New York supercop takes a crack at Caracas
With a soaring murder rate, a small, badly paid police force, and businesses threatening to decamp, the capital of Venezuela is turning to the US for answers.
March 22, 2001

By Andy Webb-Vidal

Ride on the back of Ignacio's police motorcycle through the dark streets of Petare, Caracas's poorest district, and you soon understand why he's tired of his job. Everyone is watching from the shadows. Frightened residents, armed thieves, crack cocaine dealers.

Summoned to the scene of the killing of a taxi driver shot dead in his car, Ignacio begins to investigate his first murder case of the night. The gathered crowd is curious, but unco-operative.

"No one saw anything, no one knows anything," says Ignacio, who earns Dollars 285 a month. "People know me in the barrio, but it doesn't make any difference. Crime has got out of control and no one trusts the police any more."

But the situation may about to change for Ignacio, his fellow officers, and the citizens of Caracas, both good and bad.

Alfredo Pena, the city's mayor, has recruited former New York police chief William Bratton, credited with slashing crime there in the mid-1990s, to tackle the spiralling levels of crime in Caracas.

And in an apparent first for Latin America, Mr Pena has also attracted financing for the programme exclusively from big local businesses, rather than from government and local taxes, a move that could set a trend in the region.

"What is unique about this is the embracing of the initiative by the private sector; that's truly a watershed moment in Venezuela, and maybe in Latin America," says Mr Bratton, who hopes to foster similar programmes in Mexico, Argentina and Chile.

It was only possible to recruit Mr Bratton last year after the national police force surrendered its control over Caracas's metropolitan police to the mayor.

Few doubt that the city's crime problem requires urgent attention. Several multinational companies, facing increased security costs and threats to personnel, are considering moving their offices and plants to other countries.

Preliminary figures indicate about 7,000 reported homicides in Venezuela last year, up 50 per cent on 1999, and more than double the 1998 total. Most were in Caracas. With the annual rate now running at 27 homicides per 100,000 people, Venezuela ranks only behind Russia, South Africa, El Salvador, and the distinctive case of Colombia.

Although Caracas has high hopes of Mr Bratton, he says his nine-month programme is aimed at no more than laying the foundations for an improved police service and, at a later stage, New York-style "Business Improvement Districts".

Central to the programme is the installation of a model commissariat in one of the poorest neighbourhoods, aimed at rebuilding respect among the public towards the police, widely perceived as corrupt and often on the wrong side of the law themselves, as in many other countries in Latin America.

Provea, a Venezuelan human rights group, recorded 170 extrajudicial killings in the year to last October, a 12-year high, and more than 9,000 arbitrary arrests.

The plan also foresees the creation of a city-wide, co-ordinated computer database to accurately record and monitor the incidence of crime, especially drugs-related crime.

"These are two very different cultures and crime environments, the situation is not going to change overnight," Mr Bratton says. "But we are very confident that many of the things that worked in New York can be transferred, modified and replicated in Caracas."

Mr Bratton says that, with the shortage of resources, Mr Pena has a difficult task ahead. Caracas, with 4m people, has only 9,000 police officers, compared with the 30,000 New York had in 1990, when its population was about 8m.

However, security experts say the initiative, based on the concept that there can be no economic development without security, could herald a change of policy at a wider level in Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez says that crime cannot be expected to fall until poverty is first alleviated, a goal his government has yet to achieve.

"There is a clash of doctrines that is arising from this," says Marcos Tarre, a local security adviser. "But with the public more worried about crime than anything else, and the government concerned about its popularity, it seems to be warming to the Bratton idea." Indeed, Luis Miquilena, Venezuela's interior and justice minister, said that if the initiative is successful, it could be adopted across the country.

Officer Ignacio, who will see his salary double to Dollars 570, is cautious, yet hopeful. "Crime is not going to disappear, but if we're paid a worthy wage, no one will need to take bribes, and people will begin to help us catch the criminals. It could work."

©2001 Financial Times