Report to President Calderon: Only 35% of Municipal Police in Juarez Passed the "Trustworthiness" Test

From a story in Diario (click here for story):

The national Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna, issued a report to President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday, during the president's visit to Cd. Juarez. The report consisted of an evaluation of the results of the "We are All Juarez" security program, launched a few months ago. In attendance when the report was delivered to the president were Governor Cesar Duarte and Mayor Teto Murguia.

Typically, such reports contain statistical information about the effectiveness of a particular initiative. This report is no different, and it presents an interesting profile of the kinds of issues the federal government has been trying to handle in recent months in Juarez. A few examples, but remember that many persons in Juarez do not complain to police forces, either local, state, or federal, so there is an unknown number of complaints that are not registered:

Kidnapping: 34 kidnap victims were freed by federal police, 38 kidnappers were arrested, and 5 kidnapping rings were broken up.

Protection Racket Extortion: 109 complaints of extortion were registered. Out of these 103 cases were "dealt with" without the victims paying anything; 6 were registered after payment had been given. 28 arrests have been made.

Telephone Extortions: 359 complaints were registered, out of which 306 were classified as "attempted extortion." 53 complaints were registered after payment had been made.

Federal Police Emergency calls: The Center for Emergencies and Rapid Response received 1495 calls on 089, an average of 8.4 per day. (This average is, incidentally, almost exactly what the homicide average is so far this year.)

066 Calls: the more common 066 number for emergencies (equivalent to 911) received 795,968 calls. Out of these only 164,271 fell within the scope of the service, but the wait times for a response to a qualifying emergency have dropped from 20 minutes to 7 minutes.

Drug Cartels: 118 suspected members of the Juarez cartel (La Linea) have been arrested, and 22 member of the Pacific cartel (Chapo Guzman) have been arrested. No figures were released about how many of these are still being detained.

"Trustworthiness Tests:" Without specifying what the test consists of, Garcia Luna asserted that 1664 tests were administered to municipal police in the six month time frame, and only 35% of those tested were declared to be fully "trustworthy." ("controles de confianza"). The entire municipal police force consists of about 2500 officers, recruited and trained for municipal police duty during the past year or so, after the entire municipal police force had been dissolved when the armed forces arrived to replace them in early 2009.