Robocop in Mexico City
Llopart, Jordi Pius
In October 2001. just a month after the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, when questions of security were on the minds of public officials everywhere, the leftist mayor of Mexico...
...supervision of the project would fall to the chief of, the city's Public Safety Police (SSlI...
...would degenerate into the indiscriminate imprisonment of the poorest citizens of the city...
...Marcelo Ebrard...
...But the media gave voice to some doubts...
...just a month after the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, when questions of security were on the minds of public officials everywhere, the leftist mayor of Mexico Cit), Andris Manuel L6pez Obrador, surprised everyone by ceremoniousz4 inviting the controversial soon-to-be exlayor of New York...
...It was also pointed out that U.S...
...Several Mexican and U.S...
...criminologists, sociologists and human rights experts began to remember the dark side of the New York experience...
...We will have to wait to see whether the PRD leaders manage to emerge from the political difliculties they have created for themselves by attaching themselves to zero tolerance it la a'Iexicana...
...head of the PRD in Mexico City cornmented that "if Robocop existed...
...Six years later, midwa> through his second term, the figures had fallen to 671 murders and 184,111 serious crimes...
...The creation of the C(.ommunitv Police is more significant than it appears at first glance...
...The press also began running stories about "racial profiling" and raised fears that zero tolerance...
...Perhaps a humanized version will emerge...
...The question of police brutality> was raised, and the experience of Abner Loutma, the Haitian immigrant who after a dispute with a nightclub doorman, was beaten and sodomized in a New York City precinct house, became common knowledge to the readers of the capitals newspapers...
...applied in Mexico City...
...Doubts were raised about the wisdom of putting greater punitix e resources in the hands of a badly paid, corrupt police force that had neither the capabilities ofnxestigation nor the support ofa slow and bureaucratic judicial system...
...making evident what was already suspected -that the police force of Mexico City was one of thf most feared on the cominent, not for its crime fighting prowess but for its high levels of corruption...
...At stake is the security of the city's citizens as well as the presidential ambitions of the city's mayor...
...Rudolph Giuhxani, to advise the authorities of the Mexican megalopolis on the implementalion of the no-less-controversial plan called "zero tolerance...
...All these contrary opinions forced the Mexico City government to organize a number of public meetings designed to bring the critics aud the supporters of zero tolerance closer together and to calm the fears of a confused public...
...L6pcz Obrador-s presidential ambitions, conlinced the leadership of the leftist Party of the Democratic Rexolution (PRD) that their best resnonse to Mexico City's crime problem was the importation of Giuliani's crime-_ghting model to the city...
...we would agree to bring him to Mexico...
...cities with a "community policing" model, like San Diego, obtained the same decrease in crime as New York over the same period...
...Victor Hugo ,irigo...
...a vice president of Giuliani Partners and the former Deputy C(ommissioner of Polwc- and Planning at the New York Police Departtnent, has visited the city many times and is preparing a first report of recommendations, to be presented later in the year by Giuliani himself...
...A kew days after the announcement that New York's super-tavor had been hired...
...Various studies began to appear on the nation's front pages...
...Lope/ Obrador's government has opted to apply xero tolerance, but in a nuanced manner, implementing at the same time the "San Diego model" ofecommunity policing...
...taking into accowlt the peculiarities and the magnitude of the city and its security problems...
...The objective was clear: to emulate the spectacular reduction of crime and insecurity obtained in New York under the stewardship of *Amcricas Mayor" in 1994, the year Giuliani took office, New York City registered 1.927 murders and 430,460 "serious crimes...
...Maureen Casey...
...The city's wealthiest entrepreneurs, led by the bilhoonaire Carlos Slim, agreed to pay the entire bill...
...the government of Lopez Obrador presented m o major initiatives to the city legislature, one to streamline the SSP and the other to create the Community Police, designed to promote citizen participation in public safety...
...In March of this year...
...According to the official version, all this x as due to the lero tolerance program put in place by the mayor, These statistics, the urgency of the city's insectirity problem and, possibly...
...For the modest sum of s4.3 million, Mayor Giuliani and his teatn of consultants would commit themselves to developing a plan to implement zero tolerance inn Mexico City...
...Despite the criticism, the work of Giuliani Partners continues...
...Alter the strong negative reaction among the city's progressive circles to the hiin1g of GIIulianI, the leftist Mexico City government has been anxious to show that its interpretation of Giuliani's recommendations will contain proposals that are less reactionary than those implemented in New York...
...the idea that no crime is too small to be prosecuted...
Vol. 37 • September 2003 • No. 2
