translated from Spanish: The national guard’s zero hour

One of the few things that President López Obrador will be able to celebrate today on the occasion of the first anniversary of his election triumph is the creation of the National Guard, which was presented yesterday in Campo Marte.Take forward a new security institution of that magnitude not it is a simple task, much more so when it must start operating at a time when most controls in the field of public safety have been lost with an increase in the rates of virtually all crimes. There have been successes and mistakes in the formation of the National Guard, but from today it will be on the streets and will also be tested a security strategy in which not many, too many, chapters are not clear. It seems that the National Guard is entrusted with the government to solve a problem that actually transcends it. And the strategy goes all the way there. The National Guard was born with 70,000 men who come mostly from the military and naval police, plus a group of the federal police in an integration process that has proved difficult and tortuous. Operationally, I do not believe that the GN has more than 50 thousand elements today, nor that everyone is fully trained. It is not humanly possible to do so in such a short period of time. Of these elements there are 26 thousand already deployed on the northern and southern borders, fulfilling tasks that are not the ones that originally belonged to them. Replacing them with elements of the National Migration Institute will be at least complex, firstly because most border-based agents accused of corruption have been removed. Secondly, because the integration of elements of the Federal Police that was proposed will not be easy starting with the way in which the new head of the Institute has referred to them. The truth is that such integration will take, and the thousands of elements of the GN will still have to be at the border for many months. The others will be distributed in 155 areas of the country. The case of Mexico City shows the potential and problems that this strategy must face. Three thousand elements of the GN will be moved to the capital, a city that has the state police with a unique, broader and better equipped command in the country. But the mistakes made in recent months by the citizens’ security secretariat have made it an inoperative institution. The GN will not be able to replace the 80 thousand elements of the capital police. You have to work with them and I imagine that somehow intervene in decision-making in order to transform things. Changes have been made that will be positive in the country’s capital. The appointment of Omar García Harfuch to the investigating police goes beyond that appointment. Firstly, because the investigation area of the capital prosecutor’s office was simply a disaster zone, from the teams to the facilities to a large part of the staff. García Harfuch has also been entrusted with the intelligence area, with the small detail that in fact it does not exist. Not bad, sometimes it’s easier to build than to mend. Javier García Paniagua’s youngst son also has the coordination of the head of government’s morning security meeting. With a plus that their predecessors did not have: by training and history it has a strong relationship with the military commands. If such efficient communication can be given between local police and investigative forces, military and National Guard command, one can be optimistic and think that security can be substantially improved in the country’s capital. That is the model that must be replicated in the areas where the GN will operate. The problem is that not everyone has qualified personnel to do it, even in more than one region the men and women of the GN will find that they will simply leave them responsibility while local forces get away from their work. This has happened over the past 15 years in many areas of the country with local security forces when they were deployed to serve security. We must wish the GN the best, but we must be aware that there are a lack of structures below it to fully regain security. We need a comprehensive strategy, incorporating local and state police, creating and deploying truly operational areas of research, and ensouring personnel with that task. Only then will the GN succeed. I hope so.



Original source in Spanish