Honduras Deploys Controversial Military Police

A new security force, comprised almost entirely of former soldiers, has begun patrolling crime-stricken areas in Honduras. Reuters reports that some 1,000 military police officers were deployed in the country’s most violent cities on Monday (in San Pedro Sula and part of Tegucigalpa, according to El Heraldo).

The new police body, known as the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), was created in August after a unanimous congressional vote. The measure was initially proposed by National Party Congressman Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is also a leading candidate ahead of next month’s presidential election. Polls show he is statistically tied with Xiomara Castro of the left-wing LIBRE party, who has opposed any military involvement in law enforcement. “Not only are [soldiers] trained for defense purposes, they are also professionals, they have experience,” Castro told local press last month. “They’re not meant to be monitoring traffic lights.”

The creation of the PMOP is in some ways an extension of President Porfirio Lobo’s anti-crime strategy, which has been marked by an increasing reliance on the armed forces for internal security.

 One of the strongest arguments for military involvement in policing presented by advocates of this strategy is the unreliability of the National Police. Honduran police are notoriously corrupt, and have been repeatedly accused of extrajudicial executions and other human rights abuses. Efforts to clean up the National Police have stagnated, as authorities have been slow to implement background checks and other vetting procedures for police officers. So while it is hardly ideal for the military to assume law enforcement responsibilities, supporters of this argue it is a necessary evil.

The problem with this is that the Honduran army is not immune from criminal infiltration either. Current and former Honduran military personnel have been implicated in a range of illegal activities in recent years. In March 2012, for instance, Mexican officials arrested two former Honduran soldiers accused of providing military training to the Zetas. In November 2010, a plane seized in a drug trafficking operations was “stolen” by military personnel from an army base in San Pedro Sula. Eleven soldiers were arrested in connection with the incident, including a handful of mid-level officers and a lieutenant colonel.

The mixed record of the Honduran military has caused concern in the United States government as well. A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2008, for instance, cited an internal report finding that grenades and anti-tank weaponry sold to the Honduran military by the U.S. were later found in seized arms caches belonging to criminal groups in Mexico and Colombia.

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