Possibilities of Advancing Police Reform in Guatemala through Community -Oriented Policing

Abstract

The paper describes the process of security sector reform in Guatemala with reference to the efforts to implement community-based policing practices. The results point to the difficulties of shakingoff public understandings of security honed during the armed conflict and underscore the efforts of a still young police institution to position itself in a democratic context. The study posits that communityoriented policing strategies open opportunities to forward police reform in the high-violence, low-trust, weak-institutions, and post-conflict context of Guatemala. The argument is supported by field data gathered in indigenous territories in the Western Highlands, where traditional forms of social organization persist, and in metropolitan Villa Canales municipality, an urban, high-violence site of research.

Comparative Reflections on Community-Oriented Policing (COP) in Post-Conflict Central America

“…Our research conducted in Villa Canales and Totonicapán show that community engagement by the police has met with positive reactions from residents [59]. However, not all police agents have been trained to implement the model.…”

“…The Civilian Guard opted to recruit elements from the disbanded National Police, the Military Police, and the Finance Police into a new force to fulfill the government's formal quantitative goals, and with the hope they could be substituted in the years to come. The lack of preparation for enrolment, the low wage levels, and the consequent limitations in academic preparation and other capacities of the new recruits resulted, however, in a failure to deliver a clear severance with the repressive police culture of the past [59].…”

“…An institutional policy for community policing was not, however, adopted until the launch of the Integral Community Security Police Model (MOPSIC) in 2014 [59]. MOPSIC is a model founded on the assignment of clear responsibilities to police officers in charge of stations or sub-stations for crime indicators in their demarcations.…”

“…The MOPSIC manual provides guidance for police stations to carry out work in specific sectors of their assigned district [59]. An Integral Format of Police Activities (FIAPOL) sheet is used to plan activities and set up times of turns and work periods.…”

Civil Security in the Wake of Crisis—Renegotiating Police-Community Relations in Post-Crisis Development in Swat, Pakistan

“…Globally, there is an increasing trend towards what is often referred to as alternative dispute resolution processes of mediation and arbitration that is attached to the formal justice system to, for example, reduce the burden on the courts in corporate disputes [34] or in peace negotiations, such as those undertaken by Nelson Mandela which moved between formal and behind the scenes dialog and communication [35]. There are also extensive examples of indigenous conflict resolution institutions which have been around for centuries, such as the Cantons of Guatemala [36], which are richly described in the literature [37]. There is less documentation, however, of processes of reform which describe processes of bricolage which lead to the development of institutions that lie somewhere in between the formal and informal.…”