Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Mexico’s new president, Enrique Pena Nieto, is in the process of implementing his new public security strategy, which will include the creation of a national gendarmerie with a view to phasing out the deployment of the military against organized crime.  The gendarmerie should have a strength of 40,000 by 2015.  The federal police will be withdrawn from the “frontline struggle” against organized crime.

One interesting thing to come out of the new administration’s appraisal of the security situation relates to the proliferation of smaller gangs.  The new administration says that the former administration of President Filipe Calderon targeted top leaders of organized crime but did little to attack the lower levels.  As a result, the new administration says, the targeting of the top level of crime has led to a proliferation of lower-level gangs.  In addition to the big cartels such as Sinaloa, Gulf, and Zetas, there are now 60-80 small or medium-sized criminal organizations active in the country, many of which have not yet been subject to full intelligence analysis.

Chief federal prosecutor Jesus Murillo Karam says: “It is urgent to create an intelligence system that enables us to combat them.”  This task is just beginning.

NOTE: According to the Consejo para la Ley y los Derechos Humanos (CLDH) - a private organisation that since 1991 has been providing assistance to victims of kidnappings, conducting research into security issues, and investigating corruption in Mexico’s security services - members of the police and military are involved in 70%-80% of all kidnappings.  The CLDH estimates the daily average of kidnappings in 2012 was 72, up from 51 in 2011, not including the so-called ‘express’ kidnappings attributed to the drug gangs.

The greatest increases in the number of kidnappings, says CLDH director Fernando Ruiz, have taken place in Mexico City, the neighbouring states of Morelos and Mexico, the central state of Puebla, and the western one of Jalisco — which are not the areas with the greatest presence of drug gangs.

According to the CLDH, only one out of every 10 kidnappings is reported to the authorities because of widespread distrust in the authorities – a natural phenomenon given that “the police and public prosecution services are, on the one hand, indifferent, and on the other, accomplices in these crimes”.

Of all the police forces in Mexico, Ruiz says the one most heavily involved in kidnapping is the federal police, followed by the investigative and judicial services.