Policing the Policia

After democratic leaders virtually dismantled the rapacious Argentine military over the past decade, the 48,000 officers of the Buenos Aires provincial police emerged as the country’s biggest armed force--and its biggest public safety problem.

Among other scandals, police were accused of involvement in a bloody terrorist bombing, the mafia-style murder of a journalist, drug trafficking, even cattle rustling.

So last year, a team of high-powered lawyers and academics performed radical surgery. They broke the militaristic, top-heavy force into 18 semiautonomous departments. As for 300 commanders accused of turning the police into a “federation of mafias,” the reformers concluded there was only one thing to do: Fire them all.

“We said, ‘Look, there is institutional responsibility here,’ ” recalls Alberto Binder, an international consultant on justice reform. “In a bankrupt company, you get rid of all the managers. So here we got rid of them all. It was a traumatic process. We received threats. There were killings among police officials.”

That kind of dramatic and dangerous change is taking place across Latin America, where governments are trying to transform authoritarian justice systems that are the legacy of Iberian monarchs and inquisitors.

Although Latin American countries have deposed dictators and opened up their economies in the past two decades, the hard work of democratization is incomplete. Societies remain profoundly unequal and unjust. A slow-motion riot of lawlessness threatens to reverse democratic progress.

Justice reform has acquired the urgency that restoring democracy had in the 1980s and modernizing economies had in the 1990s.

“We haven’t constructed institutions to defend us from authoritarianism,” Binder said. “We must put as much energy into that as we did into political and economic reform.”

Mexico, Central America and Colombia get more attention because of their proximity to the United States and their struggles against guerrillas and drug lords. But it is a measure of the regionwide crisis that the problems and the drive for reform are just as urgent across South America.

The map smolders with zones of endangered democracy.

Guerrillas, drug lords and death squads are pushing Colombia close to collapse. Criminality and conflict weaken democracies such as Venezuela, Peru and Paraguay, aiding the rise of militaristic strongmen. Even nominally stable societies such as Brazil and Argentina pay the bloody consequences of their failure to construct the rule of law.

“The culture of Brazil has been the culture of impunity, especially for criminals in suits and ties,” said Jose Gregori, Brazil’s federal secretary for human rights.

The lament about impunity, la impunidad, echoes regionwide. Billionaires evade taxes, and politicians get away with murder. Petty swindlers don’t get caught, and the friendly cop who stops traffic to help you jaywalk disappears when stickup men strike.

There is a growing consensus that building honest, professional police forces and strong, independent judiciaries is vital to the future of Latin America.

Corruption “may be the single most important impediment to economic growth,” said former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin in a speech this year. Latin America’s trade with the United States rivals U.S. trade with Europe. But despite the region’s potential, Rubin said U.S. investors are wary of “organized crime, extortion and street violence.”

As bleak as the panorama seems, some leaders realize that the time has come for a revolu24tion of sorts. They are overhauling police forces, replacing ancient legal codes and modernizing dungeon-like penal institutions.

These are not neat and tidy success stories, however. Progress will be difficult, and a great deal depends on the commitment of political and economic elites. The most impressive achievement of brave and innovative reformers so far has been to force their societies to confront challenges that can no longer be postponed or ignored.

The problems and the solutions start on the street, where police now are fighting a war on two fronts.

On one front, there is rising crime caused by the world’s worst rate of economic inequality, wrenching social change, the expanding drug trade and weak institutions. Latin America’s homicide rate is more than double the world average, exceeded only by sub-Saharan Africa. It rose more than 44% from 1984 to 1994, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

On a second front, police fight a war against their own traditions of brutality and dishonesty. The balance between keeping the peace and cleaning up the police is excruciatingly delicate. Cracking down on corruption and protecting human rights can make it harder to control crime, and so far, the proper combination remains elusive.

The problems start far back in Latin American history.

“Until recently, the condition of the police did not affect the interests of the governing classes,” said Sofia Tiscornia, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires. “The police in the region . . . were oriented to control the so-called dangerous classes and not to resolve urban conflicts among free and equal men as occurred . . . in the United States and the Anglo-Saxon tradition.”

Argentina has relatively low crime and the region’s highest levels of per capita income and schooling. Buenos Aires’ European-style sophistication has made it the jewel of the region’s urban areas. But like most societies south of the U.S.-Mexico border, the political debate here centers on crime and law enforcement.

A three-year wave of violence threatens Argentina’s image as one of the few safe places in Latin America. The capital and surrounding province endure home invasions, carjackings and murders whose victims include political figures, sports stars and celebrities.

With startling regularity, Argentine police officers also fall victim to violence--on-duty shootouts and off-duty muggings as well as internal vendettas.

Officers Are Plentiful, But Feared by Citizens

Deputy Commander Gustavo Rossi of the provincial police, a strapping 42-year-old who packs two guns, still has a bullet lodged in his head from one of two off-duty shootings.

In the first incident, he said, robbers accosted him on the street and, after a struggle, shot him four times as he rolled for cover.

“I’m rolling and they’re pumping bullets into me, and as I roll I’m thinking, ‘This is it, I’m dead, I’ll never see my wife and daughter again,’ ” he recalled. “Finally I came up against a cement flower box, all bloody, and lay there. I looked up and saw these guys were talking to each other, they thought I was done for. So I pulled my gun and started shooting.”

Rossi wounded one robber, who was later captured.

Two years later, carjackers blocked his path as he drove with his family. They shot him four times through the windshield while he put the car in reverse and escaped.

“They have no fear of shooting a cop,” Rossi said. “On the contrary, if they find your badge, they are sure to kill you.”

The problem is not a shortage of police: Argentina has about twice as many officers per inhabitant as the United States and Great Britain.

But a characteristic unites Argentines with such diverse peoples as Brazilians and Mexicans: They are often afraid to call the police, who have historically functioned as a thuggish border patrol between enclaves of privilege and expanses of deprivation. About 70% of crimes here go unreported, according to federal officials.

Illicit power structures give police enormous influence and ability to resist change. As a result, reform-minded governments are bringing in outsiders, often left-leaning human rights activists and opponents of the region’s former authoritarian regimes.

In Brazil, Human Rights Secretary Gregori, a close ally of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has pushed through laws requiring renegade cops to be tried in civilian, not military, courts and creating a witness-protection program for those who denounce police atrocities.

Reform Centers on Civilian Oversight

The challenge of Leon Arslanian, who until August served as minister of justice and security in Buenos Aires province, is Latin America’s challenge in microcosm.

His experience is a cautionary tale that shows that reform depends on politics, and that the police have become the incendiary issue of the moment.

In 1985, Arslanian was a respected judge who presided over the trial of Argentina’s fallen dictators and generals for their campaign of murder, kidnapping and torture that claimed as many as 30,000 lives. The verdict was a historic triumph of justice in the region. Among the convicted: Gen. Ramon Camps, chief of the marauding provincial police force that decorated torture chambers with swastikas.

Last year, Arslanian took command of that force. It patrols a province that is bigger than France, has the approximate population of Los Angeles and San Diego counties combined and presents a panorama of poverty and semi-feudal politics.

Arslanian received his “super-minister” portfolio from Gov. Eduardo Duhalde, a machine politician who is running for president in this month’s elections and knows that his province’s history of predatory law enforcement is his Achilles heel.

“We found a police institution in a terminal crisis,” Arslanian said. “We had to find fast and effective methods to renovate the institution.”

The overhaul began with a purge. About 3,000 problem officers, including the 300 top commanders, were fired.

The stately palace of justice in the province’s capital of La Plata, once a bunker of feared chiefs with sprawling fiefdoms, was emptied of a uniformed hierarchy. The new chiefs of 18 police zones responded directly to Arslanian and a handful of youthful lawyers he made his deputies.

The new structure centered on civilian oversight. Changes in the legal code inserted civilians into an area fundamental to entrenched corruption: investigations.

The reformers dissolved detective brigades that used control of case files to negotiate with suspects. Even the internal affairs squad was known for extorting the officers it investigated.

The detectives’ piratical ways were allegedly embodied by Juan Jose Ribelli, a former chief of the auto theft division.

The imprisoned Ribelli, once a rising star of the force, faces trial on charges of providing a stolen van used in Argentina’s worst mass murder, the terrorist bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994 that killed 86 people. Ribelli is also accused of orchestrating a campaign to obstruct the investigation.

His arrest in 1996 exposed a network in which he allegedly accumulated a million-dollar fortune in partnership with gangsters. That case and charges against officers in the 1997 murder of a journalist--a crime seen as a gangster-style message to Gov. Duhalde himself--were the final straws that provoked the reform.

The new leadership put detectives in a separate force and placed them under the command of prosecutors, who had played largely “decorative” roles, said Fernando Dominguez, a prosecutor in suburban San Martin. Today prosecutors respond to homicides and other major crimes and, along with a fledgling corps of college-educated civilian investigators, closely supervise investigations.

Community Policing Gains a Foothold

As in other countries, lack of resources and a huge backlog pose obstacles: There are only 21 prosecutors in San Martin, a district serving a high-crime area of 1.5 million. The caseload calls for 100 prosecutors, Dominguez said. And drastic procedural changes generate clashes.

“There is a big conflict between the old-style police and those of us in the justice system,” said prosecutor Daniel Canglosi, 30. “They say the law is too soft, and we say it is too hard. Prosecutors have gained more power at the expense of police. Now that some of the worst chiefs of the Camps era are gone, you have younger commanders who are more open-minded.”

As in the “community policing” model of North American cities, the ministry organized citizen panels in every precinct to help design patrol policy and monitor police conduct and expenditures. Arslanian cites last summer’s experiment in coastal cities, where the ministry consulted with community leaders on a strategy against the usual influx of robbers and burglars who prey on vacationers.

“The community forum proposed a plan that was totally the reverse of previous years’ strategies,” Arslanian said. Crime went down in coastal areas while it was going up overall, he said.

Although statistics are imprecise, the province’s crime rate increased about 30% since the reforms began, according to experts. Crime has gone up all over Argentina. But the increase in the province resulted partly from the inevitable clash of simultaneous objectives: eliminating corruption, protecting human rights and making officers more effective, experts say.

“There was great emphasis on institutional change and not on crime prevention strategy,” said Mariano Ciafardini, head of the federal Justice Ministry’s criminal policy division. “In this kind of process, if you don’t have a strategy in place, crime rises.”

The reasons are many: Change produces demoralization and disorganization. Police are more likely to go by the book.

Youthful criminals have become trigger-happy, a precinct commander in San Martin complained. Asked why, he talked about permissive laws and eroded values and then, with an uncomfortable grimace, got down to the bottom line: “They know we aren’t going to torture them anymore.”

Moreover, in the old system, clandestine pacts with the underworld helped control crime. Robbers who paid off detectives were careful not to get out of hand. The usual method of punishment for those who violated the pact was known in street jargon as a “mousetrap” or “operetta” in which police helped plan a robbery, but then set up an ambush and killed the robbers as they emerged with the loot.

“We had not calculated that crime control was based so strongly on territorial pacts,” Binder said. “Now it is no-man’s land. Now it is cops and robbers for real.”

There was a more sinister repercussion. Law enforcement experts suspect that fired officers, particularly ex-commanders with ties to active officials and mafias, fomented crime as a means of retaliation. Ex-cops were linked to robberies and home invasions in wealthy areas apparently calculated to generate media impact, Arslanian said.

There were threats and mysterious attacks on prominent figures, including bodyguards of Gov. Duhalde. Fifteen years after the return of democracy, an Argentine leader worried not about a military coup, but the danger of assassination by rogue cops.

“The governor feared for his life and that of his family,” Arslanian said.

As the reform encountered obstacles, former advisors and opposition-party leaders distanced themselves. They accused Arslanian of compromising his ideals and alleged that politicians interfered to protect mayors, judges and other power brokers involved in corruption.

Hostage Crisis Vindicates Reformers

Just as politics spurred Duhalde to order the cleanup, his presidential ambitions and roots in the provincial machine hobbled a well-intentioned project, critics say.

Trailing in opinion polls for the upcoming election, the governor appeared to back down. He granted pensions to about 200 of the fired Old Guard commanders. Duhalde also supported a campaign shift by the candidate he endorsed to replace him as governor, who in August appealed to conservative voters by criticizing the reform’s emphasis on civil rights and declaring that “the police should shoot thieves.”

Faced with a dramatic withdrawal of political support, Arslanian resigned. Critics allege that former police kingpins are using this lame-duck period to reassert their power in the force.

On Sept. 17, the specter of the past returned with a vengeance. A botched early-morning robbery turned into a nationally televised, 20-hour standoff pitting SWAT teams against gunmen who took six hostages and barricaded themselves in a small-town bank.

A U.S.-trained negotiator achieved the release of three hostages. But just after 4 a.m., three robbers tried to escape in a Volkswagen sedan, using hostages as shields. As horrified Argentines watched, officers opened fire indiscriminately, shredding the slow-moving car with at least 35 bullets in what Duhalde condemned as “a massacre.”

The bank manager, an accountant and a robber died. The bank manager’s wife and a robber were wounded. A third robber survived unhurt, but was found hanged in his jail cell hours later.

The prisoner’s death immediately raised accusations that he had been killed or that police negligence led to his suicide. The approach of presidential elections added to the uproar over the incident. Amid a purge of high-ranking officials, the new justice minister resigned after 45 days on the job.

Suspicions abound: Was the tragedy bad luck, sheer ineptitude or something more sordid? Was the robbery staged by police who then tried to silence their henchmen? Was the bloodshed an elaborate plot by ex-commanders to pound the final nail in the coffin of Duhalde’s fading candidacy?

“The people feel like they are living a nightmare,” said gubernatorial candidate Graciela Fernandez Mejide, a prominent human rights activist. “There is an incredible lack of political leadership. No one is in charge.”

The hostage tragedy makes another major reform plan inevitable. Arslanian’s effort has gained new respect. “The aborted police reform has been horrifyingly vindicated,” wrote columnist Sergio Moreno in the Pagina 12 newspaper.

So the outlook is uncertain even in a nation like Argentina, whose relative prosperity and stability make it seemingly fertile soil for reform.

In the long run, Argentina and other Latin American nations must confront the poverty and social exclusion that breed violence and prevent the emergence of modern law enforcement, experts say.

In the short run, Arslanian said the new governor will have to continue transforming the police force--despite all the risks and difficulties.

“This is the great challenge of a democratic society,” Arslanian said. “The democracy has to show it is strong enough to maintain the rule of law without concessions. We can’t say it’s better to leave things as they are. . . . It is a question of governability.”

About This Series

Despite reforms of the past two decades, Latin American societies remain unequal and unjust. This three-part series explores efforts to reform the justice system, which have taken on the urgency of restoring democracy in the 1980s and modernizing economies in the 1990s.

* Today: Police fight rising crime while battling their own traditions of brutality and dishonesty.

* Monday: Reformers rewrite criminal codes, open up secretive investigations and trials, and protect the rights of the poor and powerless.

* Tuesday: Prison officials strive to end overcrowding and violence with large construction program and campaign to change the mentality of authorities, inmates and the community at large.

The series will be available on the Internet at https://www.latimes.com.