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Mexico Institute in the News: Assailed Mexican State Fires City's Police

Eric L. Olson

Veracruz governor fires entire police force in city as a step to get rid of corruption.

The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2011

"Mexico's Gulf state of Veracruz, besieged by warring drug cartels and weary of trying to root out drug-related corruption among local police, took an unusual step this week: It fired the entire police force of its largest city, the port of Veracruz... 

"It's another indication of how bad the situation has gotten at the municipal level. It's pretty shocking when it's a city this big,"

said Eric Olson, a Mexico expert at the nonpartisan Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C...

Mr. Olson said the goal of cleaning up Mexican police was laudable, but stressed that Mexico needed to create robust internal affairs divisions—something Mexico almost completely lacks—to prevent vetted police from getting corrupted all over again.

"Otherwise, in the long run, this won't work. You can clean up a force only to have them get corruption and have to fire everyone all over again," 

he said."

Read the full article here.

 

About the Author

Eric L. Olson

Eric L. Olson

Global Fellow;
Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives, Seattle International Foundation
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Mexico Institute

The Mexico Institute seeks to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship. A binational Advisory Board, chaired by Luis Téllez and Earl Anthony Wayne, oversees the work of the Mexico Institute.   Read more

Latin America Program

The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action.  Read more