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Friday, August 22, 2008

Anti crime pact: Finally concrete steps to curb Mexico’s violence?

By Jeremy Schwartz | Friday, August 22, 2008, 12:17 PM

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In an unprecedented gathering, Mexican officials ranging from President Felipe Calderon, Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard (both bitter political enemies), congressmen and representatives from the Mexican courts held a summit yesterday on the violence raging in Mexico. The meeting was a direct result of the ghastly kidnapping and killing of a 14-year-old businessman’s son this summer and an alarming spike in kidnappings throughout the country. According to the Citizen’s Institute of Insecurity Studies, 3,500 people are kidnapped each year in Mexico, an average of 17 per day. Officially, kidnappings have increased 9.1 percent in 2008.

The steps taken at the summit certainly sound promising. But Mexicans have heard anti-crime rhetoric for years. Most experts have distilled the problem to one overriding factor: corruption within Mexico’s underpaid and undertrained police forces. It’s still not clear how the proposals would clean up that nasty problem.

Here are some of the 74 measures (Thanks to The News and Reforma for the list):

—Eliminating bail options for kidnappers.

—The appointment of specially appointed judges, receiving higher salaries and more protection, to hear sensitive cases.

—The creation of elite anti-kidnapping police units.

—Better cell phone tracking equipment and a national database of cell numbers (the preferred communication tool of kidnappers).

—More treatment for drug addicts.

—Somehow purging corrupt cops within the year.

But experts are already blasting the proposals as more of the same. Ana Maria Salazar, a security expert in Mexico City, writes in this morning’s El Universal that the proposals don’t go far enough. “We require a profound surgery to the system that contemplates a new organization, but above all a deep reform to the judicial system,” she wrote.

In more promising news, El Universal also reported today that agents have arrested the supposed ringleader of the group that kidnapped 14-year-old Fernando Marti.

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