The thin line between officer and criminal helps explain why just one in four arrest warrants gets filled. Too frequently, when police do bring in a suspect, the arrest is accompanied by a beating. Mexico City's human rights commission received over 200 complaints in 2002 of injuries at the hands of police, and 90 allegations of torture. Hundreds also complained of arbitrary detentions, a serious problem in a judicial system that averages three to six months to sentence those in custody.
"The Giuliani program might not be very viable if the police are not first adequately trained," says Pilar Noriega, top counsel for Mexico City's human rights commission.
photo: Claudio Troncoso
Juan Manuel Gutierrez, 11, makes $7 a day.
Related Content
More About
Currently police are not allowed to take fingerprints, access criminal records, or interrogate suspects. The Giuliani group suggests that laws be changed to give police these powers. The firm also advocates tougher sentences, despite acknowledging that Mexico City's justice and penal systems need a serious overhaul. Public defenders are overworked, prisons are beyond full, and corruption is the rule.
The Giuliani report notes that Mexico City police typically detain people for disorderly public conduct, such as urinating and drinking in the streets. The report then goes on to say that the punishments for such behavior—fines of $4.50 to $135, or up to 36 hours in jail—are too lax. "The individuals cited in these types of processes neither respect authority nor the law due to a lack of sufficiently coercive tools to effectively penalize them," the report says.
Mexico City police chief Ebrard has begun implementing what recommendations he can, aiming for a 10 percent reduction in crime for 2004.
Inspired by the concept of zero tolerance, Mexico City's legislative assembly already toughened penalties on a series of infractions in April. The new measures give small-time thieves, including shoplifters and people who munch on store food while strolling through the supermarket, at least six months in prison.
Peter Thottam, a 32-year-old lawyer from Los Angeles, found himself in the midst of the new crackdown in June when his tourist guidebook disappeared inside a Sanborns store. Thottam set about looking for it, opened a door to the street, and was nabbed for almost stepping out with a pair of the store's socks in his hand. Unable to convince the staff in his broken Spanish that he had planned to buy the socks, Thottam was carted off for a four-night stay in the city's overcrowded prisons.
Thottam was crammed into a cold, damp cell designed for four with 13 others, who slept on the floor back to back. Guards and inmates were constantly hitting him up for cash because everything in the jail—access to the bathroom, mess hall, and visitors—cost money. "I couldn't get over how surreal it was," Thottam says, "all over a pair of socks."
Luckily he had a friend in the city to front his $1,100 bail so he could hightail it out of Mexico.
Meanwhile, penalties for the convicted are often grossly disproportionate to the crime. Raul Rios, a 24-year-old who has lived on the street for most of his life, has been in jail for over a year, accused of stealing the equivalent of 10 cents. Rios became aggressive while asking for a handout of one peso, prompting a woman to declare that she was being robbed. Rios expects to spend the rest of his two-year sentence in a rehabilitation program sponsored by the Catholic Church.
"You could say that these sentences are exaggerated, but they're not. They're real," says Tlacaelel Paredes, a psychologist who works with the church program.
Another offender Paredes counseled, 30-year-old Victor Nonato, served more than four years for stealing a bottle of milk. The sentence was lengthened because Nonato had previously been convicted of stealing auto parts. Paredes traces Nonato's choices to a life of extreme poverty, a condition shared by one-third of the Mexican population. "His little sister was crying out for milk, and they didn't have any. He felt desperate," says Paredes.
Many chilangos have mixed feelings about zero tolerance. They sympathize somewhat with those who commit crimes out of desperation, and marvel at the ingenuity of "nuisance" services provided by the franeleros. They also benefit from the order in the disorder, as they can pay off police when caught driving drunk or buying recreational drugs.
Yet capital dwellers are exasperated by the high level of crime and anxiety. According to a survey conducted by the ICESI think tank, each year one in every three households in the city had a member who was victimized.
"Maybe some of these measures appear to be very drastic, and maybe they are, but something has to be done," says Raul Ceron, director of a justice program funded by phone carrier Telmex.
Since 1996, Telmex's nationwide justice program has shelled out bail for more than 30,000 first-time offenders, some of whom can't even come up with $10 to await sentencing at home. The new laws in Mexico City, though, have pushed bail for many offenders above the foundation's limit of $1,000 per person.
Telmex chairman Carlos Slim, the richest man in Latin America, contributed to Giuliani Partners' multimillion-dollar fee. Slim has also undertaken the rehabilitation of Mexico City's colonial center, where closed-circuit cameras have been installed in a nod to Giuliani's Big Brother program in Washington Square.
