Growing Incompetency of the Police

Gracias! I appreciate you laying out your understanding of how the security apparatus is supposed to work and how it is actually working. It seems that the laws are intentionally vague so as to provide cover for any politician who wants to avoid responsibility for security.

While I understand the desire to keep the military present in our community I can't help but wonder if that desire isn't mostly fueled by the idea that our political leaders suggest which is that the only other alternative is to have no security at all. Time and again around the world and throughout history we see despots take power and remove freedoms from the citizenry by lionizing the military and claiming that only they at the head of a strong military can intervene successfully to provide security. While to the contrary the places that are often rated as being the most happy and safe are those places that are regulated by local, independent and professional police forces. None are perfect but I think we can all see that there are better solutions than having the military, who have little or no training in successful law enforcement tactics, riding around with minimal interaction with the citizens they are supposed to be protecting. As we have seen in cases like the 43 disappeared students in Ayotzinapa, even the military is not immune to corruption and bad actors within the military also benefit from weak judicial and law enforcement organizations.

While Guerrero is the state most responsible for there being an independent and democratic republic of Mexico, during the past century La Guerra Sucia left a scar like a hot branding iron upon the Guerrerense society, so for so many people hardened by a difficult life and a turbulent past to want the military patrolling their streets speaks volumes to the magnitude of the problem.

¿Plata o Plomo? is the most basic law here, and public servants are no different than the citizens when it comes to this stone-cold reality.

Our local police are practically worthless due to their lack of professionalization compounded with the manner in which laws are written, i.e. so that they are nearly impossible to enforce (thanks to over 7 decades of total domination by the PRI), resulting in too many instances where the police don't know what the laws are. They just do what they're told. Yes, there are many excellent people serving as police. But more importantly, we should be thankful to live in a place where people are so decent that police aren't as needed as they would be in almost any similar-sized city in many other places on this planet where stores would be looted and gangs would roam wild in the streets with such ineffective police as we have. So there's that.

Since El Congreso de la Unión seems to be stumbling on the matter, Presidente López Obrador has proposed a plebiscite on whether the public (1) approves of the work so far by the Guardia Nacional, (2) wants the military to continue providing public security until 2028 or to return to their barracks in 2024, and (3) wants the Guardia Nacional to be part of SEDENA, Gobernación or Seguridad Pública (the first being the military and the latter two being civilian institutions).