Guatemala to keep army performing police duties
President Óscar Berger has decided to continue using the military in support of the police until the end of next year, despite the reservations expressed by Guatemala's donor countries in late September — and the fact that the deployment of the military has failed to check the rise in violent crime. Human rights organisations say he is opting for militarising the police function instead of spending on strengthening the police and the public prosecution service.
In April Berger created a joint military-police unit baptised the 'citizen security squadron', assigning 2,400 army personnel to patrol duty next to officers of the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC), the body which under the peace agreements of 1994-96 was meant to be the sole internal law-enforcement service. This was meant to last until the PNC had been strengthened — an effort for which the government started to retrain former members of the military.
Berger has also deployed the military for other policing roles. In August 200 soldiers accompanied 950 PNC officers in a drive to eradicate opium poppy plantations in San Marcos department. In late September 700 soldiers were deployed alongside 240 PNC officers in a campaign to destroy clandestine airstrips used by drug traffickers in Petén department and, separately, 1,200 soldiers took part with 1,700 police officers and 100 prison officers in a raid to wrest back from the inmates the control they had been wielding for most of the past decade over the Pavón prison complex.
It was around this time that the ambassadors of Guatemala's donor countries held a meeting with Vice-President Eduardo Stein to express their concern over the use of the military for policing duties. As put by Netherlands ambassador Bea ten Tusscher, 'They are quite different, soldiers and policemen: they have different functions in society. Both are important functions, but different ones.' After the meeting the government suggested that the diplomats had been satisfied with 'the pertinent explanations' offered. In any case, on 30 September Berger announced that he would keep the same number of troops in police support functions over the coming 15 months, that it, until the end of 2007.
The PNC's budget will be raided to pay for 1,200 of the soldiers on police support duties, and the defence ministry's budget is to be increased by about 9% to cover the remainder of the salaries and other costs. This has revived criticism from rights organisations that the government is beefing up the military instead of strengthening the police. Mario Polanco, of the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM), says, 'Insisting on keeping the army out on the streets is to want a militarised state, at the cost of not professionalising the PNC.'
On 9 October Berger announced the deployment of 300 soldiers from the army's reserve group to provide security for public transport, a sector which of late has become a frequent target of violent crime.
The deployment of the military to strengthen the police has not, so far, translated into a decline in violent crime. Indeed, the number of homicides has continued to rise, albeit not as dramatically as in 2005. In the first nine months of the year there were 4,506 reported homicides. Projected over the year as a whole, this trend would produce a 12.6% increase, leaving Guatemala with a murder rate of 49 per 100,000, up from 43.4 in 2005.
There is a widespread consensus that an important factor in the rise of violent crime is impunity. This, in turn, is attributable to widespread corruption which recent 'purges' of the law-enforcement agencies have not rooted out, and the insufficiency of resources in both the police and the public prosecution service. The PNC has just over 20,000 people on its payroll, equivalent to an average of 1.58 per thousand inhabitants (and not all of the PNC personnel is devoted to active policing). This compares to a ratio of 2.3 in the US (countrywide, with higher figures in big cities), and of 20-plus in successful stabilisation efforts (such as that conducted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland). Peaceful populations are reckoned to need ratios ranging from 1 to 4.
The investigative agency, the Servicios de Investigación Criminal (SIC) has fewer than 100 officers spread out over 15 departments (which leaves seven departments unattended). Plans under way envisage training 200 investigators, which will still leave the SIC under-equipped.
Public prosecutors handle on average about 200 criminal cases of all kinds each. With scant investigative backup, in the first nine months of the year it only achieved 102 arrests of people suspected of involvement in the 4,506 reported homicides. Last year it only recorded 115 successful prosecutions for homicide, out of a reported 5,338 cases.