The Need for a Professional Police Force to End Mexico’s Drug War Disaster Jorge Javier Romero Vadillo - SinEmbargo
go to original April 28, 2017

It's been over ten years since Mexico launched its war on drugs. What impact has it had on the country's cartels? (TRT World)

The legislative bills regarding internal security are a scheme to regulate the presence of the armed forces in public security, contrary to the 2008 constitutional reform which clearly established the civilian character of these functions. The discussion ignited by these initiatives has reopened the central debate around the police model necessary to ensure security and reduce violence in a constitutional democracy, such as the one many of us hope to create in Mexico.

The repetition of the need to regulate the role of the armed forces in tasks that are not suitable to them either constitutionally or in a democratic State under the rule of law is the most convincing proof of the failure of public policies implemented since the creation of the National Security Ssystem two decades ago. Throughout these twenty years, security in Mexico has increasingly deteriorated rather than improved. It especially worsened after the ill-fated declaration of Calderón's war, which was decided upon without a solid evaluation of the circumstances, including an exit strategy, nor has it been seriously evaluated regarding its consequences, and yet it has been followed by the current government, inconsistent with their initial offers to change strategy.

Insistence by government officials and their representatives in the legislature that laws be approved to regulate the use of the army and navy in the fight against crime means recognizing the abandonment of their initial promises. At the beginning of his administration, Peña Nieto proposed the replacement of the armed forces in these tasks by a well-trained civil gendarmerie dependent upon federal police, along with a prevention strategy. As the months have passed, resources aimed at preventing violence and crime were used in the only way PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution] governments (not to mention the rest of the parties) know how: doling them out to clients [as reward for their political support]. At the same time, the project of the gendarmerie was abandoned [Peña Nieto announced it would have 40,000 members. It has recruited 4,000] and the process of strengthening the federal police was interrupted.

In light of the obvious failures, blame was transferred to the municipal governments. In line with other centralizing initiatives, in December 2014, Peña sent an initiative for a single police command [incorporating municipal police into the state police] which faced strong resistance and was replaced in the Senate by a proposal of mixed control. Neither of the two had good technical support or took into account the experience of good police practices developed in other countries of the world. That is where we are currently trapped: in a discussion that will not lead anywhere, while security increasingly deteriorates and the Mexican State proves itself unable to complete some of its essential duties, such as reducing violence and ensuring people's lives and property.

For a long time, in the face of security disasters in many regions of the country, it has become customary for federal, state, and local governments to blame one another for repeated failures. Now, with the notable exception of Javier Corral from Chihuahua, PAN [National Action Party] governors come out calling for the approval of an internal security legislation with which they could wash their hands of their responsibilities and seek military intervention again and again to make up for their inability to complete their constitutional duties.

Rather than cry out for a legal framework to unload duties onto the armed forces that are not appropriate to them, the serious discussion should focus on the police design necessary to solve the problem of security in the long run, which should include a strong regulation of the use of State force.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices | Spanish original

Related: Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs (Cato Institute)

Related: Mexico Drug War: Increased Cartel Violence in Tamaulipas Shows Mexico Government Strategy Not Working (Mexico Voices)

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico - on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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