Should a police emergency be declared? The National Police and its institutional crisis

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By Jorge Rolón Luna* 

The model of polic­ing that has emerged in Paraguay since the end of Stro­n­ismo, and the con­sti­tu­tional and le­gal re­forms that fol­lowed, can be char­ac­ter­ized as a “brief­case model“. I call this a way of or­ga­niz­ing the ac­tions of the po­lice in which the main con­cern is the se­cu­rity of the state and the po­lit­i­cal class, and which is re­pro­duced un­der an il­le­gal col­lec­tion scheme that ben­e­fits both the po­lice in­sti­tu­tion it­self and its po­lit­i­cal bosses.

The “brief­case model” is the prod­uct of an im­plicit pact be­tween pol­i­tics and the po­lice: the lat­ter en­sures pro­tec­tion and de­fense of the sta­tus quo while at the same time gen­er­at­ing and shar­ing sub­stan­tial loot, all in ex­change for the for­mer grant­ing it free rein for il­licit ac­tiv­i­ties and a cer­tain amount of im­punity.

Thus, per­mis­sive­ness and im­punity are the condi­ments of this model in which the un­writ­ten man­date for the po­lice in­sti­tu­tion is to ob­tain money in any way, with no lim­its what­so­ever. As a re­tired (and con­victed) po­lice chief con­fessed: dur­ing Stro­n­ismo, “the best po­lice­man was the one who beat the most; now, the best po­lice­man is the one who col­lects the most”. Ac­cord­ing to the tes­ti­monies of agents, and the daily ex­am­ple of the po­lice in­volved, the il­licit acts range from drug traf­fick­ing, as­saults, mur­ders, kid­nap­pings, ha­rass­ment of tourists and sim­ple cit­i­zens who, for ex­am­ple, have the un­for­tu­nate idea of park­ing their ve­hi­cles at night in a dark place.

Two el­e­ments are spe­cific to the po­lice sys­tem de­scribed: its po­lit­i­cal au­ton­omy and self-gov­ern­ment. They im­ply, the first “a marked doc­tri­nal, or­ganic and func­tional in­de­pen­dence (…) and al­lowed it (the Po­lice) to act fre­quently as if it were above and be­yond the con­sti­tu­tional au­thor­ity of the Gov­ern­ment, in­creas­ingly pro­tect­ing its self-de­fined achieve­ments and in­ter­ests (…) while in the lat­ter, “the po­lice in­sti­tu­tion had wide mar­gins of in­de­pen­dence to gov­ern it­self or­gan­i­cally and func­tion­ally and, from there, to ex­er­cise the gov­ern­ment of gen­eral pub­lic se­cu­rity“.

The “brief­case model” is not ex­clu­sive to Paraguay; it is pos­si­ble to de­scribe the func­tion­ing of the po­lice in many Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries. How­ever, it is worth tak­ing a closer look at how it de­vel­oped in our coun­try, be­cause it has a par­tic­u­lar gen­e­sis.

How did we get here? It was not overnight. Dur­ing the pe­riod of Stro­n­ista dom­i­na­tion, the Po­lice (“of the Cap­i­tal”, at that time, plus the po­lice may­or’s of­fices through­out the coun­try) lived un­der Stroess­ner’s po­lit­i­cal power and sub­or­di­nated to the Armed Forces, to which it owed obe­di­ence. Af­ter the abrupt end of the Stro­n­ista pe­riod, this model sur­vived for some time (it con­tin­ued to be com­manded by a mil­i­tary of­fi­cer), un­til the 1992 con­sti­tu­tion de­ter­mined that the in­sti­tu­tion would be ex­clu­sively in charge of in­ter­nal se­cu­rity and en­tirely sub­or­di­nated to civil­ian power.

In prac­tice, this meant that the po­lice ac­quired a cer­tain au­ton­omy, which al­lowed them to con­trol ter­ri­tory by re­port­ing di­rectly to pol­i­tics and not to the armed forces. In this way, while mil­i­tary power was in pro­gres­sive de­cline, an­other il­le­gal and ar­bi­trary power emerged, linked to crim­i­nal­ity, which I call here “spu­ri­ous po­lice power“. We ex­changed the mboka for the gar­rote.

The se­ri­ous­ness of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is that this “brief­case model” – which has been in place for decades – has got­ten out of con­trol, with the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of crimes com­mit­ted by po­lice of­fi­cers.

Why does this hap­pen? There are sev­eral causes, but it is clear that im­punity and the lack of in­ter­est of the po­lit­i­cal class – lack of in­ter­est in se­cu­rity mat­ters, one could say – lead to these ne­far­i­ous po­lice self-gov­ern­ment.

One ex­am­ple il­lus­trates the per­mis­sive­ness and im­punity: at the be­gin­ning of the pan­demic, po­lice of­fi­cers in Alto Paraná were recorded steal­ing 70,000 dol­lars from Chi­nese cit­i­zens, a case that ended in noth­ing. Last No­vem­ber, in the same de­part­ment, po­lice of­fi­cers were ar­rested and charged with kid­nap­ping and ex­tor­tion: one of them was Ka­rina Ca­ballero, the of­fi­cer who was filmed stash­ing the bun­dles of dol­lars stolen from the Chi­nese in 2020 in her un­der­wear. How is it that some­one who the whole coun­try wit­nessed steal­ing money on video was still in of­fice?

This in­ex­plic­a­ble and un­ac­cept­able act – one of many like it – in­volves not only the in­sti­tu­tional com­mand, which keeps cor­rupt and crim­i­nal agents in of­fice, but the en­tire jus­tice sys­tem, which acts as an ac­com­plice to this model that deeply dam­ages the very foun­da­tions of democ­racy and the re­pub­li­can sys­tem.

The cur­rent in­sti­tu­tional de­te­ri­o­ra­tion is of such mag­ni­tude that po­lice com­man­der Gilberto Fleitas ac­knowl­edged just a few days ago that they face the se­ri­ous prob­lem that the in­sti­tu­tion it­self is in charge of spoil­ing its young of­fi­cers, who leave the po­lice acad­e­mies well trained “but break down along the way“.

The “briefcase model” is the product of an implicit pact between politics and the police: the latter ensures protection and defense of the status quo while at the same time generating and sharing substantial loot, all in exchange for the former granting it free rein for illicit activities and a certain amount of impunity.

In the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­rity Pol­icy doc­u­ment launched by the Min­istry of the In­te­rior in 2010 -which I co­or­di­nated and drafted-, the is­sue of early spread of cor­rupt and crim­i­nal prac­tices in the po­lice in­sti­tu­tion was al­ready noted. We call it the “Train­ing Day syn­drome”: rookie po­lice of­fi­cers ab­sorb the cor­rupt and law­less prac­tices of their su­pe­ri­ors as soon as they leave the acad­emy and en­ter po­lice work.

Just as a de­c­la­ra­tion of “prison emer­gency” has been made in 2019, ex­tended again a few days ago, due to the se­ri­ous prison sit­u­a­tion fac­ing the coun­try, it is per­haps also time to make a de­c­la­ra­tion of po­lice emer­gency, aimed at a pro­found re­form of the force.

* Re­searcher. For­mer di­rec­tor of the Ob­ser­va­tory of Co­ex­is­tence and Cit­i­zen Se­cu­rity of the Min­istry of the In­te­rior.

Cover im­age: AFP