57n6, 58n20, n24, n31, 62, 64, 66, 67, 75, 76, 80, 90, 92, 103, 107–109, 112, 115, 117, 120, 125, 127n18, 129n31, 131, 132, 136, 142, 146, 147, 156, 161, 168, 169, 172, 174, 176, 179, 180, 182, 184–186, 188, 190–199, 203–205, 208, 215, 217n14, n16, n18, 218n20, n23, 219, 222, 223, 225, 228, 231, 232, 248, 251–253, 255, 256, 267 Mexico State, 62, 63, 69, 71,180, 217n16, 239 Meyer, Maureen, 222 Micha, Adela, 44 Michoacán, 187, 222, 224, 261n7 militarization (of policing), 105, 193, 194, 221, 222, 224 military, 1–3, 6, 22, 65, 66, 103, 105, 107, 121, 124, 127n15, n17, 172, 186, 193, 194, 205, 206, 207n14, 217n14, 218n24, 221–225, 239, 257, 260, 261n4, n6; operations, 22, 223, 225; para-, 218n24; personnel, 65, 66, 209, 224, 225 Minas Gerais, 22 Mireles, Victor, 36 mistrust/distrust, v, 10, 35, 53, 171, 174, 175, 177, 212, 215, 218, 218n21232, 256, 258; generalized/ pervasive, 13, 24, 175; hinders human rights progress, 212; institutional (see institutional); institutions, within, 174, 199; interpersonal, 8, 53; police, of/ towards (see police); public, 171, 177, 229, 232, 254; society, in/ societal, 55, 173, 175, 215

304

Index

Mitchell, Kenneth Edward, 126n3 modernize/modernization, 3, 4, 87, 106, 124, 217n14; criminal justice system/justice apparatus, 122, 215, 229, 235; police, the, 1, 113, 172, 251; Public Administration— Program, 99 Moloeznik, Marcos Pablo, 62, 66, 103, 127n11, 177, 251 Mongo, Raul, 36, 38, 42 monitoring, 19, 28, 30, 91, 92, 96, 97, 111, 115, 253 Montaño, Mario, 191, 217n15 Moralez Ibáñez, Marisela, 208 Morelos, 108, 147, 180 Moreno, Alejandro, 176 Moreno, Erika, 209 Moreno Nalasco, Edgar, 36, 37, 43, 57n2, n4 Morris, Stepen D.,viii, 2, 16, 17, 34n9, 91, 92, 93–95, 97–99, 126, 126n1, n3, n4, n5, 127n9, n10, 167, 176, 177, 216n3, 216n4, 240 Musumeci, Leonarda, 15 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 192 Narayan, D., 33n1 National: Accord for Democracy, 90; Development Plan, 102; Federation of Lawyers, 127; Human Rights Commission (See CNDH); Human Rights Program (PNDH), 100; Police System, 122; Program for Public Safety, 94; Program to Obtain Justice, 91; Public Security Council (CNSP), 102, 103, 221; Public Security System (SNSP), 65, 66, 94, 102, 211 Nef, Jorge, 176 Negrete, Layda, 75 Neild, R., 3, 6, 9, 24, 250 network(s), 3, 11, 23, 34n5175, 145, 230, 253; criminal/illegal/mafiastyle, 145, 146, 206; informal (see informal) New York City, 16, 196, 219

Nicaragua, 2, 16 NGO(s) (non-governmental organization(s), 13, 27, 92, 93, 120; -government collaboration, 92 non-integrity, 88n12, 211, 256; institutionalised/structural, 210, 215, 252 norm(s), xi, 6, 5, 6, 20, 26, 48, 55, 69, 92, 96, 140, 142, 175, 210, 245 NWO (Dutch Scientific Research Council), 30 Nuevo Lareda, 108, 185 Nuevo León, n29 Oaxaca, 106, 121, 123, 124, 230 obedience, 26, 29, 138, 142, 244 O’Donnell, G., 14, 209 Olson, Erik L., 64, 65 Olvera Rivera, Alberto J., 90, 92, 258 one-party rule, xi, 2, 94, 189, 242, 243 operational indepence, 20, 112, 249 oral, 69, 96; accusatorial—system, 122, 125, 255; system, 78, 234, 235; trials, 68, 125, 126, 233, 234, 236 Orduño Cruz, Roberto, 221 organizational, 16, 26, 29, 54, 55, 91, 132, 137, 145, 196. 203, 204, 215, 229, 235, 246, 250, 256; changes, 14, 19, 30, 105; characteristics/ aspects, xiv, 52, 137, 173, 204; context(s), xiii, xiv, 27, 202–204; policy, 16, 109, 110; pressures, 133, 203; reforms, 1, 62, 101, 167, 206, 258; (work) environment, 132, 133, 145, 160 organized crime, 1, 62, 64, 65, 67, 74, 76, 106, 121, 124, 125, 186, 193, 207, 208, 223, 237, 239, 240, 241, 254, 256, 259; Deputy Attorney General’s Office Against (SCDO), 106; Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigation into (SIEDO), 106, 184, 207; gang elite enforces (Zetas), 207; Law Against (LFcDO), 64; Law to Fight—1999, 105; police involvement in, 184, 186, 222; related killings/violence,

Index 77, 252; suspect(s), 74, 76; Unit (UCCO), 105; Unit (UEDO), 64 Ortega, Joel, 48, 189 Otero-Principle, 73 PAN (National Action Party), 1, 46–49, 58n20, 191, 204–206, 220, 259 Pansters, Wil, viii, 148, 184, 192, 194, 195, 256 Paraguay, 16 Parás, Pablo, 5, 10, 34n4, n5 participation, 4, 7, 10, 11, 16, 26, 70, 103, 162, 206, 252, 253; citizens, 27, 29, 92, 196, 206, 251, 253; civic/civil, 4, 232, 258; democratic/ popular, 90, 259; police, 172, 188, 208; popular, 90 participatory programs, 27 Pásara, Luis, 83 patronage, 139, 141, 152, 215: Peñaloza, Pedro, 201 person of trust, 122 personalized/personalizing policing, 25, 30, 253–257 Peru, 24, 26, 53, 174 Peruzotti, Enrique, 13–15, 90 PFP (Federal Preventive Police), 35–41, 43–46, 48–50, 55, 57n1, 58n12, 64–66, 94, 104, 122, 124, 207 PGDF (Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Federal District), 67, 68, 117, 152 PGE (Offices of the Public Prosecutor of the States), 68, 183, 192 PGR (Office of the Attorney General of the Republic), 38–41, 43, 44, 46–48, 57n4, 58n5, 64, 67, 68, 103–106, 111, 122, 29n32, 152, 183, 185, 186, 200, 207, 208, 249 Pharr, Susan, 16 PHR (Physicians for Human Rights), 216n5 Piccato, Pablo, 184 Piñeyro, José Luis, 193 PJDF (Judicial Police of the Federal District), 67 PJE (State Judicial Police), 184, 22

305

PJF (Federal Judicial Police), 64, 104, 206, 207 Platform of Civic Organizations for Democracy, 92 plática, 185 Plattner, M., 15 police, 18, 20, 29, 30, 50, 52, 56, 112, 131, 133, 136, 199, 237, 246, 252, 253; accountability, 21, 32, 110, 230; abuse, xi, 1, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 25, 30, 31, 61, 79, 81, 90, 101, 120, 132, 136, 143, 147, 151, 158, 166, 168, 207, 210, 213, 230, 254, 255, 266; attitudes, 133, 202; Auxiliary, 64, 66, 87n3, 115, 116; Bank and Industrial (PBI) , 66, 116; Banking and Industrial, 64; conduct, 168, 231, 243; control, 16, 121, 152, 159, 166, 230; corruption, 14, 16, 31, 34n8, 53, 133, 146–149, 151, 154–156, 183, 184, 194, 199, 205, 211, 225, 230, 231, 246, 253; culture, 15, 29, 144, 115, 137, 163; curriculum, 117, 122, 250; decentralization of, 2, 260; effectiveness, 21, 101, 102, 124, 165, 172; efficiency, 21, 24, 26, 68, 129; function, 104, 200, 214; hierarchies, 18, 23, 137; identity, 115, 187, 200, 250; independence/ independent, 5, 20, 22, 117, 249; ineffectiveness, 5, 107, 177, 198, 243; integrity, 133, 207, 210, 248, 255; internal—opposition, 23, 29; judicial, 24, 31, 32, 37, 38, 42, 43, 47, 48, 50, 58, 59, 61, 63, 66–68, 73, 76–86, 87n2, 101, 104, 105, 112, 113, 115–118, 126, 132, 134–165, 167, 169n4, n9, n10, 178–185, 187, 194, 195, 200–203, 206, 207, 210, 222, 237, 239, 244, 247–249, 256, 263, 264, 266, 268; kidnappings, 35, 53, 185, 186–188, 198, 268; legitimacy, xiv, 30, 92, 135, 171, 177, 215, 231, 232, 254, 255; maltreatment/misconduct/ misbehavior/excesses, 15, 21, 99,

306

Index

112, 124, 136; military, 22, 65; opposition, 23, 29, 257; preventive, 26, 31, 32, 35, 38–40, 42, 43, 48, 50, 51, 55, 61, 63–67, 76, 81, 87n2, n3, 94, 101, 103, 104, 108, 110, 112, 114–117, 128n20, 131–165, 168n1, 169n8, n9, n10, 177, 178, 180, 181, 183–185, 187, 191, 199– 201, 203, 219, 231, 246–250, 256, 264, 266, 267; professionalizing, 17, 101, 129, 152; recruitment, 115, 116; reform, viii, xii, 2, 9, 13–15, 18, 19, 22–24, 26, 29, 33, 34n11, 56, 76, 89, 101, 146, 207, 226, 227–229, 231, 242, 243, 249, 251, 259, 269n9; register, 75, 103; responsibility, 49, 52; torture, 30, 120, 121, 80; training, xiv, 94, 103, 115–117, 143, 160–162, 173, 201– 203, 246, 248, 250, 260; uniforms, 61, 114, 115, 137, 150, 213, 219; violence (excessive), 8, 15, 18, 25, 45, 124, 290 police-public, 29, 52, 56, 112, 252; confrontations, 56, 118, 141; informal relations, 253, 254; interaction(s)/contacts, 13, 25, 108, 131, 198, 199, 237, 254; reform (see reform); relations, 29, 131, 134, 135, 167, 168n1, 174, 202, 232, 251, 254 Policía: Adulta Major, 107, 127n17; Auxiliar, 116; de Barrio, 107, 108, 199; Communitaria, 108; Federal, new, 69; Preventiva (see preventive police); de Proximidad, 199; de Vigilancia, 199 policing, v, vii, xiii, 2, 4, 8, 12, 13, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 30, 56, 57, 104, 189, 193, 196, 202, 203, 206, 218n20, 242, 248, 249, 254, 256, 260; authoritarian/coercive, 7, 23, 27; authoritarian era of, 10; basic/elementary—skills, 16, 202; community, xiv, 22, 25–30, 106–108, 127, 172, 179, 198, 199, 252, 253; crisis (of), iv, xiii, 55,

171, 197, 232, 260; democratic/ democratisation/democratize, 3, 4, 9, 13, 17, 19, 35, 57, 167, 172; effective/good/proper, 9, 18, 160; everyday, 55, 133, 249; human rights-based/oriented, 18, 35, 57, 133; issues, xiii, 230, 263, 264; Mexican/Mexico’s, v, xiii, 1, 12, 35, 57, 62, 132, 148, 171, 172, 189, 196, 215, 218n21233, 243, 247, 250, 252, 256; Mexico City, xiii, xiv, 8, 193, 199, 253; militarization of (see militarization); model(s), 255, 260; orientation (power/ power), 22, 258; ordinary preventive, 199; political, 12, 188, 189; political/politicised, 33, 171, 189, 191, 197, professional/professionalized, 11, 251; quality of, 100, 140, 173, 201, 229, 232, 247, 252; reality/realities, 35, 132, 143, 173; reform/restructuring of/new practices, 230, 257; style(s)/ methods/mode of/nature of/ philosophy, 3, 7, 15, 18, 25, 26, 29, 30, 197–199, 229, 232, 233, 241, 252, 254–256; system(s), viii, xiii, 61, 66, 232; traditional, 25, 27; zero-tolerance, 196, 218n21 Portes, Alejandro, 33n1 Portillo, President José López, 93 post-revolutionary state building, 217n14 power(s), 2, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 23, 33n1, 49, 55, 58, 61, 63, 64, 69, 70, 78, 85, 92, 95–97, 99, 112, 118, 119, 123, 125, 126, 129, 138, 142, 146, 147, 152, 170, 177, 183, 189, 193, 204–206, 208, 216n3, 217n14, 223, 228, 230, 244, 251, 252, 257, 259; abuse of, xiii, 14, 228, 129, 132, 133, 143, 146, 147, 151, 157, 158, 160, 167, 168, 173, 209, 212, 230, 248; discretionary, 18, 74, 86, 152, 246; elites, 133, 214, 215; investigators, expanded, 170; judicial/judiciary/

Index judge, 85, 98, 125, 126n5, 182, 237; networks (see networks); oriented/orientation, 144, 172, 189, 230, 258; police, 2, 4, 63, 76, 77, 88, 124, 135, 202; presidential/ presidents, 58, 94, 95, 123, 100; Preventive Police, 63, 219; public prosecutor(s), 75, 76, 78, 86, 182; structure(s), 193, 246, 261n7; Supreme Court, 73, 85, 97–99, 126 PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party), 47–49, 92, 113, 125, 128n27, 191, 194, 196, 204, 205, 220 presidencialismo, 95 press, 16, 91, 92, 121, 186 Preston, Julia, 95, 129n27, 194, 195 presumption innocence, 68, 77, 80, 122, 125, 233, 235, 237 procedural, 84, 98, 105, 116, 168; changes, 203, 218n25; guarantees, 112, 140; immediacy, 81, 86, 237 professional, 105, 116, 142, 159, 169, 215; identity, 140, 200; raise— levels, 160; standards, 20, 96, 122, 152; training, 116, 117, 161, 200 professionalism, 28, 92, 103, 128n25, 130n33, 160, 200, 250 professionalization/professionalizing, 16–18, 19, 101, 140, 229, 247, 251, 252; police, 18, 19, 31, 103, 140, 249, 251 promotion, 1, 118, 139, 143, 168, 200, 203, 215, 246, 247, 249; system(s), 30, 247 prosecution, 12, 20, 48, 66, 67, 73, 84, 99, 102, 105, 129, 148, 153, 207, 225, 236; crimes, of, 67, 73, 190, 249; evidence, 83, 84; system, 67, 87, 125, 129, 234; prosecutors, 14, 17, 68, 70, 73–75, 77, 78, 81, 83–86, 101, 112, 148, 152, 194, 207–209, 225, 233–238, 261n6; Office(s), 42, 71–73, 78, 152, 153, 178, 181, 183, 201, 216, 236; powers of, 75, 78 protection money, 148, 183, 184 Przeworski, Adam, 7, 13

307

PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), 1, 46, 49, 58n20, 90, 91–93, 95, 96, 101, 118, 125, 128, 129n27, 136, 146, 188, 189, 193, 194, 205, 210, 220, 235; dominance/dominant/ domination/hegemony/supremacy 92, 95, 97, 113, 146, 150, 191, 205, 259; opposition, 123, 205 PRODH (Miguel Augustín Pro-Juarez Human Rights Center), 225 psychological profiling, 177 public, 5, 91, 92, 137; administration, 94, 102, 106, 176; Administration Modernization Program, 183; agenda, 91, 92; attitudes, 134, 135, 176, 177; confidence, 6, 102, 134, 135, 171, 177, 232; consultations, 91, 216n5; defenders, 82–84, 130; insecurity, xii, 1, 14, 171, 192, 205, 206; institutions, 10, 16, 177; Prosecutor’s Office, 32, 43, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74–77, 79–82, 84, 86, 89, 93, 100, 102, 109–113, 117, 119, 122, 148, 149, 153, 166, 178, 180, 181, 183, 190, 201, 236–238, 249; safety, 2, 53, 94, 190, 198; trust, 2, 10, 29, 91, 106, 173, 215, 232, 233, 252, 254 public security, xiii, xiv, xvi, 36, 53, 58n22, 63, 65, 102, 123, 124, 144, 162, 172, 191, 193, 197, 199, 202, 218n18, 221, 229, 231, 232, 234, 251, 253–255, 257, 258; DF—Law (LSPDF), 112, 113, 142, 244; DF— Program, 117; General Law of the National—System (LGSNSP), 102, 103, 177, 211; Integral—Program, 247; Law, 65, 112, 113, 142, 177, 244; National—Council (CNSP), 102, 103; Program, 117; Secretariat of the Federal District (SSP DF) , 36, 40, 42–47, 50, 51, 59, 66, 67, 87n3, 89, 103, 108–110, 112–114, 116, 121, 128n20, n23, 24, 161, 169n9, 185, 189–191, 196, 200, 209, 210, 213; Secretary of, 64; (Federal) Security Law, 65, 113, 177

308

Index

punishment, 8, 12, 20, 33, 55, 79, 82, 107, 109, 110, 143, 152, 171, 214, 243–245 Putman, Robert, 4, 10, 11, 33n1 PVEM (Mexico’s Green Party), 46, 235 qualifications, 116, 143, 203, 246 Quesado, Charo, 28 quotas, 150, 190 Ramírez Mandujano, Noé, 208, 216n30 Ravelo, Ricardo, 147, 208 Reames, Benjamín, 63, 65, 67, 87n1, 103, 147, 150 Rebollo, General Jesús Gutiérrez, 105, 218n27 recruitment, 18, 102, 115–117, 229; standards, 104, 160 redress, 20, 21, 241 reform, v, vii, xiv, 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 22–24, 26, 31, 31n11, 34n11, 62, 85, 87, 93, 99, 101, 106, 112, 111, 121, 122, 126n5, n7, 195, 204–206, 207, 209, 212, 215, 227–231, 233–235, 237, 239, 243, 246, 247, 251, 256, 259; agenda, (of), xii, 13, 18, 231, 241, 242; blueprint for, 23, 227; Calderón’s— package, 34n11; constitutional, 118, 119, 126; criminal justice, 11, 23, 227; grand-design, 227–229; institutionally (oriented), 207, 220, 235; judicial, 24, 96–99, 227; Judicial—Bill, 102, 122, 124, 129n32, 218n25; justice, 2, 11, 34n6, 123, 132; platform, 132, 204; police, xii, 2, 13–15, 18, 19, 22–24, 29, 33, 34n11, 56, 76, 89, 101, 124, 146, 172, 189, 194, 205, 207, 226– 229, 231, 243, 251, 261n9; process, 23, 24, 227, 231, 235; relevant, 12, 31, 90, 146, 231, 241; state, 2, 93; top-down initiatives/approach, 23, 235, 256; U.S. drug war, of, 261n3 Regino, Gabriel, 40, 42, 45, 47, 158n18 reorganization, 103, 105, 127n13, 260 Rio de Janeiro, 30

Rio Grande do Sul, 128 Ríos de Cázaras, Alejandra, 6, 229 Rodríguez, Guillén, 56 Rodríguez, Olga R., 127n17 Roniger, Luis, 30, 173, 254 Rose-Ackerman, Susan, 17 Rowland, Allison, 107 rule, 1, 3, 18, 75, 86, 95, 97, 99, 146, 205; 10-for-1, 197; authoritarian, 89, 90, 95, 214, 216n1, 241; democratic, xii, 29, 89, 90, 93, 94, 214, 259; one-party (see -one party), 2, 94, 172, 189, 242; PRI, 92, 94, 95, 101, 172 rule of law, xi, xii, xiv, 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 22, 24, 33n2, 56, 64, 89–91, 100–108, 112, 114, 125, 147, 167, 168, 171–173, 175, 177, 188, 189, 196, 204, 213–215, 217n14, 230, 231, 241–245, 249–252, 259, 260; culture, 204, 231; institutionally internalised/ internalizing, 213, 241; lack of (institutionally internalised), 8, 213; principles, 6, 89, 168, 220, 236, 250; undermining the, 2, 5, 175; values, 231, 234, 241 Ruthenburg, Meg, 206 Salinas, Enrique, 186 Salinas, President Carlos, 93, 95, 118, 128, 129n27 Salvador de Atenco, 124 San José, 30 Sánchez González, José Juan, 126n3 sanction(s), 16, 17, 73, 101, 105, 175, 179, 195, 210, 244, 248, 251, 257 Sandoval Quappe, Ricardo, 30 São Paulo, 28, 29, 128n25 Schafer, Joseph A., 27, 29, 30 Schatz, Sarah, 99, 126n4 Schedler, A, 15 Schmidt, Samuel, 69 Schuller, Tom, 5 screening function, 31, 103 search, 74, 102, 208: SECODAM (Ministry of Comptrollership and

Index Administrative Development), 94, 102, 127n9, 212 secuestros express, 187, 188 security, iv, x11, xiii, 1, 7–9, 23, 28, 48, 55, 56, 63, 96, 101–103, 108, 115, 117, 123–125, 171, 172, 178, 193, 196, 198. 200, 219, 222, 227, 231, 232, 233, 247, 252, 256; achieve/ improve/increase/provide, 3, 7, 9, 12, 13, 22, 24, 27, 28, 53, 145, 172, 189, 193, 196, 205, 206, 223, 233, 254–256, 260; forces, 118, 195, 221; issues, 190, 192, 198; local, 29, 59n25, 255; matters, 102, 254; national—doctrines, 2; National— Secretary, 34, 261n9; personal, xii, 6, 9, 61, 102, 257, 259; personalized/personalizing, 256, 257; private—firms, 26, 66, 172, 211, 251, 256; Roadway—Division, 67; situation, 172, 193; system, 103, 122, 257; selection, 96, 97, 117, 162, 209, 252; procedure(s), 104, 106 Seligson, Mitchel A., 16, 176 Shirk, David A., 6, 229 SIEDO (Deputy Attorney General’s Office for special Investigation into Organized Crime), 106, 184, 207, 208, 218n29, 222 Sierra Guzman, Jorge Louis, 185 silent revolution, 96 Silva, Carlos, 150, 151 SIUs (Sensitive Investigation Units), 105, 127n15 Skolnick, Jerome, 15, 16 Smulovitz, Catalina, 13–15, 22, 26, 27, 29, 90, 253 Soares, Luis Eduardo, 34n10, 261n9 social, 6, 8, 90, 91, 145, 253; control, 8, 12, 189; cooperation (see cooperation); disintegration, 56, 175, 259; movements, 13, 91, 93, 230; polarization, 5, 12, 175; structure, 175, 258 social capital, 4, 5, 8, 10, 33n1, 34n4, 176, 258, 259, 262n19

309

society/societies, xi, 3–7, 10–12, 14, 15, 19, 22, 24, 30, 52, 53, 56, 61, 96, 111, 118, 126, 131, 132, 135, 147, 154, 164, 171, 173, 174–176, 177, 189, 197, 209, 229, 232, 241, 244, 258–260, 265; Argentine, 228; civil, 3–10, 14, 23, 24, 53, 90–92, 97, 120, 121, 221, 227, 229, 230–232, 242, 258; democratic, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 33, 90, 245; Mexican, xiv, 35, 53, 55, 56, 61, 84, 121, 139, 165, 173–175, 201, 215, 216n2, 232, 241, 250, 257–259; transition, in, 29, 241; unequal, 12, 175; Western, 20, 21 solidarity, 54, 55, 258, 268 sorteos, 150 Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, 72, 73, 100, 101 Stanley, Ruth, 15 state, 2, 6–8, 9, 11, 17, 18, 20, 22, 26, 32n6, 53, 55, 62, 68, 72, 73, 77, 84, 87n1, 89, 96, 99, 103, 107, 108, 118, 125, 126, 128, 129n20, 146, 171, 172, 175, 182, 184, 201, 214, 217n14, 222, 225, 228, 232, 235, 236, 242, 261n7; actions, 3, 14, 100; actors, 3, 6, 8, 177; agents/agencies, 1, 14, 15, 235, 253; apparatus, 26, 93, 94, 252, 253; authoritarian, 214, 215, 259; authority/authorities, 65, 100, 119, 121, 123, 129n29, 221; bureaucracies, 10, 206; classneutral, 12, 19, 189; democratic, 214, 215, 259; federal, 62, 63; forensic doctors/physicians, 82, 11; governors, 99, 103, 124; institutions, xii, 11, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23, 51, 53, 55, 120, 164, 173, 175, 177, 190, 192, 213, 230, 232, 254; Judicial Police (PJE), 50, 63, 222; judiciary/judiciaries/judges 62, 73, 99; jurisdiction, 62, 63, 68, 170; legitimacy (see legitimacy); level(s) 62, 63, 69, 72, 76, 78, 95,

310

Index

96, 102, 112, 116, 119, 126, 190, 212, 227, 228, 234, 240, 245, 249; police (forces), 63, 64, 66, 80, 107, 117, 118, 222, 128n27, 136, 178, 239; post-revolutionary building, 217n14; public prosecutor(s), 76, 120; Public Prosecutors Offices, 63, 111; structure(s), 22, 95 Staton, Jeffrey K., 98 Stevenson, Mark, 178, 226, 261n8 Stokes, S., 13 Stone, Christopher E., 23, 227 summary executions, 8, 39n2 Supreme Court (SCJN), 66, 73, 77, 80, 88n11, 97, 98, 126n5, 126n6 suspect, 20, 53, 70, 71, 73–77, 79, 80, 82–84, 86, 99, 110, 148, 166, 179, 183. 188, 202, 238 Tamaulipas Human Rights Commission, 262n11 teaching methods, 161 Tello Peón, Nelia, viii, 31, 51, 56, 116, 135, 148, 158, 174, 192 Territorial Coordinates, 196 test(s), 96, 109, 123, 177, 247, 262, 266, 269; lie-detector, 194, 219; security (see security) Tijuana, 106, 123, 221 Tláhuac, xii, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42–48, 50–58, 59n27, n30, n31, 66, 134, 135, 144, 171, 189, 191, 196, 197, 200, 259 Torres, Jorge, 40, 41, 58n11, 58n12 torture, 1, 9, 14, 31, 33n2, 72, 77, 79– 82, 86, 89, 99, 111, 112, 119, 120, 121, 129n30, 136, 138, 146, 157, 172, 173, 178–181, 186, 201, 204, 216n5, n6, , 218n27, 225, 236–239, 250, 258, 262n11; accusations/ allegations of, 104, 119, 183, 238; alleged, 81, 111, 180, 182, 237; anti-—courses/provisions, 119, 202, 237; cases, 81, 111, 237, 238; Committee Against—(CAT), 74, 75, 79, 81, 82, 180, 181, 216n6, 237; complaints of/complaining, 120,

157, 181; confession/informationdriven, 81, 239; confessions, result of, 181, 237; Convention Against —, 33n16, 239; evidence, 181–183; examination of, 111, 182; Federal Law for the Prevention and Punishment of (see Federal); International Rehabilitation Council for—Victims, 111, 216n7; police (see police); reduce/reduction/ decrease/diminution, 157, 168, 203, 230, 238; reported, 180, 181; study, 111, 181; suspected, 111, 180; victims of, 120, 181, 182 training, 14, 15, 18, 19, 28–31, 64, 68, 85, 104, 106, 107, 115–117, 128n25, 133, 249, 161–163, 167, 173, 181, 197, 201–204, 250, 257, 260: additional, 111, 162, 249; courses, 28, 96, 108, 116, 139, 163, 168, 201–203, 249; deficits/ inadequate, 29, 202; firearms, 115, 117, 162; fragmentation/ fragmented, 173, 202; human rights, 167, 203; lack of, 85, 116, 160–162, 216; on-the-job, 115–117, 161–163, 200, 204, 249, 250; physical, 107, 160, 162, 249; police, xiv, 94, 102, 103, 115, 116, 143, 160, 161, 201–203, 213, 250, 257, 260; Police Technical—Institute (ITPF), 116, 161, 246; Police—Institute, 117; professional, 161, 200; program(s), 103, 111, 248, 249; public security, on, 202; quality of, 162, 203; recruit, 115–117, 163, 201; relevance of, 161, 163, 202, 249 transition, 2, 6, 12, 15, 19, 33, 93, 126, 172, 232; democratic, xi, 1, 8, 11, 17, 93, 188, 191, 230, 242, 260; from authoritarian/repressive to democratic regimes/rule, 15, 19, 29, 94; policing, in, 15, 167 transitional process, 236, 258 transparency/transparent, 1, 91, 93, 102, 122, 212, 246; absence of/lacking/lack of, 70, 212 261;

Index increase of, 93, 122; International, 147, 174 trust, xiii, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13, 22, 29, 30, 82, 151, 173, 175, 215, 231, 232, 237, 240, 254, 257; -building/ creation/development/engendering/ formation of, 11, 21, 22, 29, 231; climate of, 28, 258; focalized, 30, 173, 254; institutional, 10, 16, 34n5, 225, 252, 260; interpersonal, 16, 176; lack of/absence of, 11, 22, 138, 176; levels of, 10, 11, 22, 175; personal/ personalized, 254, 255; public, 2, 10, 22, 29, 91, 106, 173, 215, 232, 233, 252, 254; social, 4, 10, 11, 175, 229, 253, 258 TSJ (High Court of Justice), 73 Tulchin, Joseph S., 3, 7 U.S.: Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms and Explosives, 226; Department of State Mexico Report 2004 on Human Rights Practices, 216n7, 216n9 UCCO (Organized Crime Unit), 105 UEDO (Special Anti-Organized Crime Unit), 64, 105 Ugalde, Antonio López, 129, 209, 213, 245 Uildriks, Niels, 3, 4, 15, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 34n7, n10, 115, 212, 241, 263 UN rapporteur for Human Rights, 180 UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico), ix, 51, 116, 214, 266, 267 unequal societies, 12, 175, 259 Ungar, Mark, viii, 6, 9, 22, 23, 127n16, 228 United States, 15, 25, 33n3, 64, 123, 198, 218n24, 225, 226, 240 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 33

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unrule of law, xii, 241 urgent cases, 63, 74–76, 86 Uribe, Victor Garcia, 178 USAID (United States Agency for International Development), 126 Van Reenen, viii, 4, 15, 19, 20, 25, 34n7, 212, 241 Varenik, Robert, viii, 9, 212 Vargas, Jorge, 108, 109 Vasconcelos, José Louis Santiago, 208 Venezuela, 2, 26, 53 victims, 10, 38, 48, 50, 68, 73, 111, 120, 121, 148, 150, 180, 181, 182, 185, 212, 222, 223, 234, 261n6 Vilas, Carlos, 8, 50, 51 Villa Nueva, 28 Villareal, Mayor Oscar Espinosa, 193, 194 Villareal, Samuel, 194, 195 violence, xiv, 6–8, 10, 15, 38, 52, 82, 102, 127, 135, 140, 164, 168, 181, 184, 191, 193, 195, 215, 217n19, 221, 223, 228, 237, 239, 241, 249, 253, 259; cartel (related) (see cartel); drug(related), 220, 222, 224, 252; escalated/explosion of/ high levels of/increasing/rising, 7, 10, 11, 168, 223, 224, 260; organized crime, 241, 252; Waddington, P.A.J. 27; Ward, Heather, 4, 22–24, 201, 227; Welna, C., 15; Wintrobe, Ronald, 241; WOLA, 15; Woolcock, Michael, 33 Zaniartu, Mario, 176 Zedillo, President Ernesto, 65, 88n13, 94, 96–99, 102, 150, 222 zero tolerance, 8, 196, 218n21 Zepeda Lecuona, Guillermo, 71, 72, 74, 78, 84, 85, 97, 152, 179, 193, 217n17, 228, 236, 262n14 Zeta enforcers,186, 200, 207

About the Author

Niels Uildriks is senior researcher and consultant at the Institute for Safety, Security, and Crisis Management (COT) in The Hague, The Netherlands. He has worked at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Utrecht University, and the Police Academy of the Netherlands. He has published on police-public violence, torture, accountability, complaints procedures, human rights, and police and judicial reform in different countries, specifically in Eastern Europe. In 2009 he published Policing Insecurity: Police Reform, Security, and Human Rights in Latin America. Nelia Tello Peón is social worker at the National University of Mexico and has a degree in social work and semiotics. She has been director at the National School of Social Work of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is an expert regarding policing in Mexico and has carried out a large number of studies on policing and violence in Mexico, particularly on police-public relations.

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