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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:59 pm
Time: 10:59 pm
Results for policing (latin america)
3 results foundAuthor: Cruz, Jose Miguel Title: Police Abuse in Latin America Summary: The AmericasBarometer survey provides an opportunity to assess police behavior in the Americas from the perspective of voting age citizens. This report in the AmericasBarometer Insights series seeks to answer these questions based in the 2008 database. The survey containing the question about police mistreatment was carried out in twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries, and it was answered by 32,853 respondents. The report concludes that although police reforms have taken place in several countries in the region, further work is needed with the police forces in Latin America. Details: Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University, Latin American Public Opinion Project, 2009. 8p. Source: Internet Resource; Accessed August 14, 2010 at: http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/files/i3AQ5a/I0811%20Police%20Abuse%20in%20Latin%20America%20English.pdf; Americas Barometer Insights: 2009 (No. 11) Year: 2009 Country: Central America URL: http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/files/i3AQ5a/I0811%20Police%20Abuse%20in%20Latin%20America%20English.pdf; Americas Barometer Insights: 2009 (No. 11) Shelf Number: 119604 Keywords: Police BehaviorPolice ReformPolicing (Latin America)Public Opinion |
Author: Withers, George Title: Preach What You Practice: The Separation of Military and Police Roles in the Americas Summary: American citizens enjoy a legal concept that many nations do not. Domestically, the United States has a clear separation between the uses of its military and the uses of its law enforcement agencies. U.S. law generally restricts the military from use against its citizens. While this separation does not guide U.S. operations in battleground environments like Iraq and Afghanistan, it remains very strong at home. In Latin America, where democracies have struggled mightily to exert civilian control over their armed forces, the reality is different. Most nations lack a similar principle of clear military-police separation. The region’s circumstances hardly ever require armies to defend citizens from foreign invaders, but leaders often call upon them to defend some citizens – or the state – from other citizens. Today, many governments are calling on militaries to enforce laws and to combat domestic crime. Choices made in Washington can have a strong impact on this. The U.S. government is by far the largest provider of military and police aid to Latin America and the Caribbean. Arms and equipment transfers, training, exercises, presence at bases, and military-to-military engagement programs send strong messages about military and police roles. So do diplomatic interactions with the region. Instead of exporting the principle to which the United States adheres, though, these efforts often do just the opposite: encourage Latin American governments to use their militaries against their own people. This is a longstanding tendency in U.S. policy toward Latin America, though it rarely gets framed in terms of the United States’ much different domestic model. That is what this report will do. The following pages highlight U.S. practices that encourage Latin America’s armed forces to take on internal security roles that the U.S. military cannot legally play at home. They go on to point the way toward policy changes to end these practices. Section I reviews the U.S. experience with Posse Comitatus, an 1878 law that became a cornerstone of U.S. democratic stability by making U.S. citizens’ interactions with on-duty soldiers very rare, and causing the institutional character of the country’s defense and law-enforcement forces to diverge dramatically. Section II looks at Latin America’s far different history of civil-military relations, with a focus on the military’s use against citizens internally, in a climate of few external security threats. Section III lays out the United States’ persistent, century-long tendency to help the region’s militaries take on internal security roles; this tendency, it argues, continues with today’s “wars” on drugs, terrorism, and organized crime. Finally, Section IV offers recommendations for Latin American governments seeking to protect their populations while at the same time consolidating their democracies; for the executive and legislative-branch architects of U.S. policy toward Latin America; and for the United States at home, as it seeks to secure its citizens and borders against 21st century threats. These recommendations can be summarized simply. Militaries should not be used for internal security and law-enforcement roles, and the United States should not encourage such use, either at home or abroad. While exceptions may exist under extraordinary circumstances – and then, only with several safeguards and institutional reforms in place – the Posse Comitatus model works, and should guide future U.S. security interaction with Latin America. Details: Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, 2010. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 26, 2011 at: http://justf.org/files/pubs/1011pwyp.pdf Year: 2010 Country: South America URL: http://justf.org/files/pubs/1011pwyp.pdf Shelf Number: 122902 Keywords: Law EnforcementMilitary OperationsPolicing (Latin America)Security Operations |
Author: Johnson, Stephen Title: Police Reform in Latin America: Implications for U.S. Policy Summary: Police reform is a growth industry in the Americas. First, security threats have largely shifted from external state-sponsored aggression to stateless crime that affects citizens more directly and undermines confidence in government. Once deployed for external defense as well as for guarding internal order, armies are not equipped to deal with public safety in a setting where combating crime requires special knowledge to protect the rights of victims and perpetrators, preserve evidence, and apply the right intelligence and patrolling tools to keep crimes from happening. Second, not all Latin American law enforcement institutions can protect citizens in this manner, given that in some cases they are tied to political parties or that they exist as a poorer, fourth branch of the army. As Latin American countries have consolidated democratic practices in a post–Cold War setting, the need for effective policing, specialized law enforcement agencies, and legal frameworks to help them coordinate actions will become only more urgent. At the same time, the need for capable defense will continue, perhaps with smaller or more specialized militaries. And, because these forces always have personnel in training, they will continue to be called on periodically to support civilian authority, as most police, even in the United States, have limited surge capacity. To the extent that the security and stability of close hemispheric neighbors impinge on the security and well-being of U.S. citizens, the United States will be obliged to promote regional law enforcement reforms. If not, other countries such as China and Iran may be willing to do that, perhaps in ways the United States might not like, potentially putting American interests and lives at risk. Police reform is a hugely complicated undertaking, in which there are no easily transferable formulas for success. The authors discuss a strategic approach—in which planning considers trends, the threat environment, available resources, institutional strengths and weaknesses, and leadership and applies common evaluation standards—that will permit U.S. assistance to be successful and less wasteful. Details: Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International STudies, 2012. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 2, 2012 at: http://csis.org/publication/police-reform-latin-america Year: 2012 Country: Central America URL: http://csis.org/publication/police-reform-latin-america Shelf Number: 124341 Keywords: Police ReformPolicing (Latin America) |