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Peru General Police
The General Police (PG), formerly the Civil Guard and
by far
the largest of Peru's police forces (42,537 in 1986), were
organized into fifty-nine commands (comandancias)
throughout the country across five police regions (whose
boundaries and headquarters were the same as the country's
five
Military Regions), with overall headquarters in Lima. The
general
staff was similar to the military's, and included sections
for
operations, training, administration, personnel, legal
affairs,
public relations, and intelligence. As of 1989, commands
were
located in each of Peru's 24 department capitals and in
the
constitutional province of Callao, as well as in the
largest of
the 183 provincial capitals. Smaller police stations and
posts
operated in most of the other provincial capitals and in a
significant portion, though by no means all, of the 2,016
district capitals. Detachments varied in size, depending
primarily on population density, from a single police
officer, to
three or four commanded by a sergeant, to thirty or forty
commanded by a lieutenant; a department-level command
included up
to several hundred police and was headed by a colonel or a
general. Lima-appointed mayors and deputy mayors had some
influence over local posts, but primarily chains of
command went
through police channels. Some commands had specialized
duties,
such as riot control, radio patrol, and traffic, and one
guarded
the presidential palace.
The PG instruction center, located at Chorrillos,
included an
officers school that provided a four-year curriculum to
police
cadets comparable to the service academy programs, a
school for
lieutenants preparing for the required examinations for
promotion
to captain, and training schools for enlisted
officers--recruits,
corporals, and sergeants. In the 1960s, the police
received
training support from the Public Safety Mission of the
United
States Agency for International Development (AID), and
some
officers attended the AID's International Police Academy
in the
United States during its years of operation (1963-74). AID
support for the police was renewed in the 1980s in the
Upper
Huallaga Area Development Project and the Control and
Reduction
of Coca Cultivation in the Upper Huallaga Project; the AID
assistance was part of the United States government's
effort to
control coca production and cocaine-paste trafficking.
Both
projects were created in 1981, but passed from the
Ministry of
Agriculture to the Ministry of Interior in 1987. The
United
States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also worked
closely
with the police to impede drug production and trafficking;
a new
base, Santa Lucía, completed in the Upper Huallaga Valley
in
1989, gave the police and the DEA significantly greater
local
capability to directly confront the drug problem in the
area.
Because the reorganization of the police forces into
the PN
was not fully implemented by the Congress until 1987, the
Ministry of Interior substantially reduced its training
programs
for new officers and enlisted personnel in the late 1980s
by
postponing the admission of an entire officer class and
two
enlisted classes. With normal retirements, losses to the
insurgents, and the large number of forced retirements
ordered by
President García, a decline in police personnel occurred
just as
insurgency, crime, and drug trafficking were increasing.
Only in
1988 did the first joint police officer class of 682
graduate,
combining the PG, the PT, and the PS. Some 814 were
scheduled to
complete their studies in 1989, none in 1990, and about
600 in
1991.
To cover the growing shortage of trained enlisted
personnel,
the Ministry of Interior established a new National Police
School
(Escuela de Policía Nacional--EPN), with centers in Lima,
Chiclayo, Arequipa, and Cusco--and planned to open
programs in
Chimbote and Pucallpa as well. The eight-month training
prepared
some 1,288 high school graduates who had already had some
secondary school military orientation, with a somewhat
longer
program for 1,618 recruits without high-school diplomas.
With its
six locations fully operational, the EPN was capable of
providing
up to 5,500 graduates a year for the PN enlisted ranks
beginning
in 1989. As of mid-1991, however, police training remained
inadequate, with courses ranging from three to nine months
at
most.
The insurgency of the 1980s frequently targeted police
stations for attack as part of a strategy of acquiring
arms and
equipment and of forcing the abandonment of smaller and
more
exposed posts, particularly in rural areas. Individual
police
were often targeted also for the same reasons. From 1981
through
1990, at least 735 police of all ranks were killed at the
hands
of the insurgents, most by the SL; many analysts believed
that
seized police arms provided a large share of the
guerrillas'
stock.
As the incipient insurgency began to grow in Ayacucho,
where
the SL originated, the new civilian government's initial
response
in October 1981 was to send the specially trained police
antiterrorist unit to the area to combat it. The Sinchi
Battalion, named after pre-Incaic warriors by that name,
had
proven quite effective on previous missions, including
riot
control, squatter eviction, and replacements for the 1980
Cusco
police unit work slowdown. However, in Ayacucho the
Sinchis
appeared to make a difficult situation worse by some acts
of
indiscriminate violence and abuse, and were withdrawn
before the
Belaúnde administration decided to put the area under
military
control in December 1982. It was believed that the Sinchis
underwent a thorough vetting and retraining before being
committed to other actions, where their performance was
much
improved.
Although the police had primary responsibility for
dealing
with drug-trafficking activities in Peru from the
mid-1970s
onward, that role expanded markedly during the 1980s. The
Peruvian military consistently held that coca eradication
and
drug interdiction were designated by the constitution of
1979 as
responsibilities of the police rather than of the armed
forces.
However, the army did indicate its willingness to assist
with
security against the insurgents, so that the police would
be
better able to carry out antidrug operations. Because Peru
was
the world's largest producer of coca used to make cocaine,
the
police concentrated on eradication and interdiction. The
Upper
Huallaga Valley produced most of the cocaine (between 60
and 65
percent of world supply), so the police concentrated
there. The
United States government helped with DEA personnel, an AID
assistance program, and, in 1989, resources and assistance
for
the Santa Lucía base, including a 1,500-meter runway.
Three
United States mobile training teams (MTT) of Green Berets
helped
prepare National Police units in base defense and
interdiction
techniques with short-term training in 1989-91, and
contracted
United States specialists continued narcotics tasks
subsequently.
Although United States financial support for the
antidrug
production and trafficking program in Peru was modest, it
did
increase from about US$2.4 million in 1985 to US$10
million in
1990. Even so, both the hectarage under cultivation and
the
production of coca in the Upper Huallaga Valley increased
to
79,000 hectares by United States government estimates,
which were
quite conservative compared with those of Peru's Ministry
of
Agriculture (from 8,400 hectares cultivated in the Upper
Huallaga
Valley in 1978 to 150,000 in 1990). Estimates as of early
1992
were 100,000 hectares (United States figures based on
aerial
surveys) or 315,000 hectares (Peruvian figures based on
ground
site inspection).
Efforts to reduce drug production and trafficking in
the
Upper Huallaga Valley were hampered by a number of
negative
factors. One was the insurgency; both SL and MRTA forces
began to
operate in the valley in 1985 and 1986. Then attacks on
police
and government employees working on eradication and
interdiction
forced suspension of most antidrug operations in the Upper
Huallaga Valley between February and September 1989. The
guerrillas positioned themselves as the protectors of the
coca-
growing peasants, while collecting "taxes" and drug-flight
protection payments estimated at between US$10 million and
US$30
million per year. Only when the army was able to drive the
insurgents out of much of the valley, as occurred for a
time in
late 1989 and early 1990, could antidrug-trafficking
operations
resume. When they did, the emphasis shifted to
interdiction
rather than eradication.
Other problems included the perception among much of
the
local population that many of the police stationed in the
Upper
Huallaga Valley were either abusive or corrupt, or both.
This led
to a substantial overhaul of the police forces (and of the
army
as well) by the García administration during its first
year in
office, when a reported 2,000 to 3,000 police members were
removed, reshuffled, or retired. Shortly after President
Fujimori
took office on July 28, 1990, another reshuffling took
place that
forced the retirement of nearly 350 police officers and 51
police
generals, some of whom, United States officials believed,
were
among the drug-trafficking initiative's most able and
experienced
personnel.
A number of incidents involving the police during the
first
year of the Fujimori government led Minister of Interior
general
Víctor Malca Villanueva to disclose that 23 officers and
631
police members had been dismissed and another 291 officers
and
600 police members were facing administrative action.
Among the
events leading to this announcement were the shooting down
of a
Peruvian commercial plane in the jungle at Bellavista, San
Martín
Department, with the loss of all seventeen on board; the
murder
of a medical student and two minors in Callao; the
disappearance
of fifty-four kilograms of cocaine after a police seizure;
the
release of a Colombian drug trafficker's plane after large
payments to police involved in its capture; and the
hold-up of
buses on the highways to rob their passengers. General
Malca
announced on July 12, 1991, that evidence of "enormous
corruption" and serious excesses committed by some of the
PN's
members required "a total restructuring," and that the
Peruvian
government was in contact with the Spanish police to
enlist their
assistance in the task.
The underlying factors contributing to the problems of
the PN
included the following: the constant threat and frequent
reality
of guerrilla attacks; the low pay (only US$150 per month
for top
generals and between US$10 and US$15 for new enlisted
police)
resulting from inflation's impact on the capacity of
government
to keep up with previous levels (which were considered
quite
adequate by Peruvian standards through the mid-1980s); and
continuing tensions with armed forces counterparts,
particularly
the army, over roles, responsibilities, coordination, and
support. These difficulties eroded the capability of the
police
forces, particularly the PG, to operate efficiently and
with a
high degree of professionalism.
The problems with the armed forces had spilled over
into a
direct confrontation between striking police in Lima and
the army
in February 1975, a confrontation that was settled only
after a
shoot-out in the police command with considerable loss of
life
(thirty police members and seventy civilians were killed).
Other,
less dramatic incidents occurred as well. In March 1988,
when the
military failed to respond to urgent requests for
assistance by a
police force besieged by SL guerrillas at Uchiza, in the
Upper
Huallaga Valley, the police felt that they had been
humiliated by
another branch of their own government, as well as
defeated in
that encounter with the guerrillas. General Malca saw no
alternative but to resign as minister of interior. The
explanation that no helicopters were available and that no
order
had been given was unconvincing. Others blamed the failure
to
respond on interservice rivalries and a perception by some
military personnel at the time that the police in the
Upper
Huallaga Valley were getting more than their share of the
technical and material assistance available to fight drug
production and trafficking.
Data as of September 1992
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