Law and Order? Policing in Mexico City and Kingston, Jamaica
Chevigny, Paul
Throughout the Americas, the official rhetoric of the "war on crime" sounds the same. By calling for the law to get out of the way to let the police do their job, it invites the use of deadly...
...In recently democratized countries like Argentina and Brazil, which continue to grapple with the legacy of military dictatorships that imposed harsh security measures and supposedly maintained "order," the appeal of anticrime rhetoric is even greater...
...In a famous incident in 1992, journalhave begun to ist Rafael Luviano protest official Delgado lost an eye from a beating when he refused abuse and to pay a bribe to the police corruption...
...506 (November, 1989), p. 64...
...In Argentina, President Carlos M6nem did just that in 1994, when he tried to whip up support for increased security measures, even though the problem of crime did not seem to be growing...
...Police action also says that the system can be vicious if it is defied...
...As he attempted to leave the station, Locke was shot in the spine and paralyzed...
...Although police work is often directed against the poor, abusive police action in Mexico City seems to be just as intimidating to the middle class, because it is intimately linked to corruption as well as to political repression...
...When I asked human rights activists in Mexico City what they thought was the most pervasive problem in the criminal-justice system, the typical answer was, "false charges, framing suspects...
...Louise Shelley, Policing Soviet Society (London: Routledge Press, 1996...
...Although the use of violence in Mexico City is widespread, it is less arbitrary than in Kingston, and tends to be governed by complex political concerns...
...Never punctilious about civil liberties during the colonial period, successive postindependence governments came to rely on force to repress threats from below, whether of political militancy or of crime...
...In 1966, the island's chief newspaper, The Gleaner, called on the government to "unfetter the police" to deal with these criminals...
...Law and Order...
...The response of the security VOL XXX, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1996 25REPORT ON CRIME AND IMPUNITY forces to a prolonged period of apparent impotence in the face of rising political violence," says Jamaica specialist Terry Lacey, "was to direct their own frustrations and aggression against the more amorphous, not necessarily political, 'criminal element...
...The sort of ill-controlled violence we see in Jamaica (and in other Latin American cities like Sao Paulo)-thinly disguised as legally justified force-is characteristic of policing in weak democracies...
...One well-known case is the 1991 killing of Sidney Francis, a supervisor at a glass company...
...This suggests that deeper social and political forces, common to Jamaica and other countries in Latin America, produce uncontrolled police violence...
...In part, the difference lies in the government's ability to "keep the peace"-that is, to hold a monopoly of legitimate force...
...Officials refuse to testify against each other, and have been known to intimidate witnesses and even judges in proceedings against other officials...
...Say police themselves have begun to protest...
...Government officials and police officers alike complain that defendants have too many rights, that prison sentences do not really punish, that the courts are a "revolving door," that the police have to "crack down" on crime...
...The impunity of the judicial police is so entrenched that when they are accused of a crime, they contrive to disappear the witnesses, or even to disappear themselves, only to return, sometimes with a new name, elsewhere in Mexico...
...Criticism by international human rights groups takes on added significance...
...Macropolis (Mexico City), October 29, 1992, pp...
...When this is the case, as in Mexico, it tends to discourage arbitrary violence by the police as well as by everyone else...
...this co-optation was often brokered by corruption, either through money or personal influence...
...18.As quoted in Amnesty International, Mexico: Torture with Impunity (Amnesty International AMR 41/04/91), p. 42...
...criminals-is good policy...
...The worst abuses occur when the police, impatient with the workings of the courts, simply dispose of susPOLICE AND CIVILIAN KILLINGS IN JAMAICA, 1983-1993 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 Civilians killed by police Civilians wounded by police Civilians killed by civilians 196 288 210 178 205 181 162 148 178 145 120 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 98 71 96 81 85 n/a 424 484 434 449 442 414 439 542 561 629 n/a Police killed 7 20 9 15 8 n/a 13 11 10 9 n/a Police wounded n/a n/a 22 n/a n/a n/a 24 23 8 16 n/a Source: All figures provided by the Jamaican government, with the exception of civilians killed by police between 1983-1985, which the Jamaica Council for Human Rights culled from reports in the Kingston daily, The Gleaner...
...The judicial police routinely manufacture cases for corrupt purposes or in order to be able to say that the criminal-justice system is "getting results...
...cities...
...The chief of the patrol police proudly told me in 1993 that crime was less serious in Mexico City than it is in many U.S...
...The central government tried to co-opt and absorb power less through the use of violence than by offering positions in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its local administrations...
...16 It is the judicial police, which is organized separately from the patrol police, that is responsible for the most serious acts of violence...
...It is perhaps even more alluring in countries beleaguered by external debt and increasing economic misery, where solutions seem to be cut off...
...1 2 Only since the mid-1980s have opposition groups emerged, including stronger, more vocal human rights organizations, which have begun to challenge state-sponsored violence...
...This happened to Fernando Alpuing Ozuna and his wife when they sought the aid of a public prosecutor after falling victim to a fraud scheme...
...Once the abuse of force has been tolerated by police superiors and other officials, it cements into a nearly impenetrable system of impunity...
...Until recently, governments made no concerted effort "When it comes to handling crime, in this country I don't expect any policeman, when he handles a criminal, to recite any Beatitudes to him...
...Violent police behavior also persists-even in the face of demands for social and political change-because the mechanisms for holding police accountable are woefully inadequate...
...Following one of the Hirst report's recommendations, the government created in 1993 an agency independent of the police that has the power to investigate alleged police abuse and subpoena evidence...
...As in other places in the Americas, people who defy the police run a real risk of being shot...
...Members of the Mexican police force, for example, were implicated in the torture-murder of U.S...
...Fortunately they were found innocent, and in January, 1993, the officials involved were dismissed.' 9 In many other cases, however, the victims are not so fortunate, and the police scenario becomes the official story...
...It also found that the police did not follow their own regulations for disciplining acts of police violence, and that complaints were rarely referred to the public prosecutor...
...Everyone in Mexico seems to mistrust the process, suspecting that every claim of guilt or innocence has some hidden purpose behind it...
...A handful of prosecutions or even dismissals of abusive police officers can help by demonstrating that the wall of impunity can be breached...
...The violent handling of alleged criminals by the Jamaican police has gone hand-in-hand with a popular mindset that approves of vigilante-style justice...
...17.The case is U.S...
...In 1992, for example, a Mexico City magazine published the results of a public-opinion survey in which Mexican citizens said that while they thought the city as a whole was dangerous, their own neighborhoods were not...
...Between 1986 and 1992, 166 lynchings of thieves and other petty criminals were reported on the island...
...amaica's intractable economic problems have given rise to persistent poverty and maldistribution of income and wealth...
...In Jamaica, as in Brazil, police killings often blend into the lynchings...
...Zaffaroni, "Right to Life and Latin-American Penal Systems," Annals of the American Association of Political & Social Sciences, No...
...Under such an authoritarian government, control is not exercised through individualized acts of deadly violence at the discretion of the police, but by well-directed surveillance and repression...
...New York Times, October 19, 1995, p. A4...
...As crime and unemployment grew worse in the 1970s and 1980s, a police force accustomed to using violence for political purposes began to use deadly force against suspected criminals...
...Drug Enforcement Agency official Enrique Camarena in 1985.17 In Mexico, it is with reference to the drug war that the rhetoric of the "war on crime" is most commonly heard...
...In some years, they were responsible for over a third...
...to hold the police accountable for the profligate use of deadly force over the past 30 years...
...It seems as though officials have become so poisoned by the tradition of coercing suspects that they are unable to undertake a systematic and reliable investigation...
...If the judicial police used deadly force against a political enemy of the regime or against a narcotics dealer, they would expect to get away with it because it was "part of their job...
...If that first crime had been investigated and punished, Sidney Francis might still be alive today...
...Free of controls, the police were thrown into a situation of great societal violence, with all sides demanding forceful police action...
...This relative tranquillity, together with Mexico's reputation for propitiating rather than destroying the discontented, allowed for Mexican "exceptionalism"-an insulation from criticism of fraudulent elections, state repression and other violations of human rights, as though official violence were rare...
...Say no to police corruption...
...See Human Rights in Jamaica (New York: Human Rights Watch/Americas, 1986) and Paul Chevigny, Edge of the Knife (New York: The New Press, 1996), Chapter VII...
...In notorious political cases like the 1994 murder of presidential candidate Donaldo Colosio, for example, we have seen the embarrassing spectacle of officials announcing a theory of the case, arresting suspects to fit the theory, only to be later followed by a repudiation of the theory...
...There is little room for reform when the police claim that assassinations are just that-nothing more than assassinations...
...In 1991, when a man caught stealing coconuts survived repeated shots by the police, the aggrieved coconut farmer said, "the police should have killed him.''6 Police officers use violence arbitrarily much as private citizens do, for both personal and political reasons...
...blind eye to it...
...If Jamaica shows us how clientelism contributes to a weak sense of rights which, in turn, permits official violence to go unchallenged, Mexico City, at least until the 1990s, reminds us that government legitimacy and social control are possible even without strong citizen participation...
...Politicians, apprehensive about mobilizing their poorest constituents, have turned political parties into networks of patronage that dole out political favors...
...Some cops are guilty of the abuse of force themselves, while others are guilty of turning a Security forces patrol the streets of Kingston...
...Official corruption goes a long way to preserving impunity for officers involved in human rights abuses, because individual police who are on the take do not act alone...
...Until recently, Mexico was just this sort of highly centralized and authoritarian government...
...When they arrived at the appointed place, they were taken prisoner by judicial police at gunpoint, and tortured until they signed confessions implicating themselves in extortion...
...When everyone has committed crimes, it is next to impossible for anyone to act against any of the others...
...Star (Kingston), July 7, 1992...
...In no to police October, 1995, a policecorruption...
...These figures suggest a disproportionate use of deadly force by the police-and, in many cases, the deliberate killing of suspects...
...In comparison to Mexico City, deadly police violence is far more extensive in Kingston -despite the fact that Jamaica has been ruled by democratic regimes since it gained independence from Great Britain in 1962, while Mexico is an authoritarian system that, despite tentative democratic openings over the past few years, remains highly controlled at the center...
...One tied who stopped him at a traffic light...
...atterns of violent police behavior persist because for the ordinary citizen, the police represent-often in surprising detail-the political and social order in which they live, as well as their place within it...
...Discipline often breaks down and the killings continue, according to informants familiar with the inner workings of the police, because middle-level officers still believe that killing "gunmen"--i.e...
...In 1991, however, prodded by harsh criticism of official abuse by judges and the Jamaican bar association as well as by international bodies including the UN and human rights groups, the Jamaican government commissioned an international team of experts to investigate the police...
...234-35...
...Drug traffickers cannot be 'collared with caresses...
...Playing on citizens' fear of violent crime is an easy route to popularity, and even legitimacy...
...The appeal is compelling because it resonates with the fears of elites and the middle class, while at the same time it intimidates those most affected by police crack-downs...
...5, 1991, p. 28...
...Politicians in such countries often succumb to the temptation to escape the apparently insoluble by inveighing against crime and the legal systems that seem unable to control it...
...1 0 Alfred Laing, for example, was involved in 11 different shooting incidents between 1982 and 1985, several of them apparently summary executions...
...In the decades following the Mexican revolution, the ruling party sought to wrest power, particularly the power to use violence, from local and private sources, and thus to monopolize the use of legitimate force...
...If there is going to be a "war on crime" in Latin America or anywhere else, it should be a war against police corruption and violence-not only within the police force, but against all parts of the political system that tolerate and encourage official impunity...
...It allows politicians to project an image of strength and decisiveness without having to come to grips with intractable problems of economic and social injustice, by shifting the blame for many of society's ills onto the poor, or at least onto the part of the poor who can be labeled "marginal" and "dangerous...
...It is essential to break this circle of impunity...
...The elite and the middle class fear the "have-nots," and few common bonds link the upper crust of society to the lower classes...
...2. As cited in Terry Lacey, Violence and Politics in Jamaica (Totowa, New Jersey: Frank Cass, 1977), p. 138...
...The anticrime rhetoric calls for the law to get out of the way and let the police do their job, which often leads to arbitrary police action...
...Police action tells people of all classes in Mexico that they are subject to the whim of a venal government and that their problems can be resolved only by personal intervention, by payment or some other means...
...The drug war has to be fought with an iron fist," said the head of the federal narcotics police in a 1992 interview...
...When, on the other hand, the government seems incapable of controlling civil violence and replacing private acts of vengeance with the rule of law, as in Jamaica, official violence is likely to be poorly controlled...
...But when authorities appeal to the military analogy of a "war on crime," violent police action will undoubtedly increase...
...Even in 1992, when civilian homicides peaked, the police accounted for over 18% of all homicides in the island...
...In a 1992 poll, 34% of the respondents said that the best way to control crime is to hang criminals...
...Between 1983 and 1993, the police killed an average of 182 persons each year, although from 1991 to 1993 the numbers had dropped slightly [see Table...
...The development of local human rights monitors, such as have appeared in Mexico in recent years, is essential to strengthening civil society...
...Since the police did not charge him with any crime, he insisted on being released...
...By calling for the law to get out of the way to let the police do their job, it invites the use of deadly force as an instrument of "first resort...
...An investigation of the police officer who killed Sidney Francis, for example, revealed that he had killed an innocent person working on a roof three years earlier...
...5 The government has neither successfully curtailed such vigilantism nor steered it into a system ruled, at least nominally, by law...
...5. E. George Green, private communication with author...
...They almost always act on behalf of those who work with them, of their superiors, and usually of others in the political system...
...The citizenry, as a result, have not developed a well-defined sense of rights, and until recently, few groups in society have demanded greater accountability for abusive police...
...15-27...
...Police officers who killed alleged criminals have been retained on the force, and some have wound up killing again...
...The ratios are the reverse in cases of civilians who shot police officers...
...While suspects are sometimes tortured for information, the most dramatic problem is the abuse of firearms and deadly force in the streets...
...The results for the justice system have been disastrous...
...H. LaFranchi, "Mexico, Lies and Video: Police Nabbed in Killing," Christian Science Monitor, April 17, 1996, p. 7. 14...
...Once the security forces have repressed opposition groups whose alleged violence they used to justify their political control, the police begin to seek new ways to legitimize their power and influence...
...2 Jamaican governments, unsure of their ability to draw on popular support, became hybrids of authoritarian colonial rule and democracy...
...The pattern of police violence in Jamaica is more similar to Sdo Paulo, Brazil, where police act as "delegated vigilantes," carrying out arbitrary acts of violence that the population might otherwise carry out themselves...
...One way they do so, according to Argentine criminologist Rail Zaffaroni, is by "projecting another war-a war against ordinary delinquency...
...Historically," says political scientist Roderic Camp, "repression has been an acceptable rule of the game in Mexico...
...In fact, such violence was not rare, only well-hidden...
...No doubt the same is true of all lowlevel government officials, but in the case of the police, officially sanctioned impunity is more flagrant because their job involves the authorized use of force...
...857, 1992...
...olicing in a state that does not hesitate to impose systematic control is quite different from the situation in Jamaica...
...24REPORT ON CRIME AND IMPUNITY A Mexico City police officer in action...
...The police continue to conduct operations jointly with the armythe two together are always called the "security forces"-often leading to unjustified shootings...
...It does not, however, tell us what sort of police action is to be expectedwhether surveillance and intimidation will be used, for example, or if more deadly violence is the method of preference...
...Legendary police gunmen have shot dozens of suspects in this way and have never been effectively disciplined...
...Nevertheless, even in the 1990s, it helps to explain the complex patterns of the official use of violence...
...1. E.R...
...Following the fragmentation and seemingly endless violence of the civil war, there was an overwhelming desire for political stability, for "peace and order...
...8 Official violence is often a result of the semi-military tactics with which the police force operates...
...As a result, the police often resorted to summary executions to get rid of criminals who were protected by the politicians...
...Nor is it uncommon for the police to torture suspects to force them to shape their stories to fit the projected scenario of the case...
...7 Other unjustifiable shootings grow out of flimsy suspicions...
...An assistant prosecutor solicited a bribe to expedite the case, and after paying the money, Alpuing Ozuna went with a friend to meet the prosecutor...
...The resulting Hirst report found that the police force was not well-prepared for patrol but was primarily equipped to use force-the "instrument of first resort...
...3 After independence, politicians drew for their support and safety on gunmen, whose links to the main parties helped shield them from prosecution...
...While this case received extensive media attention, partly because it was a huge public event and partly because of the "respectability" of the victim, more anonymous acts of official violence of this kind occur frequently in Kingston...
...In 1986, Patrick Locke was picked up at a gas station and taken to a Kingston station house for "questioning...
...nla" stands for "not available...
...This force has been implicated in spectacular cases of torture and killing, both in political cases and in drug-trafficking incidents (the latter often in cooperation with the United States...
...In Jamaica, the police certainly do reproduce "order"-an order that is violent, filled with personal vengeance, and socially stratified...
...5 The system is himself to a cross so highly articulated and and hung a sign entrenched, with police officers underpaid and at reading, "End the the same time obliged to impunity, injustice pay a quota of bribes to their superiors, that the and insecurity...
...The police killed many more people than they wounded, according to the government's own figures...
...15.See Paul Chevigny, Edge of the Knife, pp...
...Where traditions of holding officials accountable are weak, these watch-dog groups can help strengthen local efforts to rein in police violence by establishing that citizens' groups are on the alert and are willing to speak out...
...The well-off are little grieved, for example, by the death of an alleged criminal, or someone they perceive as belonging to the "criminal class...
...Kingston, Jamaica and Mexico City offer an interesting comparison in this regard not only because the level of police abuse differs, but because it differs in a way that seems surprising at first...
...If we were inclined to think that police violence in cities like Sdo Paulo is chiefly a consequence of weak democratic traditions and recurrent dictatorships, we would have to think again when we look at Jamaica...
...man had himself tied to a cross overlooking the main thoroughfare in Mexico City, with a sign at his feet saying, "End the impunity, injustice and insecurity...
...All this is not to say that the citizenry does not fear the patrol police...
...Weekly Gleaner (Kingston), September 23, 1991...
...In part, such police practices are a result of the very nature of Mexico's authoritarian system...
...Sources of capital, including land, are concentrated in the hands of a few...
...1 4 Nor do politicians and police officials trade in rhetoric about civil violence and a "war on crime," and the patrol police do not generally kill poor suspects in the streets as an instrument of control...
...The police-conceived as an army-will pick out some part of their own population as the "enemy...
...The rhetoric of "cracking down on crime" is appealing enough in the United States, where many people have come to believe that a legal system that grants broad rights to defendants is to blame for growing crime...
...National Committee for Human Rights (CNDH) case #122/92/ DF/C02148 and Acordo (Mexico City), January 19, 1993...
...While the rhetoric is similar from place to place, there are telling differences both in the way the rhetoric is employed and in the levels of police violence that result...
...The slapdash terror that the police have imposed has contributed, along with private violence, to making people feel powerless and dependent...
...Although police investigations were supposed to be completed within 30 days, 69% of the complaints filed between 1986 and 1991 were still pending in 1991...
...4 After releasing this whirlwind of official violence, the government was unable to bring it under control...
...The judicial police investigate and collect evidence for the prosecutors and the courts, much like detectives in the United States...
...Notably, the police represent the killings as "shootouts"-that is, responses in selfdefense-which shows that they recognize that an outright execution would be a violation of human rights...
...Sam Dillon, "Mexico City Journal: Police Go Straight (Now That's News...
...Underlying such rhetoric is the belief that it is the responsibility of the police to control crime and maintain order-without the intervention of the rest of the criminal-justice system (or any other part of the polity, for that matter...
...9 A large crowd had gathered at the National Stadium at the end of July to see South African President Nelson Mandela...
...The image of power presented by the central government-never as strong elsewhere in the country as it has been in Mexico City--has begun to break down in recent years...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26REPORT ON CRIME AND IMPUNITY pects in bogus "shootouts...
...When the police use deadly force, they usually do so for "reasons of state...
...4. Terry Lacey, Violence and Politics in Jamaica, p. 71...
...v Alvarez Machain, 112 S. Ct...
...Almost all the complaints against them, however, grow out of a system of corruption that sometimes results in violence when the victim does not Police themselves cooperate...
...7. Weekly Gleaner (Kingston), May 12, 1992, p. 1. 8. Weekly Gleaner (Kingston), August 12, 1991...
...anticrime rhetoric is so effective, in fact, that politicians sometimes exaggerate the dangers of violent crime in order to garner voter support...
...In April of this year, for example, the police fired on demonstrators protesting the construction of a golf course in Tepoztldn, near Mexico City, killing a well-known leader of the opposition Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD...
...Roderic Camp, "The Military," in George Grayson, ed., Prospects for Democracy in Mexico (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1990), p. 86...
...The island's history of slavery and colonialism has contributed to the sense that such a death is an acceptable, even inevitable, response to crushing social problems...
...1 3 VoL XXX, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1996 27REPORT ON CRIME AND IMPUNITY On the other hand, vigilantism is not a major problem in Mexico City...
...As a result, administrative discipline improved and abuses declined...
...In response, the police opened fire on the crowd, killing Francis and wounding another woman...
...While the present government has made some headway in reforming the police, the long-term effectiveness of such reforms remain unclear...
...Former Prime Minister Hugh Shearer coined a phrase in 1967 that is still famous in Jamaica: "When it comes to handling crime, in this country I do not expect any policeman, when he handles a criminal, to recite any Beatitudes to him...
...s Yet much of this violence has turned out to be in the service of corruption...
...In Mexico City or Sdo Paulo, Los Angeles or Kingston, Jamaica, the official rhetoric of the "war on crime" is very much the same...
...In such a system, the prevalence of police brutality often goes hand-in-hand with vigilantism, or "popular justice...
...In the 1980s, when it was common for criminals to commit burglaries by breaking in through rooftops, several cases were reported in which innocent people repairing roofs were shot by the police...
...Crime does not seem to be perceived as a crisis problem in Mexico as it is in the United States and other Latin American cities...
...After the police roughed up a man who had climbed a fence to get a better look at Mandela, some members of the crowd became angry and started throwing things at the police...
...Moreover, although Kingston and Mexico City share the same problems of massive urbanization-radically insufficient housing and other social services to accommodate a huge poor, migrant population-the unmanageability of social problems would seem more dramatic in the case of Mexico City because it is so much larger (the whole island of Jamaica does not contain half as many people as Mexico City...
...Particularly in democracies plagued by social and economic inequalities, politicians are often tempted to run their election campaigns by appealing to the voters in the name of fear and insecurity...
...Yet the police response to the poor is more consistently violent in Kingston than in Mexico City, coming close to a system of terror...
...In such a system, when an official act of violence occurs, it has been chosen as a matter of policy...
...Yet serious problems persist within Jamaica's police force...
...Jamaica is at the same time an interesting counterpoint to Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina, where high levels of police violence have continued even after democracy was reinstated...
...9. Weekly Gleaner (Kingston), Aug...
...6. Weekly Gleaner (Kingston), March 18, 1991...
...As long as the idea persists within the police force that if "most" of those killed are criminals then abuses are acceptable, police violence is bound to continue...
...3. Obika Gray, Radicalism and Social Change in Jamaica (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991...
...NA2CLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Paul Chevigny is professor of law at New York University Law School This essay is adapted from his book, Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas (New Press, 1995...
Vol. 30 • September 1996 • No. 2
