Driving Out The Crime Wave: The police methods that worked in New York City can work in Latin America
July 23, 2001

By William Bratton and William Andrews

Latin America is the new frontier of reform for police work. Having taken part in reforming U.S. police departments, including the New York City Police Department, in the 1980s and 1990s, we see enormous potential for the transformation of policing institutions in South America, Central America and Mexico that badly need the shake-up. The good news is that with major efforts from government, business and citizens, the turnaround is happening now.

To many people, our optimism may seem misplaced. Most large cities in Latin America are contending with steeply escalating rates of street and violent crime, and the public consensus in many of these communities is that the police--whether federal, state, or local--are hopelessly corrupt and inept. Widespread poverty and huge squatter settlements in major metropolitan areas seem to ensure a limitless supply of violent pathologies and potential criminals. Indeed, crime and the fear of crime present a challenge to democratic government in the entire region.

Yet, as consultants in the region over the past five years, we have seen many positive signs. Political leaders--notably Alfredo Pena, mayor of Caracas, and Tasso Jereissati, Governor of Ceara State in northern Brazil--have made profound changes in their police departments. Although we have encountered officials who resist reform, we have also worked with enterprising police leaders who are eager for guidance in how to structure and manage the complicated functions of a police organization. We have been very encouraged by the depth of positive community response to even the first glimmerings of police reform, clear evidence that the poorest and most crime-torn barrios can still hope for a better future.

Much of Latin America's policing problem is a problem of scale. The region's cities have grown and changed rapidly, but police departments have not grown and changed with them. Departments using strategies appropriate to cities with a population of a few hundred thousand are struggling to cope with metropolitan populations in the millions. The military model followed by so many Latin American police agencies further compounds the problem. Accustomed to military-style operations, Latin American police have developed little competence in two essential police functions: preventive patrol and investigation. Investigations are usually conducted by a separate department that is entirely divorced from the realities and priorities of street policing. As a result, many Latin American police departments can no longer connect to local communities or provide any assurance of order and safety.

Over the past 10 years, this unstable situation has been made much worse by the growth of the narcotics trade. Latin American cities have long been drug transshipment points to the U.S. and European markets. Now they are themselves thriving narcotics marts in which dozens of local gangs have set up shop. They are always armed and often deal in guns, escalating violence. They employ young people as lookouts and couriers, drawing children into the orbit of crime. Drugs, guns and youth crime: it is the same volatile mixture that led to an explosion of violence in the U.S. in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The solutions lie in decentralization and localization of police resources. Police departments must break down problems to manageable size; they must connect again with the neighborhoods they are policing, investigating past crimes and preventing future crimes at the local level. They must concentrate on eliminating local gangs, not international drug smugglers. And they must establish management systems that allow top managers to detect corruption and misconduct, allocate resources and drive forward a citywide effort to defeat the criminals.

Mayor Pena and his capable public safety secretary, Ivan Simonovis, are proceeding with such an agenda and have made major changes in one of South America's most violent cities. To deal with chronic underfunding of his government, Pena has turned to the wealthiest citizens of Caracas, who have given financial aid and donations in kind. Some of the poorest communities have labored to renovate police facilities and have embraced local policing initiatives. Already we have seen murders drop from 236 in the period January through May 2000 to 132 for the same period this year. Rich and poor alike are refusing to accept crime and violence as their fate.

Bratton, New York City police commissioner in 1994-96, and Andrews, who served with him in the N.Y.P.D., are members of the Bratton Group, an international police-management consulting firm

©2001 Time