The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Mad As Hell And Not Willing To Take It Anymore
by James Dunnigan
January 20, 2015
The Mexican government claims it intended to implement President Enrique Pena Nieto’s proposal that the country eliminate over 1,800 municipal police departments and create new state-based police units. Pena made the suggestion in early December as the political crisis created by the Iguala Massacre continued unabated. The Iguala Massacre (the September mass murder of 43 students from Ayotzinapa Teachers College in Guerrero state) provided a textbook case and hideously violent example of how a crooked local government aligned with an organized criminal gang uses corrupt police force to enforce its political whim. The students were abducted and killed on orders from the city’s mayor, with input from his wife. The wife, who intended to run for mayor and succeed her husband, had family connections with the local branch of a drug cartel. The local cops passed the arrested students on to gang members who then killed them. The gangsters then burned the students’ bodies. If it sounds feudal, it is. And Mexicans won’t take it anymore. There is also disappointment at the recent corruption accusations against Pena.
Pena’s proposal has backers and detractors. How would the government go about replacing 1,800 local forces? No one is quite sure, though the initial reform would establish 32 state police corps. Presumably a state-controlled corps would assign detachments to municipalities and monitor their operations. Detractors ask what prevents crooked state and federal politicians and police from corrupting the system? No one is quite sure about that, either. The federal government knows how to take operational control of a town. It has already taken over police duties in several major cities and towns. The Federales (federal police) have around 1,600 policemen patrolling Acapulco (Guerrero state’s metropolis). The military is coordinating police operations in Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. The question is, how to create replacements. Former president Felipe Calderon, whom Pena derided during the 2012 election for militarizing the Cartel War, had a bottom up program to rebuild police and judicial institutions. That is a painfully slow process and one that involves persistent presidential leadership. Ironically, Pena’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) opposed Calderon’s program. (Austin Bay)
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