Politics: Desolate Outlook for Mexican Police
In our new series on problems with security and the criminal justice system in Mexico, this week we take a broad look at police institutions at all three levels of government (federal, state and municipal). A lack of federal oversight and legislative gridlock have worsened the already deplorable state of policing in Mexico in recent years, and many municipalities have completely ceased to operate their own police forces. There are enormous deficiencies in police wages, benefits, training, equipment and confidence controls, as well as disparities that separate the 32 states’ own police departments, and an utter lack of indispensable coordination between all levels of government in rebuilding the country’s policing institutions.
Even the quantitative level of staffing and the rate of spending on security per police officer are woefully deficient both by international standards and in keeping with the demands of Mexican law.
Only the federal police (FP) can be seen as approaching the basic requirements of a professional police force, and even if we go by the standard set by the FP, with an annual budget that averages 684,000 pesos per officer, it would be necessary to roughly triple the amount of spending on police nationally even without taking into account those at the municipal level, which according to these standards should be spending around 40 billion pesos annually.
One of the problems behind the country’s negative policing results and the situation of the Mexican police forces and officers is a lack of political will on the part of the federal administration, state governors and municipal presidents to make the arduous task of rebuilding and strengthening police corps a priority. This comes from mistaken analyses regarding the causes of insecurity (the current administration’s public security plan does not even mention strengthening the police) and stalemates between parties and state governments over whether to eliminate the municipal police, a standoff that has derailed efforts to redesign the federated system in matters of security.
The road toward Mexico's establishing a national system of reliable, professional and efficient police is a long one. At least ten years have already been wasted.
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