Mexico's Clear Message to Cops in Ferguson, MO

After the recent live TV theater action from Ferguson, MO on the police involved shooting, what did you bring away from it besides the shooting? How about the show of police force? It was pretty scary stuff, over the top, but many said justified. If it was in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan wars it would be a necessity in warfare. I have never seen U.S. public demonstrations in the United States reach the combat fervor of raising the threat limits to the level of combat; albeit, some anomalies admittedly do exist.

Read about how a country has gone back to the wild West just "south of de border down Mexico way."  It is an instruction manual on what not to do in federal government civil inforcement interdiction.

El Presidente de Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto is a true politician's politician. With his movie star good looks and his 'soap opera' TV star wife, and promises of social reforms and government services he swept the 2012 national elections.

Enrique Peña Nieto returned to power the 'PRE', a corrupt political party in itself, that ruled with an iron fist for seventy-five years that was rife with murders, bribery, extortion, kidnapping, drug cartels and pay-offs. It read more like a tabloid crime story from the top on down. The jury is still out on how the Nieto political machine will overcome its past or not.

Presidente Peña Nieto recognizing Mexico's massive crime problems, started a newly formed security force in 2013 that will function as a response force to recover public spaces from criminal control. Peña Nieto will have, at minimum, a 100,000-strong federal security force by the end of his six-year term, with 50,000 Federal Police and 50,000 members of the gendarmerie. As WOLA, the Washington Office on Latin America, and others have indicated, there are many concerns about the creation of the gendarmerie, particularly given the military nature of the force and the lack of consultation with the Mexican Congress and civil society about its creation over using instead civilian-led police security forces.

It is worth noting that unlike the model that the U.S. government has promoted in Latin American countries (including Mexico), U.S. law strongly restricts our military from carrying out law enforcement roles in the United States, and for good reason—the police and the military are not interchangeable bodies. 

• Military forces are trained for combat situations in which force is used to overwhelm an armed enemy.  

• Police are a civilian corps, trained to address threats to public security while using the least amount of force possible and to address crime with the cooperation of the people. 

There are inherent risks in having military-trained forces in close contact with the civilian population as situations can become volatile creating tensions and armed overreaction.