Wealthy Peruvians Hire Neighborhood Vigilantes

Herbert Ramirez struggled with a would-be car thief in the dark street and shoved him into the back of a van, which sped off to the nearest police station.

Ramirez is a neighborhood guard in Miraflores, a wealthy district of Lima grown tired of increasing crime and the lack of effective police protection.

He works for one of the growing number of “serenazgos”--vigilante patrols formed by well-off neighborhoods of this rundown, overpopulated capital, where one-third of Peru’s 22 million people live.

The appearance of the patrols is the latest illustration of society’s response to decades of governmental failure to provide essential services.

Peasants in the Andes have organized militias for years to defend themselves against leftist guerrillas. But only recently have Lima’s well-to-do added security forces to their high walls and electric fences, which have not stopped kidnaping and robbery.

Urban crime increases steadily as the economy sinks deeper into a recession now in its fifth year.

There were 802 murders unrelated to guerrilla violence in Lima last year, compared to 784 in 1991 and 727 in 1990, said Enrique Bernales, a former senator who heads a research center on violence.

“Lima is a tremendously unsafe city, and the recession is pushing more and more people into prostitution, crime and terrorism,” he said.

Before the Miraflores vigilante patrol was organized last year, prostitutes and drug dealers operated openly on the streets. Women were mugged and raped in parks left dark by burned-out street lights and power rationing. Battles between street gangs left bodies at the foot of the beachside cliffs.

“The police are overwhelmed by terrorism and drug trafficking,” said Alberto Andrade, mayor of the district of expensive shops and apartments. “The last thing they’re worried about is prostitution and street crime.”

Andrade said his campaign to photograph the license plates of clients and publish the numbers drove prostitutes from Miraflores. Muggings and rapes have declined sharply, he said, but gave no statistics.

Most calls to the neighborhood patrol this year, he said, have been to stop fights between drunks or lower the volume of noise from parties.

Since the swank San Isidro district formed its “serenazgo” two years ago, 12 of Lima’s 42 suburban districts have followed suit.

Outfitted with citizen-band radios and cellular telephones, fleets of patrol cars, motorcycles, pickup trucks and ambulances cruise the streets 24 hours a day. All-terrain vehicles patrol the beaches. The Monterrico district even has a helicopter.

Foot patrolmen armed only with nightsticks are linked by radio with city police, ambulances, tow trucks, even beach lifeguards.

Prostitutes, thieves, wife-beaters and unruly drunks are stuffed into cages in the back of pickup trucks and taken to police stations.

The San Isidro patrol, which has more than 200 uniformed agents and 20 vehicles, receives 80 calls a day and reported handling 6,000 cases last year.

Members of the patrols are paid about $200 a month, the same as regular police officers. They do everything from talking suicidal people out of jumping off window ledges to preventing robberies and chasing prostitutes away.

Residents praise the patrols, but police initially were hostile.

“The police arrested my men out of sheer jealousy until we hired them too,” said Carlos Neuhaus, mayor of San Isidro.

Now police officers often ride with patrols in serenazgo vehicles because the poorly equipped national police force does not have enough cars of its own. They collect salaries from the neighborhood groups in addition to their regular pay.

Serenazgos were not designed to fight the Shining Path rebels, but experts say the patrols help keep an eye on streets the police abandon after dark for fear of becoming guerrilla targets.

Shining Path guerrillas have threatened vigilante groups formed in shantytowns where it has a strong presence, but seems to be ignoring the serenazgos.

The boom in special security was spurred by car bombings in July, 1992, that killed at least 40 people and wounded hundreds.

Neighborhoods also have formed volunteer committees that report suspicious activity by telephone.

Some analysts fear the serenazgos will turn into private armies serving the interests of district mayors as the capital’s neighborhoods become increasingly independent.

“Lima is no longer an integrated city,” Bernales said. “The fragmentation of the city cannot be stopped, and that’s highly dangerous.”