500 complaints against CDMX police for sexual crimes, pending

Claudia Sheinbaum’s promise to women to end police sexual abuse in the capital has remained only in that: in a promise. 
In August 2019, after three almost simultaneous cases of sexual assaults by police, thousands of women and feminist collectives took to the streets of the city to protest under the slogan ‘They do not take care of me, they rape me’. Although Sheinbaum initially criticized the mobilizations, he finally received a group of activists at a dialogue table in which he promised to attack the problem at its roots, but there have been few results.  
The Prosecutor’s Office has opened, until August 2021, 531 investigation folders for sexual crimes allegedly committed by city police, elements of the Army and Navy, and private security guards. 

But until May 31, less than 8% of those cases (42) had reached the courts, without it being known to date if there was a single sentence. The rest of the folders were archived or are still in process. While only 23 police officers of the Secretariat of Citizen Security (SSC) have been discharged for sexual crimes, despite the fact that this corporation accumulates more than 400 complaints. 

Not only that. Although the head of government promised that the fight against institutional sexist violence would be a priority, her administration did not provide sufficient resources or personnel to face the problem. 

Renata Villarreal, an activist with Marea Verde Mexico, was one of the participants in the meeting with Sheinbaum in August 2019.  At two years, he calls it “a waste of time.” 
 “When we saw that they just wanted to give us a finger and that we went once a week to sit on some benches, we decided to retire. Not a single activist stayed because no action was taken. In fact, we offered them training courses to sensitize the authorities, from the police in the field, to the agents of the Public Ministry, to the judges, because we know that there can be a change.” 
Villarreal assures that the answer was always the same: “They told us everything that there was no budget. And even though we told them ‘ok, we give the workshops for free’, the door was closed to us.” 
 The former prosecutor of sexual crimes of the city, Susele Deyanira Ortega Lara, also speaks of lack of budget to fulfill what was promised after the dialogue tables. “They want the problem to be combated, but they don’t give you what. It’s as if they tell you to sow a forest, but they don’t give you trees, shovels, or water. You can’t do that.”
And in the current administration of the capital government, they confirm it. 
Laura Angelina Borbolla Moreno, general coordinator of Investigation of Gender Crimes and Attention to Victims of the capital prosecutor’s office, assures that an internal restructuring of the Prosecutor’s Office of Attention to Sexual Crimes was made, in which a unit dedicated only to sexual crimes committed by police was created. Although he admits that they have had to do “more with less” due to budget adjustments. 
“For the same pandemic reasons, budgets were hit hard this year and last. We had to do more with less in the sense of reorganizing the work and restructuring all the personnel that were already assigned to the Sexual Crimes Prosecutor’s Office.” 
Marcela Figueroa Franco, Undersecretary of Institutional Development of the SSC-CDMX, attributes other factors. He says in an interview that the bureaucracy, the administrative disorder, and the failures in the integration of the files explain the slowness of the investigations within the corporation, although he highlights as progress the creation of a Specialized Gender Unit of Internal Affairs. 
But for women who are victims of abuse, rape and sexual assault there is no justification. Less for those who denounce and see that nothing happens. In the pending cases, there are, for example, 27 complaints indicating that the police did not act alone; or the case of a woman who reported 7 police officers for sexual assault. 
“The women who live and travel through Mexico City still cannot trust the police,” says Suhayla Bazbaz, director of the civil organization Community Cohesion and Social Innovation (CCIS), and coordinator of the campaign ‘They don’t take care of me, they rape me’.
“The police have never taken care of me”
Mamba is 27 years old. It is not called that, he asked to protect his identity to narrate in an interview that he was a victim of kidnapping and sexual assault by elements of the Secretariat of Citizen Security (SSC) of Mexico City; the most denounced instance in the last two years in the capital: of the 531 folders opened for sexual crimes as of August of this year, 75% are against city police. A figure that far exceeds the 64 complaints filed against private security elements, and of the 19 against the Ministry of Defense, the other two most denounced instances. 
She was with a friend when Gustavo A. Madero met with city police officers at the mayor’s office. 
“They told me it was a kidnapping,” Mamba says. The patrol car they were loaded into stopped on a poorly lit block. Minutes later, another patrol arrived at the place: “They made like a little house so that no one would see them. My sexual parts were touched and my friend was also groping very seriously,” she says. 
“They separated us in the two patrol cars and brought us around. They intimidated us that they were going to rape us, they were going to kill us, they were going to sell us, they were going to throw us away and that our families were never going to know where.”
The touching continued, the young woman relates that she was left alone when she warned that if they continued to assault her they would not pay the ransom. The police asked them for 100,000 pesos, an amount impossible to get. In the end, freedom was set at 10 thousand pesos.
At 9.30 p.m., six hours after they were abducted, Mamba’s friends managed to raise the money and the two were released. 
For days, the young woman was in shock and pondering whether to go to the Prosecutor’s Office to report. Finally, he decided that he had no case. The cops had kept their IDs and would know where to find them. Fear prevailed.
“Now I am aware that the police have never taken care of me, and that those who take care of me are my friends,” she says almost a year after the case, using the slogan that gave rise to the demonstrations in the capital in August 2019 and the subsequent dialogue tables from which the promise to end and punish the violence exercised by city police emerged. 
Renata Villarreal, an activist from Marea Verde Mexico, participated in the dialogue table with Sheinbaum in August 2019. “It was just a smokescreen to keep us calm at a time when tempers in the streets were very hot.” 
In the meeting that took place on Sunday, August 18, 38 women participated, and among the agreements were the urgency of following up on the operation of the Public Ministries, the change of discourse of the Government so as not to criminalize women, train public servants, and strengthen the shelter model, among others.
“No government comes and has to know how to do everything. But you can look for people who are trained. We told them, ‘We do it for free.’ But, if that possibility is not even open, it is because they have no interest in the subject,” says Villareal.  
Suhayla Bazbaz, director of CCIS, was also one of the participants of the meeting. Despite the fact that the figures of police reported for sexual crimes are made transparent monthly, the activist says that is not enough.  
“We need there to be a specific critical path to not only address, investigate and punish sexual crimes, but also for there to be comprehensive reparation for the harm to the direct and indirect victims of those crimes.”
“It’s not possible to just keep adding folders. There must be a specific strategy to attack the reasons for these unacceptable crimes.”

The complexity of investigating police officers
After the marches of August 2019, the Sexual Crimes Prosecutor’s Office began to look for mechanisms to respond to the demands of women and collectives. However, admits the former head of that Prosecutor’s Office, Susele Deyanira Ortega Lara, from the beginning they set themselves too ambitious goals: “The goal was to prosecute between 20 and 30 folders (of sexual crimes of policemen) per month. But it was a goal we set for ourselves by shooting ourselves in the foot. First we had to make an analysis of where we were standing, and see if the progress in the investigations gave to propose such a goal.”
Also, says Ortega Lara, is that to integrate the cases depended on the Secretariat of Citizen Security. 
“It is extremely complex to investigate police officers. Because, for example, when victims are part of the same corporation there are no adequate protocols to protect them. That is why they often leave the victim alone before the accused, who is also their superior. And what you risk is that she will be revictimized and that, in addition to sexual harassment, she will suffer workplace harassment.”
And, on the other hand, the former prosecutor points out, there is also the issue of the cover-up between the police. He assures that upon his arrival at the sexual crimes prosecutor’s office, cases were found that were ready to be prosecuted, and that, however, they were sent to the file. 
On the subject, Marcela Figueroa, Undersecretary of Institutional Development of the Secretariat of City Security, was asked in an interviewAna, why there is such a notorious distance between the cases of police officers in the capital involved in sexual crimes – until November 24, 538 open administrative investigations – and the elements dismissed by the institution, which amount to only 23. 
The official assures that, despite this low figure in layoffs, there is progress. For example, she explains that as a result of the agreements derived from the meeting between Sheinbaum and the activists, the Specialized Gender Unit of Internal Affairs was created in December 2019 composed only of female police officers who are the ones who carry out the entire process: from the reception of complaints for sexual crimes against police officers, to research. 
Then, with each file, a folder is integrated. “And although only an administrative sanction can be applied – since the SSC is not a prosecutor’s office – an investigation is made as if it were an MP.” And from there, each case is passed to the Honor Commission of the SSP, which is the area in charge of deciding whether or not a sanction is appropriate.
So far, Internal Affairs has opened 538 administrative investigation folders, of which 117 resulted in “disciplinary corrections”, 3 are in the internal control body, and 94 more were sent for analysis to the Honor and Justice Commission with a proposal for dismissal, although so far only 23 police officers have been discharged.

In the analysis of cases in the Honor Commission is where the state official admits that there is a problem: the cases of police reported for alleged sexual assaults have been mixed with thousands of others, such as procedures for non-attendance, control of trust, violation of the principles of police action, etc. And that’s why progress has been very slow.
“We have been doing a reengineering for a few months, because we identified that at that point we have many bottlenecks,” accepts Figueroa, who explains that part of the problem is that cases of sexual crimes were not being properly hierarchized. “On the other hand, now, we have already identified the urgent cases, and the instruction from the highest level is that they be resolved,” he says. 
As for the continued growth in complaints against security elements, Figueroa says that these figures “must be analyzed with caution,” since he believes that this increase does not have to be bad news. On the contrary, he points out, it is also a reflection of the fact that there is an increasing culture of denunciation, even if the alleged aggressors are police elements.
“Not all matters are going to reach judgment”
When the complaint against police officers is for sexual harassment or abuse, explains Laura Angelina Borbolla, general coordinator of investigation of gender crimes and attention to victims of the Prosecutor’s Office, alternative solutions are found such as an apology or a reparative agreement. 
He insists that not all cases reach the conviction of the aggressor, and that the corrective measures taken by the corporations are sufficient for the victim to desist from continuing with the complaint.
“These two crimes (sexual harassment or abuse) almost 100% do not go to trial. Which are the ones that do arrive 100% safe?, those of rape. At this moment there we bring 30, a little more (of these cases),” said the official, who confirmed that so far five arrest warrants have been issued, although none has been completed because the aggressors have taken refuge.
“I understand that many times from the outside they say ‘they are not doing anything, just look at the numbers they bring’ (…) but we are opening the door to justice and opening it is not necessarily that a person wants his aggressor to be in jail, but many times it is that he has these healing processes,” Borbolla said.
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Original source in Spanish