Criminality, Public Security, and the Challenge to Democracy in Latin America

Chapter Six: The Weaknesses of Public Security Forces in Mexico City

c ha p t e r si x The Weaknesses of Public Security Forces in Mexico City el ena az aol a This chapter outlines some of the results of a qualitative study conducted between 2001 and 2005 on the preventative police in Mexico City. One of the key goals of this study has been to “give a voice” to police officers so as to understand their views and their understanding of their job, as well as the obstacles they face when doing their work. The premises of the study are that police officers must know about and be willing to carry out any police reform project if it is to produce profound changes (see Bayley 2001); that if reform is to have the backing of the police, it must take their needs into account and respond to their problems; and that to know and understand the problems that are most important for police officers, it is necessary to listen to their points of view. The study underpinning this chapter consists of an analysis of the testimony of 280 police officers in all ranks of the hierarchy. One hundred and seventy of them were interviewed at police headquarters, and 110 are eight-page autobiographies written by police officers of different ranks 147 148 Elena Azaola and career lengths who responded to an invitation from their institution to write the story of their life as a policeman.1 The preventative police supposed to protect Mexico City’s nine million inhabitants consist of seventy-six thousand officers.2 Half are employees of the Secretariat of Public Security (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública, SSP), and the other half (auxiliary and bank police) have an irregular status, so that while they are members of the force, their labor rights are not fully recognized, and they operate autonomously and according to arbitrary and rather opaque criteria (Arroyo 2003; Varenik 2005). Of the total, including auxiliary forces, 20 percent are traffic police (policía de vialidad). Belonging to the traffic police is considered a privilege , even though not all officers have access to a patrol car or a motorcycle . This is because traffic cops have the most opportunities to extort people who violate the traffic code, and the income they receive from extortion far outstrips their wages (Pérez 2004). The preventative police is not only the most numerous force in Mexico City but also in the rest of the Mexican Republic, as can be seen in Table 6.1; it accounts for 91 percent of the state force at the national level. The mandate of the various preventive police forces is to preserve public order, respond to citizens’ needs, protect their lives and goods, and control motor traffic; the judicial or ministerial police and the Federal Agency of Investigations are in charge of criminal investigations, although the preventative police can also detain people caught committing a crime in flagrante delicto. Table 6.1 National State Forces in Mexico, 2006 Police Force Percentage Municipal Preventative 144,276 37 State Preventative 190,730 49 Judicial or Ministerial 25,495 7 Federal Preventative 19,597 5 Federal Investigation Agents 5,945 2 Total 386,043 100 Source: Information supplied by Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Federal, January 2007. The Weaknesses of Public Security Forces in Mexico City 149 MAIN FINDINGS It is a known fact that the inhabitants of Mexico City are dissatisfied with the performance of the police (see, among others, Zepeda 2004; López Portillo 2003; Arango 2004). It is a perhaps less-known fact that there is also deep and widespread job dissatisfaction among the police. High levels of uncertainty prevail, as there is no consistent application of norms in the contractual relationship between the Public Security Secretariat and the police. There is also widespread vertical (inter-rank) and horizontal (inter pares) lack of trust within the institution, which constitutes a significant obstacle to the adequate performance of police work. Because norms and procedures are not consistently applied, a parallel informal or paralegal regime governs relations among officers. Deplorable working conditions have also generated a sense of abandonment or lack of protection among police officers, leading to their growing loss of interest in properly fulfilling their duties. Another important problem is what the rank-and-file describes as a continual lack of citizen respect and recognition. There are some recurring issues that emerge in both the interviews and the autobiographies. First...