Police crime and corruption

Poll: How much credibility do the police have for you?
None, 85%; Little, 13%; Much, 2%
Images: Diario El Tiempo, Honduras

[All links are in Spanish unless otherwise noted]

Last Friday, police spokesman Silvio Inestroza said that he was confident that many of the 100 or so police agents missing from La Granja police station had not reported to the command of Cobra unit for investigation and special retraining because they are sick, on their days off, or on vacation. Half of those who did report were currently off for the weekend. The chief of the Cobras stated that is normal because they are not in a condition of detention and are entitled to their salaries and days off. Director Carlos Aguilera Mendoza stated that the high authorities weren't sure whether the agents will return on Monday.

Interestingly, no mention was made in the news this week about whether or not the missing officers reported to the Cobra unit on Monday. These are part of the 176 police agents erroneously reported by international media as having been "arrested".

The "Cartels" de Belén and La Granja

El Heraldo's investigative unit has exposed another putrid police district which they call the "Cartel de Belén". Belén is one of the largest police districts in Tegucigalpa and covers an area with many illegal drug, weapons, and sex businesses as well as 'chop shops' where stolen cars are dismantled. In order to avoid problems with the police, both illegal and legal businesses such as taxi stands pay an impuesto de guerra to police.

Through access to intelligence reports, El Heraldo connects the murder on Tuesday of police agent Juan Carlos García Flores with his "violation of the police code". García is said to have reported by name an intermediate police official in La Granja who pays L.100,000 per month (about US $5,200) to a higher authority within the police in order to keep his job. It's an exorbitant amount considering that base pay for an entry-level police agent is about US $320 per month, but easily accumulated through the "war tax" and by getting cuts of extortions and other illegal activities. Additional, El Heraldo reports that there is an established fee for returning confiscated weapons to criminals rather than officially reporting them.

One report indicated that patrol vehicles were followed and police agents were observed unable to even stand up after leaving known drug houses. The report establishes that corrupt Belén agents have to pay L.180,000 (about US $9,500) to a higher official to maintain their jobs due to that area being more lucrative than La Granja.

Police have not found the four missing police agents accused of being involved with the murder of the two university students [in English]. One of missing, Wilfredo Figueroa Velásquez, was accused by his brother of killing his own father. It has been revealed that there were other 'unresolved' investigations in Internal Affairs against these same agents.

Missing weapons

After police weapons were found in Tegucigalpa pawn shops, Minister Bonilla has ordered an inventory of all police issued and confiscated weapons, including makes, models, and serial numbers. [What a novel concept!] La Tribuna has confirmed through pawn contracts that the weapons were pawned by the officer in charge of the Belén bodega, Víctor Zelaya Suazo. One of the pawn shop owners stated that the officer would say that he was pawning the guns at the order of his captain. Zelaya Suazo was indicted on Friday and ordered to be held in prison pending trial.

But in another exposé, El Heraldo reported that no one in the police or prosecutor's office can answer where are the 3,000 prohibited weapons (many of them AK-47s) confiscated during former President Ricardo Maduro's 2003 campaign to register legal guns and remove illegal guns from circulation. Credible sources within the police say the weapons are missing. [summary in English] The policeman in charge of the Cobra bodega has disappeared and a denuncia has been filed that he was murdered to prevent him from testifying which functionary had ordered the removal of the weapons.

The murder of a DNIC inspector in La Lima is also suspected to have been a result of his investigation of robbery of arms. Other missing guns have also been reported in the news, 40 from the police academy and 32 from the prosecutor's office. No one has ever been held responsible in any of these or other cases of missing weapons. The Minister of Security has named a commision to investigate all of the missing weapons.

Unresolved Internal Affairs investigations

La Prensa revealed a long standing Internal Affairs investigation of sub-commissioner Jorge Alberto Barralaga, currently being considered for criminal charges for the release of the four murder suspects. Barralaga was accused of commandeering 80 police from other divisions for 16 hours for the inauguration of a municipal building in Copán, possibly this narco mayor's White House look-alike [in English]. He falsely claimed that he was acting on orders from his superior and later paid each of the officers L.1,000 in cash. Commissioner Juan Carlos ("the tiger") Bonilla submitted the report to higher authorities in March 2011. No action was taken. Barralaga was later transferred from Copán to La Granja in Tegucigalpa in October and Bonilla was castigated for "disrespecting superior officers" by submitting the report. La Prensa indicated that this is not the only Internal Affairs investigation of Barralaga not acted upon.

Other police "complications"

Former district commissioner over La Granja, Einer Moncada Martínez, has been reassigned to the Statistics Unit pending investigation by the Fiscal of his possible involvement with organized crime. Unofficially, La Tribuna was told that Moncada had fled, but this was denied by a police spokesman.

Commissioner Danilo Orellana admitted that it was uniformed officers who assaulted a congressman and stripped him of his belongings, including a luxury vehicle, and that police officials did not take action on the complaint at the time. Previously, officials had denied any police involvement in this case on national television.

Three police agents from El Progreso were released on substitute measures yesterday after one of them "accidentally" shot a citizen on Tuesday and the other two attempted to cover up the action.

Two police agents were "put at the disposition of the prosecutor" for what was vaguely reported as "bad procedures" related to the arrest of four taxi thieves.

On Friday, a 15-year-old tortilla vendor bravely denouced being assaulted and robbed of L.550 (about US $29) while being detained by three police agents, whom he identified at the police station. The agents were indicted and are supposed to be translated to Tamara prison pending trial. The three police agents were assigned to the purified Belén station mentioned above.

Another police killing

The May 2011 drive-by assassination of Raúl Reyes Carbajal, coordinator of prosecutors in Puerto Cortés, has been connected to DNIC (criminal investigation) police agent Walter Zepeda Ramos. Fiscal Reyes was investigating certain police who were being paid up to L.30,000 for permitting crimes. Zepeda had previously been accused of murder in February 2009 but was released on "substitute measures" and apparently was able to continue with the police department until 2010. Zepeda supposedly abandoned the police and fled in August 2010 with his badge and weapon after an unexecuted order of capture was finally issued for the 2009 homicide. The day following Reyes' murder, Zepeda, using his police badge, questioned neighbors in the area of the crime as to whether they had seen anything. A few weeks later Zepeda was said to have been murdered because the victim's body was found to be carrying his badge and regulation weapon. However, an investigation accessed by La Prensa establishes that the agent is still alive and active within the police department. Failure of Puerto Cortés authorities to advance in the investigation resulted in personnel from Tegucigalpa being assigned to the case.

Phantom operativos

By order of Commissioner of the National Police, Tegucigalpa authorities have designed a plan to avoid unauthorized "phantom operativos" such as the one in which the two university students were murdered. All road stops will be supervised by an official and will include a minimum of eight agents. Police will be identified by yellow vests and police traffic cones. Tegucigalpa citizens were asked to denounce suspicious road stops by calling Subcommissioner Rony Flores Díaz on his cellphone at 9910-8953. (Later two additional numbers were added, 2222-SEGU for cell phones and 800-2222-SEGU for land lines, but media have reported and demonstrated on television that there is no answer at these numbers.)

Flores says that it has been the custom of police agents to execute operativos without authorization. In the past, individual police posts or agents have performed illegal road stops in order to extort drivers for trumped up charges which they then offer to overlook for a price. These measures will later be implemented at a national level

Honest forces within the police and justice system appear to be leaking very damaging reports to the media. It appears that long-pending investigations are coming to light after months and years of inaction by the government.

Guest blog: Poverty equals crime

The following is a guest response to "Crime is out of Control in Honduras":

I took the time to read your thoughts on the ongoing violence in Honduras and I can add that the only way things are going to get better in Honduras is by getting as many people out of poverty as possible.

This rampant poverty, lack of education and lack opportunities drives some young people to become delinquents and gang members. They grow up to become thieves and killers. They grow up to believe the only way to get ahead is by going against the system and taking advantage of those who can be taken advantage of. They feel above the law because many of them are members of the law themselves, members of the government themselves, or they work for a corrupt government official or corrupt law enforcement official.

And if they don't work for anyone but themselves, they chose to be criminals because they know they can get away with it as police forces are incapable of pursuing every law breaker out there. Unless the government focuses its resources on purging the system and washing out the scum and worthless, the government will continue to be in the crapper, and in turn, everyone else in the country.

I was watching CNN en Español sometime before the events at the San Pedro Sula airport, and they were talking about the constant and prevalent violence in Honduras. The CNN anchorwoman opened her news story by saying "In Honduras, where every adult citizen is entitled to own up to five firearms, crime and violence continues to dominate". Her opening statement was to point out that Honduras was a society allowed to be armed as to imply that the fact that citizens have the legal right to own weapons, that it may be a contributor to the violence.

In reality, legal ownership of firearms is not the real contributor to crime or violence since many of these crimes and killings are committed with weapons of illicit origin or illegal to be in the hands of civilians.

Committing acts of violence is already a crime and killing is already a crime so clearly passing laws that penalize this or that won't make any difference in a society and culture where killing is the norm. People don't commit murder because there's a law that allows them to own a gun (we know the weapons used in crimes are of the illicit nature to begin with) nor do they commit murder because it isn't illegal (it is illegal, we all know that), they kill because they have been raised in a culture where it's okay to do whatever you have to do to get by and because they know the chances of being caught and punished for their crimes are slim.

The government can pass all the laws they want or even take away the right to bear arms entirely since they could as gun ownership is not a constitutional right in Honduras, but it would still not reduce crime. There are already thousands of illegal guns in the hands of criminals and as long as the laws are not enforced and police forces are not properly equipped with the funding, the manpower, a descent salary, the equipment and the tools to do their jobs, thugs will continue to rule the streets.

— The author lives in the United States, lived in Honduras for several years before, has traveled back and forth to Honduras since 1994, and is familiar with Honduran culture and its people. He graciously consented to the publishing of his response to "Crime is out of control in Honduras". Your comments are welcome.

Facebook and Google+ identities: online, real, common, fake

Cartoon by Dave Walker
Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

The 'nymwars'

After doing a lot of reading about the online identity issue, I wanted to share some of what I've found with you. I know that many might initially think that someone who uses a "fake" name does it for nefarious purposes. It is often true among cyberbullies and spammers. That can't be denied. But the 'nymwars' (name wars) is an important issue for many other people for many legitimate personal, professional, political, or safety reasons, especially those living in less democratic and violent societies.

The 'nymwars' is a hot topic and some of the articles I ran across point out the futility and ridiculousness of the "real name" policies. In some cases, the legal names of persons of foreign nationalities just haven't been real-sounding enough for Facebook and Google+ employees. In other cases, even real American ('center of the universe') names just don't sound real to the powers that be, as in the case of Violet Blue, a high-profile author whose account was terminated by Google+.

The "real name" policy is not something that can be realistically enforced unless these mega companies are going to ask all umpteen million users to submit government identification. Until then enforcement is most likely to come by two means: 1) Extremely unusual or obviously unreal names, or 2) complaints from other users. As in my Facebook case, a malicious user complaint could be merely because someone doesn't like your political opinions or doesn't want others to see the information that you are sharing. In some parts of the world, being able to so easily silence another user could severely limit freedom of expression.

After a lot of bad publicity and significant pressure from the nymwars, Google+ just announced that they have reconsidered their "real name" policy. But from what I've read, they may adopt Facebook's policy of requiring a government issued photo ID. I'm not willing to do that.

I imagine that most of you would also be offended or concerned about your own privacy if you were asked to submit a copy of your ID merely for a casual online account.

What's in a name?

I understand the reasons for these policies. The internet can sometimes be a very unpleasant place because of trolls, spammers, and cyber bullies. I commend Google+ and Facebook for trying to make the internet a more civil place. YouTube comments are a perfect example of "freedom of speech" gone totally wrong.

On the other hand, a real "sounding" name can be meaningless, and does nothing to protect other users. This article reported that a man created 130 Facebook pages just to harass his ex-girlfriend. Apparently his fake names sounded real while mine didn't. Facebook's real name police didn't protect the victim.

Currently, I am again being cyberstalked by someone who purports to be using his real name. He follows the typical pattern of cyberstalkers: Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim with false accusations intended to turn other people against them. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for this purpose. More commonly they will repititiously post defamatory or derogatory statements about their stalking target on web pages, message boards, and in guest books. In some cases, they may pose as the identity of the victim and publish material in the victim's name that defames or ridicules others. Some cyber-bullies may also send threatening, harassing, and obscene emails and instant messages to the victims and their friends (sometimes using anonymizer email services), or post rumors, gossip, or false "quotes" attributed to the victim. Google's name polices have not protected me from cyberstalking, and in fact, Google's Blogger policy specifically does not protect against personal attacks or alleged defamation.

This points out the irony of the "real name" policies. I felt that using a false name would be dishonest. But as it turns out, if I had lied and said I was Maria Garcia or Jane Thompson, neither Facebook nor Google+ would have questioned my name and Facebook wouldn't have demanded an official government-issued photo identification. Most readers would have never questioned the lie either.

So what these "real name" policies actually do is to encourage dishonesty in people, who for valid reasons, don't feel they can or should use their legal name. After all, we aren't opening a bank account or applying for food stamps, we are just being "social", as they tell us we should be. Most importantly, what these policies do not do is to protect users against abusers or cyberstalkers.

What can be done to keep the internet "civil"?

I realize that it is extremely difficult for large companies to control abusers, but I think that they should at least make a cursory review for actual abuse before terminating someone's account. For some online services, one way that I've had to verify that I am who I say I am, the author of La Gringa's Blogicito, was to put a code provided by the company in the HTML section of my website, very simple to do and virtually impossible for anyone else to fake.

Robert Scoble, celebrity geek blogger, gave a long list of suggestions to Google+ about this issue, including the one I mentioned above. He also suggests implementing features similar to the Disqus commenting system (which I use here on the Blogicito). Disqus makes it very easy to almost completely eliminate spam and abuse. Google+ could make it easier to allow users to decide to block "fake posters" if they don't want to see them, but still allow others to see them if they want to. Scoble also recommends adapting an internet "clout" system. That might not be so different from what Google now uses to determine which search results go on top.

Update on my Facebook Status

The online petition to reinstate my Facebook account has received over 500 signatures. Thank you all so much. The petition will be closed and sent to Mark Zuckerberg soon. If you haven't signed yet, please hurry.

Dr. Ulf Erlingsson set up a page Reinstate La Gringa's Facebook Account. If you are on Facebook, I hope that you will join it.

Maybe nothing will be resolved in my case but I have a bit of hope if this article is true. It says that in this case, someone was able to have their FB account restored with an apology from FB.