800px-Dome_CCTV_cameras

A recent poll showed that only 40% of Americans supported more cameras in the name of public safety – and only 12% wanted fewer cameras.

And yet, more cameras are coming in the United States. Police officers in Denver, Phoenix, Chicago and other cities are relying more on surveillance video to help fight crime. READ MORE HERE

Boston Police did a good job.

Thermal-imaging devices have been used to watch the second suspect in this week’s Boston Marathon bombings as he was holed up in his last hiding place, the boat.

Authorities said a helicopter equipped with a thermal imager (FLIR — a forward-looking infrared device —) spotted the heat signature of a person inside a tarp-covered boat, sitting in a backyard in Watertown, Mass.

After an area resident reported seeing a trail of blood leading to the boat, Boston Police gave instructions to the helicopter who used the sensor.

The thermal readings confirmed that there was indeed someone under the tarp, and that the person was still alive.  After that the helicopter´s termal equippment followed up the heat signature of the individual, even though he was underneath of what appeared to be the ‘shrink wrap’ or cover on the boat itself.

From that point on, the helicopter was able to direct the tactical teams over to that area.

After monitoring the body in the boat for more than an hour, police moved in and took the wounded bombing suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, into custody.

The FLIR (Forward-Looking Infra-Red) system detects the Infra-red signatures of high heat sources, associated with the metal-hydride lights used in large grow operations.

A similar helicopter to this monitored the suspect by using thermal equipment , during the standoff in Boston

The technology is not new. The military has used it for years on the battlefield. Law enforcement has adopted the device only recently, using it in search and rescue operations, fugitive apprehensions, and along the border to detect drug smugglers and illegal border crossings. Moreover, thermal imagers have been particularly helpful, albeit controversial, in the detection of indoor marijuana-growing operations.

Police will fly at an altitude between 1,200 and 1,500 feet in a helicopter fitted with FLIR. The thermal image of a structure will show the walls and other areas as bright white, indicating significant heat was escaping. This is than determined by the FLIR operator as being consistent with that of a structure being used for an indoor marijuana-growing operation.

The Americas Security News - Senator Pinto exiled in the brazilian embassy in Bolivia.

March 3rd.- The governments of Bolivia and Brazil on Saturday signed joint actions to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, protection of migrants and regional integration. The initiatives were defined in meeting by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Patriota (Brazil), and David Choquehuanca (Bolivia) in the bolivian city of Cochabamba.

Choquehuanca said that in April, there will be a meeting between the Defense Ministers of Bolivia and Brazil to review the policy of protection to immigrants in the border regions. In the meeting will participate commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force of both countries, to coordinate activities in joint border.

The governments of Bolivia and Brazil agreed also to establish a commission of officials and experts who will analyze the case of Bolivian senator Roger Pinto, exiled for more than nine months in the Brazilian Embassy in La Paz. Pinto is accusing the bolivian government of links with the drug trafficking.

Crime in Brazil

Recent surveys reflect public safety has not been the priority of the current Brazilian government. The surveys are talkinf about little investment public safety, high rates of crime and homicide, low percentage of homicides cleared by the justice system, increased sense of insecurity of the population, according to an article published by 180graus.com

The article says that a survey by the website Open Accounts about public spending on public safety, points out that the 3.1 billion in planned budget for public safety in 2012, only 738 million reais (23.8% of total) was used by the federal government.

According to the survey, the pending on the purchase of new vehicles, equipment and infrastructure improvements, such as prisons and police departments, although it was higher than in 2010 and 2011, is far less than that applied in 2007 (R $ 1.2 billion).

Excessive bureaucracy, the systemic failings of the various organs of government and lack of commitment results are the main factors for the low investment of resources in the area. Furthermore, by constitutional provision, the federal government maintains some distance from the public safety issue, since the control of the military and civil police is the responsibility of the states. With this, the difficulties in applying the resources demonstrate the need to review assignments of the central federal government in Brasilia, states and municipalities.

Brazil is considered the second most violent country in the world, based on figures relating to intentional lethal crimes. Annually about 50 thousand Brazilians are victims of homicides in Brazil. Of these, on average, only 8% the police get the criminals and far fewer get to be tried and convicted. The impunity rate reaches the level of 92%, according to the article.

Nevertheless, Brazil supposedly can not be regarded as a country of  impunity, because it has the third prison population in the world, second only to China and the United States, and one of the fastest growth rate of incarceration in the world. In 1995 there were 160 000 prisoners and currently are 540 000.

The announcement Friday by Undersecretary Eduardo Sánchez of the Interior Secretariat was another sign that President Enrique Peña Nieto is developing a whole different strategy against the cartels, and wants to distance itself from practices under the previous government, which left power Dec. 1.

Last week, Sánchez also told the press that police no longer would put suspected gangsters on display in “perp walks” before banks of television cameras, nor would authorities post “most-wanted” lists, allow news media to air raids in action or refer to gangsters by aliases.

“It is not acceptable, nor will it ever be under this government, that authorities conduct themselves in arbitrary ways that hurt society (or) lead to impunity and injustice,” Sánchez said at a news conference.READ MORE HERE

FBI long distance firearms training is out of fashion.Photo Credit H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

The FBI has quietly broken with its long-standing firearms training regimen, putting a new emphasis on close-quarters combat to reflect the overwhelming number of incidents in which suspects are confronting their targets at point-blank range.The new training protocols were formally implemented…READ MORE HERE

This week, the two countries signed Memoranda of Understanding with UNODC that will see the establishment of CCP Joint Port Control Units in Port Georgetown (the John Fernandes Port) and Nieuwe Haven Port respectively.

The Caribbean has become increasingly vulnerable to the illicit flow of drugs from South America to North America and Europe via maritime containers, particularly as Latin American States tighten border control and security. Given their geographic location, the Guyana and Suriname container trade faces significant threats from transnational organized crime.

The Joint Port Control Units in the two countries will strengthen the control of containers entering and leaving the ports, improve the coordination, analysis and exchange of information in real time, share human and technical resources to avoid duplicity of activities and facilitate safe foreign commerce. Container inspection in the two ports will be carried out by a team trained and equipped to work together to systematically target high-risk containers with minimal disruption to the free flow of legitimate trade.

A two-week training programme will be conducted for Guyanese and Surinamese officers drawn from relevant government agencies from 1-12 October, and it is expected that the Joint Port Control Units in both countries will commence operations in mid-October. Jamaica and the Dominican Republic are also expected to establish similar units later this year.

READ MORE HERE

The Americas Post - These Colombian troops could be the model for new elite Mexican units

The leading security adviser for Mexico’s incoming president announced Friday that he is recommending the creation of elite units of police and troops who will target not just major drug traffickers but also lower-level cartel hitmen as a way of swiftly reducing violence.

The proposal from newly retired Colombian police director Gen. Oscar Naranjo  offers a glimpse of how President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto might fulfill his promise to slash the number of murders and kidnappings by 50 percent during his six years in office.

Similar to the approach that Naranjo employed against Colombian traffickers, the proposal raises the question of whether the widely respected general can reproduce his success in a very different country.

More than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against Mexico’s cartels nearly six years ago.

Pena Nieto has pledged to reduce violence by refocusing law-enforcement efforts away from the current administration’s heavy reliance on the military to capture drug-cartel leaders and seize their product. He says he wants to better protect ordinary citizens from criminals.

He provided few specifics during his three-month campaign, leading to speculation he would ease pressure on traffickers as long as they throttled down violence.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, who has held a series of meetings with the president-elect and his advisers, said this week that Pena Nieto has discussed a new offensive against the smaller, local gangs that have cropped up in many Mexican states and earn money through kidnapping and extortion in addition to drug dealing.

Naranjo’s proposal of small, elite units dovetails with that idea.

Such units have specific goals and typically work in isolation. The better a unit performs, the more resources it gets. Information is compartmentalized to prevent leaks. The model worked in Colombia and Naranjo said it could also be effective in Mexico.

“It’s good to go after drug dealers in order to capture them. But it’s not good not to have elite groups going after killers in order to impose the law, those squads of hitmen,” he said. “You also have to put a lot of importance on these groups of hitmen to control the violence.”

The idea has been discussed by Mexico’s security experts, and makes sense as a component of a broader strategy to reduce violence, said Eric Olson, associate director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

“If you want to really stop the violence, don’t focus on the kingpins, focus on the killers, it kind of eliminates this middle range of actors,” he said.

Naranjo also proposed setting violence-reduction targets for Mexico.

“In the first 100 days (of Pena Nieto’s government) the goal should be set for reducing violence. It could go badly. It could go well. But it should be put in play,” he said. “I think it’s possible to tell the Mexicans, `Look, in 100 days we want to cut the violence we have in half.’”

It’s feasible, he said, because Mexico’s violence “is really concentrated. If you look at the map of violence there it’s in six places. It’s impossible that in six cities you can’t have some control.”

The 55-year-old Colombian said he does not believe it wise to use Mexico’s military against drug traffickers, criticizing Calderon’s sending of 10,000 troops into Ciudad Juarez at the end of last year.

It neither reduced deaths nor intimidated criminals, he said.

Naranjo, aided by his U.S. allies, had been advising Calderon’s government since 2007. Colombian police have in the interim trained more than 7,000 Mexicans in investigative techniques.

A top foreign policy adviser to Pena Nieto said the president-elect is focused on fighting crime by swiftly spurring economic growth and job-creation with reforms that include bringing private investment into Mexico’s state-owned Pemex oil company, developing massive shale gas deposits on the Texas border and building alternative supplies including wind energy projects in southern states like Oaxaca and Baja California.

Emilio Lozoya said Pena Nieto’s transition team wants to forge consensus among the lawmakers when Mexico’s next congress convenes in September, three months before Pena Nieto takes office.

“Our aim is to have an energy bill that is clear and gives absolute clarity to local and foreign capital to co-invest along the state in developing these energy sources,” Lozoya said. The importance of economic growth to security, he said, is that “you won’t get one without focusing on the other.”

“The best weapons against organized crime and insecurity are jobs,” he said. He said a focus on developing infrastructure projects and agriculture would also be important for the new administration.

Lozoya also said Pena Nieto’s administration would want more intelligence-sharing from the U.S., particularly to combat money-laundering, and that Mexico would seek a bigger role in building stability in Central America, which he called a major source of the problems afflicting Mexico, drug-trafficking among them.

Despite major security gains under Naranjo, rural Colombia remains turbulent. Thousands of hired guns in the service of rival drug gangs continue to plague it as well as leftist rebels who are deeply engaged in cocaine trafficking.

The Americas Post - Would front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto keep up the pressure on Mexican cartels?

Ending the bloody drug war is a major issue in Mexico’s current presidential campaign, but results of this election will affect both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border.

While all three leading candidates tout new strategies like reducing violence and taking troops off the streets, some U.S. lawmakers worry that cross-border cooperation may decrease after Mexican voters choose a new president July 1.

Last week, a Republican congressman told the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that he was concerned about Mexico’s “impending change in power.”  And Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said in February that he feared at least one Mexican presidential candidate was not committed to continuing his country’s campaign against organized crime.

Worries in Washington as Mexico’s election looms are a reminder of the close ties binding the neighboring nations. The two countries share billions of dollars in trade and a border that stretches for nearly 2,000 miles. Millions of U.S. citizens travel to Mexico every year, and millions of Mexican immigrants — legal and illegal – live in the United States.

“Almost no other country affects the United States as much on a day to day basis as Mexico,” says Shannon O’Neil, a Latin American studies fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  “What happens in Mexico is hugely important for the United States.”

For nearly six years, a brutal drug war costing over 47,500 lives has dominated discussions between the two countries.  Cracking down on cartels and sending troops into the streets  were the first moves by President Felipe Calderon after he took office in December 2006.

The United States offered $1.6 billion to aid in the fight. U.S. officials consider cooperation with the Mexican government a key weapon in the war on drugs.  But on the campaign trail in Mexico this year, the three leading candidates have stressed the need to shift strategies.

Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the opposition Democratic Revolution Party has summed up his security policy as “abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not bullets).  He opened his campaign with a promise to pull back troops from Mexico’s streets, but he said last month that the military would remain deployed until there is a “trained, skilled and moralized” police force.

Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Action Party has apparently tried to distance herself from Calderon’s policies with a simple slogan: “Josefina Diferente” (Different Josefina).

“The results will be measured not just by criminals captured, but by how stable and secure communities are,” her campaign website says.

Front runner Enrique Pena Nieto of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has pledged to focus more on reducing violence and less on catching cartel leaders and blocking drugs from reaching the United States.  He said that federal, state and local authorities would coordinate a better security plan on his watch.

“I propose adjusting the strategy and making a national front that involves the three levels of the government, focused on diminishing the violence in the country,” he said.

In a congressional hearing last week, U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner said the war on drugs was nearing a “potential crossroad,” referring to Pena Nieto’s plan and his party’s political history.

“While in power, the PRI minimized violence by turning a blind eye to the cartels,” the Wisconsin Republican said, noting that Pena Nieto “does not emphasize stopping drug shipments or capturing kingpins.”

Minutes earlier, DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart had testified that Mexico had extradited more than 200 accused suspects to the United States since 2010.

“Without reservation, I would characterize the cooperation between United States and Mexico at an all-time high,” she said.

Sensenbrenner said the close teamwork could be short-lived.

“I worry that the relationship could be at a high water mark with the impending change in power,” he said.

In a statement the next day, Pena Nieto’s campaign said he was committed to combatting organized crime.

No matter who wins, the election will likely mark “a change from where U.S.-Mexico security strategy has been,” said O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations.

But the shift is something U.S. officials who work with Mexico have prepared for, she said.

Robert Pastor, director of the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington, said a change in presidential leadership will give Mexican officials a chance to consider fresh approaches to deal with drug-related violence and other issues that affect the United States, such as economic and energy policies.

“Between the three candidates and the predecessors, there would be an opportunity to reflect on what worked, and what didn’t work, and how, perhaps things should be changed,” he said.

The concerns from some U.S. lawmakers about a shift in drug war strategy are overblown, he said.

“All three of the major candidates have committed themselves to fighting drug trafficking and reducing the violence,” Pastor said. “All three are very much committed to working with the United States.”

The Americas Post - In spite of a sex scandal, the Summit of the Americas wasn't all fun and games

In response to growing bilateral and multilateral dialogues on citizen security, Presidents Obama and Santos met today on the margins of the VI Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, and agreed to deepen coordination of ongoing security cooperation activities throughout the hemisphere and West Africa. Both presidents agreed to formalize this coordination in the form of a U.S.-Colombia Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation. These efforts are in response to increasing insecurity generated by transnational organized crime (TOC) and draw on Colombia’s established and expanding expertise and capacity for countering this threat and shared U.S. responsibility to address the demand for illicit narcotics. The plan formalizes the security coordination and cooperation component of the inaugural U.S.-Colombia High-Level Strategic Security Dialogue (HLSSD) which took place on February 23 in Washington, D.C. The HLSSD aims to broaden the decades-long U.S.-Colombian security partnership. This new plan paves the way for future cooperation through a strategic and formal partnership. Accordingly, coordinated Colombian and U.S. law enforcement and defense support can more effectively counter the threats of transnational organized crime and strengthen partner institutions.

Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation