Crime booms as Central Americans fear police switched sides

Posted on Friday, January 20, 2012 Modified Friday, January 20, 2012
Crime booms as Central Americans fear police switched sides


[font size=1]
A peculiar feature of the high-end neighborhoods of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, is that many
walled compounds have turrets for private guards to fire at any attackers. Few Hondurans
trust their own police. | Tim Johnson/MCT[/font]

By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers
Tim Johnson McClatchy Newspapers

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — In a city that's just earned the title of the most dangerous in the Americas, few people dare go to the police with complaints. Rather, they view police officers with fear, scorn and disgust.

"Society has completely lost confidence in the police. The citizenry is more afraid of the police than the criminals," said Jhon Cesar Mejia, a federal prosecutor assigned to look into abuses by the state.

In recent months in Honduras, evidence has turned up of police units involved in murder-for-hire plots, drug trafficking, extortion, auto theft and kidnapping. Distress over police corruption has grown only more intense in the three months since the dean of Honduras' national university fingered police in the murder of her son and the widow of a slain national drug czar blamed police for his assassination.

Deep-rooted police corruption is just one reason for the deterioration of public security that's shredding the social fabric of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, a region known as the "Northern Triangle" of Central America.

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