Randal C. Archibold: Familiar Flaws Seen in Mexico's New Elite Police Force Randal C. Archibold - The New York Times
go to original August 23, 2014

The heavily armed officers have been trained by the Mexican army while its senior officers have been instructed by police forces in the US, Colombia, Chile and Spain. (Reuters)

MEXICO CITY — More than two years after first floating it during his presidential campaign as a signature effort to control rampant violence, President Enrique Peña Nieto on Friday swore in a new gendarmerie for Mexico, an offshoot of the federal police aimed at quelling outbreaks of violent crime.

But even before the new division hits the streets, criminologists have panned the idea as akin to prescribing “aspirin for a cancer,” in the words of one, and as continuing a tradition of reinventing forces without attacking the fundamental, chronic problem of weak local and state police institutions.

Mexican officials, outlining the force this week before its inauguration Friday, said it would comprise about 5,000 new recruits and function as a division of the 36,000-officer federal police. It will be an elite civil force, not a military one, drawn from well-educated young recruits with no prior police experience as well as veteran police commanders.

Officials said the force had been intensely screened and was expected to be a “new model” of corruption-free policing.

Although it carries the name gendarmerie, to distinguish it from the normal police, the force has characteristics similar to a SWAT team, with specially trained officers reacting quickly to hot spots.

Monte Alejandro Rubido García, the national security commissioner, said the force would be deployed particularly to areas where criminals have caused economic distress or threatened commerce or tourism, which some analysts outside the government took as a nod to Mr. Peña Nieto’s effort to promote business and investment.

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