Police forces in Venezuela are being defunded. Resignations, vacation requests and desertions have multiplied in recent months. The economic crisis deepens after a diffuse recovery in 2022, and the police are leaving the institutions and the South American country one by one, perhaps with better physical conditions, to cross the dangerous Darién jungle among the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have managed to get there tried it year. This was carried out by Chief Officer Omar Rincón, a local police officer from Caracas, who began the journey in mid-July and arrived in the United States via Arizona a week ago. “I waited for more than a month for them to give me a vacation, I sold my motorcycle, saved some savings and came.”
Rincón brought canned goods, cookies and a change of clothes. He took boats, canoes and buses; He walked along paths at night, avoiding migration to the most complicated countries on the way north, and arrived in Mexico City, where he made an appointment to apply for entry through the CBT One application that the US government launched this year has introduced. United to try to channel the enormous flow of refugees accumulating at the southern border. He left the money he brought with him at each stop to pay for transportation, coyotes, and guides. Caracas, Cúcuta, Medellín, Necoclí, the Darién Jungle, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, “another country called Guatemala”, Tapachula, Mexico City, Hermosillo, Nogales, Arizona, New York and will soon travel to Atlanta , where he got a job. “On the way, I met six police colleagues who were waiting for their appointments, some of them took the beast (a freight train that travels through Mexico and that migrants irregularly board to reach the border). So far I am the only one in my group who has already entered the USA. “I think I was lucky.”
This group of Venezuelan migrants share not only their past in uniform, but also their motivations for fleeing. “I had 15 years of service and everything was going downhill. “I went for myself, for my daughter,” Rincón says on the phone. “Political interference in the police has made things more complicated. The salary allowance, the conditions, you don’t have the logistics to carry out the job as a worthy civil servant.” The provision of uniforms and boots, sometimes even ammunition on an informal market, is in many institutions the responsibility of the civil servants, whose salaries are average about $20 per month.
Migrants cross a river in the Darién jungle in October 2022. Fernando Vergara (AP)
The group of 618 “courses”
During one of the numerous operations against the dangerous Koki gang in the Cota 905 district in the west of Caracas, shrapnel from a grenade hit another police officer who preferred not to identify himself. The facility he worked for did not have active health insurance due to non-payment, so he had to pay for the care of his wounds with the $14 a month he was receiving at the time. He has been in the United States for a year and two months, after serving for eleven years in various police forces in Venezuela and after crossing the Darién during one of the harshest seasons, when the camps of humanitarian organizations and the journey took more than one week on foot. “On the way I saw about 12 dead people and with the first aid tools that I know as a police officer, we saved the life of a Cuban woman who was not feeling well,” he recalls by telephone from New Jersey, where he delivers his own car .
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These days one of her daughters is traveling with her mother on the same Darién road and she will take the other later. The migration of Venezuelan police officers is so large that they are already forming a network in the USA. The former officer says that he is in a WhatsApp group in which there are 618 “courses” (as fellow police students call each other) from the third doctorate of the National Experimental University of Security, created in 2009 by Hugo Chávez to professionalize the Police function was founded and the force massage. In this digital community, he learned that the state of Indiana is reportedly accepting former immigrant police officers to fill the deficit of local security forces, which he sees as an option for those who want to continue in their profession. “As I speak with you now, I meet four other colleagues who are traveling and I will receive them in the United States.”
The government of Nicolás Maduro has made huge investments in money and resources for the country’s police forces, especially the Bolivarian National Police, which was founded in 2009 together with the university based on the principle of the “Union Civil-Military Police,” a source of the Power and social control of Chavismo. The PNB’s staff consists of approximately 40,000 civil servants. The once powerful and autonomous state and regional police forces are now administered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Justice. With some exceptions, their resources and personnel have been weakened in recent years, particularly when governed by opposition politicians, as the central government denies them the resources to match them. They have less power and weapons to confront the underworld than the PNB, although their salary is just as precarious.
A part of the National Police Special Unit patrols in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 9, 2021.Getty (Ramses Mattey/Anadolu Agency)
Lawyer and criminologist Luis Izquiel points out that Venezuelan police salaries are the lowest in South America. And for regional police forces they are even lower. “An entry-level police officer earns a salary of between $100 and $20 a month. There are bonuses, benefits and insurance, but they are modest. However, there are queues, many volunteers who want to join the PNB.” Javier Gorriño, a veteran commissioner, criminologist and university professor who heads the citizen security division of the mayor’s office in El Hatillo, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in eastern Caracas, agrees . “The boys really like the work, but with the salary you can’t start a family, because the main problem here is the daily food,” he admits.
“We must take into account the adventurous spirit of every police officer, all of which is included in their calling. That is why there are some who take paths like Darién, very popular with police officers, but there are others who unfortunately take the path to the left, namely that of corruption, the so-called matraqueo (collecting bribes, favors). or services). to merchants and private individuals) to round out income and even to alleviate the institutions’ own deficits, leading to a confusion of values.
The mayor of Maracaibo, Rafael Ramírez, the country’s second-largest city in Zulia, a state bordering Colombia, also noted the exodus with concern this week. “Our police officers are the first to feel physically fit to walk through the Darién. “Last week, at least 22 officers left, they asked for permission and crossed the Darién,” he said in a press conference, adding that the number of agents was not enough to protect the city and that they had little cover with active police officers would have 10% of the territory.
Deprofessionalization and lethality
“It is difficult to obtain data on the number of expatriated police or security officers because the government has been encrypting this information since 2012,” says Rocío San Miguel, lawyer and director of the NGO Control Ciudadano. “But it is very obvious that the number of officers requesting leave, police officers migrating through border areas, especially regional ones, is increasing.” Citizen Control cites “inadequate salaries, job stability, political participation, etc.” as causes for the police and military Deprofessionalization.” Chief Officer Rincón, who recently arrived in New York, says that the generations being trained now have no expectations and that there are no real opportunities for promotion. “They don’t get the training and discipline that others get.”
This deprofessionalization and politicization is also linked to other alarming statistics that describe Venezuela’s police institutions as the deadliest in the region: one in three murders in Venezuela are committed by officers of the State Security Force, according to a report by the Monitor of Use of Lethal was carried out last year presented. Added to this is the file on extrajudicial killings investigated by the fact-finding mission ordered by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which called for the suppression of the PNB’s elite organ, the Action Forces. FAES).
Police officers during a security operation in Caracas, 2018. Fernando Llano (AP)
Maduro himself has said he wants to expand the PNB to 100,000 civil servants, an institution with “very wide-ranging” filters for college graduates receiving Chavista doctrinal training. “In democracy there was a weaker police concept, but with more money police officers made careers, were well insured and bought apartments,” says Izquiel. “The number of officers is now growing, but many officers are quickly leaving their careers or emigrating to look for alternatives.” Maduro has completely militarized all police functions in the country, recalls Izquiel. This has had an impact on working practices and concerns among career police officers with different levels of training. “A cop studies for years to become a director, and then they come and put a soldier on him,” says the former cop who was reinvented as a delivery man in New Jersey.
An active municipal police officer in Caracas says disappointment is widespread. He has decided to take his leave to pursue other jobs, such as working as a mechanic, but he has no motivation to return to his command. They have lost bonuses for extraordinary interventions, bonuses for children or studies, foundations and other benefits established in contracts, manuals and labor standards that the public administration in Venezuela no longer respects. Other police officers also work as delivery drivers, motorcycle taxi drivers or escorts, using the 24-hour shift and 48-hour Fridays standardized in several facilities to reduce the burden and deal with the deficit. Some police forces have begun delaying layoffs to stop the exodus. But as the crisis progresses, more and more police officers simply desert.
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