Mexico Seeks to Unify Police to Fight Drugs

New York Times ^ | October 1, 2010 | RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

[Inappropriate Laughter]

Tomas Bravo/Reuters

The family of Edelmiro Cavazos, mayor of Santiago, mourning his death. Several local police officers were accused in his killing.

SANTIAGO, Mexico — The Mexican government is preparing a plan to radically alter the nation’s police forces, hoping not only to instill a trust the public has never had in them but also to choke off a critical source of manpower for organized crime.

Five police officers and a traffic agent linked to the mayor’s killing.

The proposal, which the president’s aides say is expected in the coming weeks, would all but do away with the nation’s 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a “unified command.” It comes at a critical moment for President Felipe Calderón, who faces mounting pressure from the United States and within Mexico to demonstrate progress in defeating the drug cartels.

He has already hurled the military into the fight, using soldiers to buttress the federal police and battle the drug traffickers, but violence continues to soar and corruption among the nation’s police forces remains a constant, fundamental scourge.

[Venturer]

So here we have a police Department filled with bribe takers, drug dealers, murderers, and thieves, but unifying them is going to help??

I don’t think so.

[Wolfie]

Yay. One big easily corruptible national police force instead of thousands of tiny individuals to deal with.

[conejo99]

The sad truth is that the problem is probably beyond the Mexican federal government’s power to control. So long as there is so much money to be made in drugs, it will continue to corrupt anything it touches.
Having said that, unifying the police has a good chance of solving some of the problems for a while. Presently the local governments are important players in the power struggles between rival gangs. Mayors and chiefs of police are targets of corruption and murder as they give their loyalty to one side or the other in local drug power struggles, or targets for both sides if they make the thankless choice of being honest.
So long as the President of Mexico tries to fight all cartels, unifying the police would be a significant blow to all cartels. He can remove known corrupt individuals and reward loyalty. But what happens if a dangerous individual then gets elected president and inherits the unified police?

[Vaduz]

Oh you know the story weed heads use if it was legal we wouldn’tneed a war on drugs because it would stop drug dealers,things like heroin and coke would just go away.