GIs Take Over Most Dreaded Haiti Police Post

U.S. soldiers took another significant step in dissolving Haiti’s military authority Monday, entering the country’s most feared police station in a move that marks the downfall of Lt. Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, Haiti’s most dreaded policeman.

Coming less than a week after U.S. troops abolished the Haitian army’s most important unit, the Heavy Weapons Company, Monday’s action at the downtown police headquarters, and at three other important stations, in effect eliminated even the appearance of the military’s power.

The next step, U.S. officials said, will be the identification and registration of the 1,500 policemen as a precursor to the purging of the force and its separation from the army, a major goal of the U.S. troops who arrived a week ago to secure the end of Haiti’s military dictatorship.

U.S. officers denied they were occupying the downtown police headquarters, saying they were there only “to assist and cooperate with the police.” But their presence certainly looked like an occupation and sounded like an occupation.

And the people certainly thought it was an occupation--one that sent them into ecstasy when two armored U.S. military police vehicles pulled up at 10 a.m. to the 59-year-old architectural monstrosity on the jammed Gran Rue.

While some U.S. troops walked through the structure and others stood guard out front, M-16 assault rifles slung from their shoulders, dozens of confused Haitian police in blue uniforms looked on sullenly from inside, the only noise the sound of dominoes being slammed on a table where arrested people used to be interrogated.

Outside, the noise was deafening as thousands, and then tens of thousands, of people headed into downtown, dancing and chanting and turning the area into one of delighted bedlam.

Popularly called the Cafeteria because that is what the police building was when first built in 1935, the massive, dirty-yellow structure represented all that was ugly and grotesque in Haiti’s murderous police.

By the accounting of human rights organizations, hundreds of people have died or disappeared after being taken to the Cafeteria; thousands more have been beaten and tortured in its fetid and windowless cells.

“When they take you in at night,” goes a local saying about the station, “they take you in the morning to the body dump.”

To 69-year-old Jean Elie, the U.S. presence was liberating. “These are good times,” he said, “good times. Before, I was afraid to even look in there,” he said of the building’s dark entryway.

He could look now, and he joined a large group of Haitians laughing and chanting at the police, “They are afraid!”

The Cafeteria also was the headquarters of Francois, then an army major, during the military overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s only elected president, on Sept. 30, 1991.

“Sweet Mickey,” as he is derisively called behind his back, built a reputation for brutality and corruption while commander of the Cafeteria--a brand he carried with him when he named himself national police chief after the coup.

“This is the end of Francois,” a diplomat said. “He’s out of here.” Francois is--along with Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, the army commander in chief, and Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby, the army chief of staff--one of the men the United Nations wants removed from power.

Actually, the Americans’ takeover of police stations Monday came earlier than expected.

Friends of Francois had said privately over the weekend that he would be leaving Haiti in the next few days--before any such U.S. move--so he could avoid the humiliation of being on hand when he lost control.

Francois, the reclusive 37-year-old son of an army Palace Guard major who served during the bloody reign of Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, showed either defiance or cowardice by refusing to meet with Col. Michael Sullivan, the U.S. military police commander who is engineering the dismantling of the Haitian force.

Haitian police did not resist when the American troops approached the Cafeteria, although the inability or refusal of the U.S. soldiers to break up the demonstration brought a protest from the Cafeteria commander, Capt. Josue Montheville.

“If the people stay here in front of my troops, they could become very angry; it could be very bad,” he told a reporter. “If the people do not go from there, it will not be good for my troops.”

According to U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Egnor, the Haitian police “wanted to do their job their way,” meaning to attack the demonstrators. “We don’t want them to,” Egnor said.

The move against the police, whom U.S. troops had already told to stop beating demonstrators, was not the only significant event.

* Looters raided two warehouses in the western town of Gonaives, one belonging to the United Nations and one to a private French volunteer organization.

* U.S. Army spokesmen defended the killing of 10 Haitians by Marines during the weekend in a firefight in the northern city of Cap Haitien. Acknowledging that a Marine fired the first shot, Col. Barry Willey told reporters that the battle opened after a Haitian raised an Uzi submachine gun “with clear hostile intent.”

Willey also said a demand by Cedras that the U.S. troops be punished was rejected. “There won’t be any court-martial,” he said.

Cap Haitien was peaceful Monday, and in their first patrols outside the city, Marines ventured to two nearby towns, Grande Riviere and Limbe. There, local residents voluntarily handed over to the Americans about 75 automatic and semiautomatic weapons, in addition to some handguns--though the soldiers said the old weapons were useless.

* The United States will begin buying arms from Haitian civilians today, “to remove illegal weapons to create a secure environment,” according to Willey. Payment for the weapons, generally well below black market rates, will be $50 for handguns, $100 for semiautomatic rifles, $200 for machine guns, $300 for mortars and $100 for grenades and other explosives.

* U.S. Embassy spokesman Stanley Shrager announced Monday that U.S. troops will guard the Parliament when it opens Wednesday for the first time in nearly a year to debate an amnesty law for Cedras, Biamby and Francois.