Corruption scandals blow up in Honduran President Orlando Hernandez's pet security forces.
| Autor | Rodriguez, George |
News about police officers stealing confiscated drug money or kidnapping a man in broad daylight would hardly shock anyone in Honduras, whose police ranks are a case study in massive, unyielding corruption and abuse of authority. But recent media reports that such crimes were committed by officers in two of the country's newest militarized police forces--among President Orlando Hernandez's pet security projects--were cause for scandal in this Central American nation.
In the first case, 22 members of the Tropa de Inteligencia y Grupos de Respuesta Especial de Seguridad (TIGRES, an acronym for the Spanish word for tigers), are facing legal proceedings, charged with having stolen US$1.3 million of the US $12.5 million they had confiscated while arresting the leaders of a drug-trafficking structure.
TIGRES is an elite force created in 2013, officially mandated to be in direct contact with communities as part of an effort to revamp the negative image--as ridden by widespread, unchecked corruption--the regular police force has with most Hondurans (NotiCen, Sept. 5, 2013).
The second case involves four officers of the Policia Militar de Orden Publico (PMOP) who were caught while kidnapping the owner of a fruit shop in a market in the southern sector of Tegucigalpa, the country's capital.
PMOP--the newest of the two--was also created to perform special operations besides regular police work with the official aim to diminish spiraling crime rates--some of the highest worldwide--which, different estimates indicate, have skyrocketed to more than 90 homicides per 100,000 population.
TIGRES and PMOP are among the new police forces (NotiCen, Feb. 6, 2014), some militarily oriented, that have come to life with decisive backing from JOH--as Hernandez is locally referred to--within the framework of the Policia Nacional (PN), among them the Direccion Nacional de Investigacion Criminal (DNIC), Direccion Nacional de la Policia Preventiva (DNPP), and Direccion Nacional de Servicios Especiales de Invetsigacion (DNSEI).
Perfect crime turns out not to be
Local media reported that, the morning of Oct. 5, 2014, more than 70 troopers of two police bodies--including 22 TIGRES--took part in an operation in the town of Florida, in a mountainous area of the western Honduran department of Copan, close to the border with Guatemala. The PN says that 71 officers took part in the operation--51 members of TIGRES and 20 of the Unidad Especial de Lucha contra el Narcotrafico.
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