Police Corruption in Honduras

Without any institution inside or outside the country that can clean up the police force, what's left is one of the most violent countries in the world with a police force that is too ineffective to stop the crime and too corrupt to reform and improve itself.

By James Bosworth
As if to disprove some of my recent criticism that the media frame Honduran violence only as a "drug war" issue without considering the other problems there, both McClatchy and Miami Herald (aren't they the same company?) do an excellent job reporting on the issue of police corruption in Honduras. From McClatchy: Unlike other parts of Central America, where organized crime has relied on enforcers recruited from street gangs and unemployed youth, in Honduras entire units of the national police appear to work for drug and crime groups, preying on the public and gunning down foes.

From The Herald: Another ranking police investigator told The Herald he discovered that his supervisor allowed members of the special forces squad to double as bodyguards for drug traffickers. That supervisor is now a commissioner, the highest rank in the police department.

“Maybe the ratio of honest to corrupt in the police is 10 to 1. But it doesn’t help that nine are clean if the one who is dirty is in charge,” the investigator said. “In this country, bosses are named to specific posts with the purpose of facilitating the entry and exit of drugs.”

This is a level of corruption that is very difficult to root out. After all, if top police commanders are corrupt, who is going to investigate, prosecute and arrest them? Lower level police officials who attempt to do so take a huge risk in terms of their careers and lives. Judges and other civilian authorities can attempt to investigate, but a judge can't arrest someone. That takes a police officer. When former Security Minister Alvarez attempted to fire corrupt police commanders, the police threatened to revolt and go on strike, not something that would help a country plagued with crime. Then there is the military, back in a domestic security role largely due to police corruption, but I've written before about the challenges on that front.

So what options remain, The Herald hints at them:

Many Honduran activists have called for the United States to “intervene” and help run the police. American technical security experts will head to Honduras soon. Colombia and Chile have sent teams to help investigate high-profile cases, and the Organization of American States sent a mission to figure out what role that diplomatic organization can play.

I'm not sure you could get too many activists inside Honduras on the record saying they want the US to "intervene", but I do think this paragraph gets at the point the potential solution may have to come from outside Honduras. Ideally, an organization similar to Guatemala's CICIG could be set up in the country and granted authority to investigate and prosecute. The UN, OAS or SICA would be the multilateral organizations to operate and monitor the group. Of course, as seen in Guatemala, that sort of solution is far from perfect and can only be a stop-gap measure.

Based on my research for the Wilson Center back in late-2010, I know there are officials inside President Lobo's government who want that sort of outside solution. At the time I wrote that report, at least one official said it was close to a certain deal. Obviously that hasn't happened. Political forces, some related to organized crime and others related to the 2009 coup, have so far blocked the potential for an outside investigative unit to be set up in Honduras.

Without any institution inside or outside the country that can clean up the police force, what's left is one of the most violent countries in the world with a police force that is too ineffective to stop the crime and too corrupt to reform and improve itself.

Nearly every analyst who looks at organized crime in the hemisphere will tell you that "police reform" is a key part to improving the security situation. But what's the answer when the police refuse to reform and the political system can't or won't force them to do so? That's one of the key challenges that Honduras poses today. (1/23/12) (photo courtesy Internet)

Note: This article was reprinted with permission. The author is a freelance writer and consultant based in Managua, Nicaragua. He blogs regularly at Bloggings by boz.