|
Peru Security Police
Although renamed in the police reorganization begun in
1986,
the Security Police (PS), formerly the Republican Guard,
continued to have responsibility for border control,
custody of
the prisons, and guarding significant government
buildings. The
PS grew the most rapidly of all the police forces in the
1980s;
from 6,450 in 1980 to 21,484 in 1986. Some 20 percent of
the
force was detailed to prison duty, with a large portion of
the
rest distributed among public buildings and 177 border
stations.
Another sixty-one border stations were to have been added
or
reactivated by 1990, thirty-two of them staffed jointly
with the
army, but budget difficulties may well have delayed these.
There
was also a small parachute squadron, formed in 1963. Until
the
early 1970s, this police subgroup recruited its personnel
directly from the army and had no training establishment
of its
own. In 1973 the minister of interior opened an advanced
training
school for upper-level career officers, with a
comprehensive
training center for all ranks expected to follow at the
end of
the decade. In the early 1990s, it was still unclear how
the
integrated police services officer school, which began
operating
in the late 1980s, would ultimately affect the PS's own
training
establishments.
The growing drug-trafficking problem across Peru's
borders,
particularly with Colombia and Brazil, provided the PS
with
additional challenges. The additional border posts were
envisioned as one way to respond, because most were
proposed for
areas where the drug trafficking was believed to be
concentrated.
However, the growing prison population during the 1980s
posed
more difficulties for the PS; many had to do with the
prisoners
accused and/or convicted of terrorism.
In December 1989, two police officers were found guilty
of
abuses in the prison massacre by a Court of Military
Justice and
were sentenced to prison terms. The other sixty-nine
police
members and six army officers accused were acquitted, but
in June
1990 the not-guilty verdicts of eight of the police
officers were
overturned in a Military Appeals Court. One officer was
sentenced
to one month in jail, the other seven to six months.
Data as of September 1992
|
