Public Security Minister Mario Zamora speaks to The Tico Times about his agenda, the lack of resources for the National Police and the value of passing an annual business tax to generate security revenue.
The root of Costa Rica’s security concerns can be found
in numbers. According to Public Security Minister Mario Zamora, Costa Rican
cops have only 276 patrol vehicles for the entire country. That’s about one car
for every 16,667 residents.
A proposed business tax that would be used to fund
security initiatives passed a first vote in the Legislative Assembly in early
August, but was shelved two weeks later.
Zamora, who was promoted to security minister in May, sat
down recently with The Tico Times in his San José office to explain how he
plans to tackle one of the country’s biggest concerns.
Excerpts follow:
TT: You worked at the Immigration Administration before
coming to this ministry. How have you transitioned into the role of security
minister?
MZ: At one time I was assistant director of the National
Police Academy. My first government job was in this ministry in 1993.
Were you ever a police officer?
I studied security and took police courses. … I have a
license to practice law, and my thesis was on police law. I analyzed the
implementation of laws. That helped me land a role in the Security Ministry.
The principal goal of this administration is to improve
security. What is the ministry’s plan to accomplish that goal from now until
2014?
Much of our goal centers on the use of technology. The
primary role of the police is to fight crime and patrol the country to ensure
security and crime prevention. The new element that we hope to incorporate is
the use of intense technology, such as electronic maps, communications with GPS
devices to improve the coverage of our patrol areas, better coordination to
respond to alarm systems and 911 calls, and use of video patrol cameras.
Our principal goal is to establish a police model that is
highly digitized, which we are currently lacking.
During the past year, The Tico Times has visited communities
across the country that seem to share the same concerns about a lack of police
presence. Some communities have only two to five officers for thousands of
residents. What is the ministry doing to improve the lack of police presence?
The police graduation ceremony in downtown San José a few
weeks ago is a good example. We normally graduate 300-350 police officers every
six months. However, we usually lose 50 officers every month because they are
fired, quit or retire. It is a job with a high turnover. For every graduating
class from the National Police Academy, we replace the same number of police
who left.
With the graduation a few weeks ago, we started a new
strategy. We are still graduating a class of at least 350 new police officers
every six months, but we are also implementing a new model to improve the
police force’s capabilities. We are improving the police officers’ education.
Police officers will be required to take more course work before going on duty.
We believe that more highly educated officers will serve better and last
longer. An anticipated class of 580 is scheduled to graduate in December. We
hope that each of our upcoming classes will exceed 500 officers.
Another strategy is to improve the infrastructure within
the police force. Police stations, vehicles and equipment are in bad shape. One
of the main reasons that officers leave the profession is because they are
working with poor equipment and under substandard conditions. They are working
with inferior equipment and they feel obsolete.
Why do so many police leave? Fifty per month seems to be
a large figure.
Because of the bad working conditions. I think that has a
lot to do with it.
Recently, 12 police officers were arrested in Puntarenas
for corruption and for robbing the homes of the people they were supposed to be
protecting. What does that say about the state of police in this country?
It indicates that we are combating corruption within the
police force. It is a positive sign because corruption exists in police forces
throughout the world. What marks a good police force is how they react to it.
In this case, we were able to detect the corruption and act accordingly.
A lot of national discussion is going on about the annual
business tax that could generate revenue for security.
$72 million.
How would the ministry spend it?
We hope to use it principally for vehicles. Costa Rica
only has, right now, as we are talking, 276 vehicles.
What kind of vehicles?
Patrol cars. There are only 276 patrol cars in the
country. What we would do with this money is acquire no less than 400 more
vehicles. This will result in a better ability to respond to emergency
situations, such as 911 calls.
There has been a large number of murders and deaths of
tourists and residents lately and this year in particular. Often families and
friends of the victims say they feel the investigations are lacking and
incomplete. What are the ministry and Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) doing
to improve murder investigations?
We are in charge of very different areas than the OIJ.
Tourist Police and investigations of that nature are completely the
responsibility of the OIJ. We work together to improve citizen security, though
the area of criminal investigations is 100 percent the task of OIJ.
That is something that is important for the readers of
The Tico Times to know. The word “police” in the U.S., Europe or Canada means
something different than what it means in Costa Rica. We have separate areas of
a police force. It is divided. In other countries, such as in the U.S. or
Europe, it is common for all of the members of the police and detectives to
report to one chief. A lot of foreign residents here think that I am that chief
who organizes everyone. That is not necessarily the case.
A better title for me would be the “Minister of the
National Police [Fuerza Pública].” That is what I manage, nothing more.
Security is a broad concept. So people sometimes think that I am the
mega-minister.
Our police forces are a public service that can be
compared to the Red Cross. The Red Cross brings someone from the scene of an
accident to the hospital. We make the arrest of criminal acts at the scene of
the crime and are involved in the case until it arrives in court. That’s where
our role ends. That is the scope of our responsibility. We intervene to prevent
crime and present the suspect or criminal to court. If there are
investigations, they go through the OIJ.
You gave a speech a few months ago and said that the
police forces are very fragmented and in some ways uncoordinated. What is being
done to create more collaboration in public security?
Two things, technology and operating protocols.
Technology will be used to manage information in real time and distribute it to
various entities. As for protocols, we are improving the process of how a crime
is handled. In the event of a murder, robbery, or any crime, we are
establishing a better protocol that clearly defines the process of how each
investigation is carried out. We are improving the way each crime is
departmentalized.
Readers of The Tico Times also comment on the slow
response time of National Police forces. When a crime or theft occurs, the
police are called, though they might show up 30 or 40 minutes later, and the
opportunity to prevent the crime or detain the criminals is lost. Is there
anything that the Security Ministry is doing to improve response time?
For that reason I mentioned the amount of vehicles that
we have. That explains the slow response time. With only one patrol car,
officers have to attend to several different obligations.
This is the reason for the critical state of our national
anti-crime forces.
Everyone wants response times to be faster, but it’s not
easy with only one or two patrol cars in an area where several crimes occur.
People complain about the slow response times, but remember that Costa Rica,
different from Panama, grows laterally in place of vertically. Every time you
enter Costa Rica on a plane, there is less green area. It is a big carpet of
cement. We don’t grow up, we grow laterally.
Every time we construct a new housing development or
neighborhood, we do so with one-story homes or apartments. It is expanding
almost daily. The deficit between the amount of police and the citizens’ demand
continues to grow. The coverage area is growing, but our resources are staying
the same.
For that reason, we want to acquire at least 400 more
police vehicles. Instead of a 30- to 40-minute response time, like you
mentioned, it will be cut to less than 15 minutes. A response time of zero to
15 minutes is excellent, optimal.
From five to 15 minutes, you can still assist the victim,
and the criminal or criminals are still in an area where they can be located.
After 15 minutes, the chance of detaining the criminal is almost entirely lost.
Then it is just a matter of taking the information and registering the event.
To me, the response times are the most important indicator of our police
forces’ shortcomings.
If everything that I have talked about today works, it is
going to improve the response time. We are doing all we can to reduce response
time.
The amount of drugs confiscated in Costa Rica this year
is nearing an all-time high. Does that mean the National Police and OIJ are
improving their abilities to locate drug sources, or is it an indication that
there is an increasing amount of drugs in the country?
That is a good question. To be honest, there isn’t a
definite response. I would prefer to say that it is due to the improvement in
the abilities of the National Police and isn’t simply an increase in the amount
of drugs in the country, though we can’t necessarily say yet.
I think that we are seeing larger confiscations in
certain parts of the country, such as Limón and in the Nicaragua border
crossing at Peñas Blancas. So there are some signs of success with the same
amount of resources.
But, to be honest, I can’t say for sure whether the
amount of drugs in the country is increasing or if the police are doing a
better job than in previous years.
In your opinion, what is the biggest security concern in
the country at this time?
I think this is a two-part answer. The first part is the
amount of crime that exists in the country right now and how to prevent it from
getting worse in upcoming years. High levels of crime haven’t yet arrived in
Costa Rica, but the worry is that they could.
We have located the presence of several Mexican drug
cartels in the country. The fear with cartels is the amount of savage violence
that accompanies them. Other countries in northern Central America are already
experiencing tremendous amounts of violence. If the number of Mexican drug
cartels continues to grow here, crime will most likely increase.
Currently, the worry about Mexican drug cartels isn’t
overwhelming, though it is a valid concern for the future.
The second part of the response is that we need to
improve how we work together to reduce the amount of crime in the country. This
includes judges, prosecutors, police and the cooperation of all involved in the
fight to reduce crime. We have to improve the way that people attempting to
reduce crime work together to accomplish that goal. The process needs more
connection and collaboration.
These two are the biggest challenges facing the security
of the country at this time.
One more thing to add is about the day-to-day robberies
that occur. They must be reduced. For example, when you leave your bike
outside, you go away for a few minutes and come back and your bike is gone.
When that happens, people feel that their personal space has been violated. The
feeling that a crime happened close to me, that they robbed something that
belonged to me, something that I valued, maybe something that had sentimental
value because it was a gift from my father – those type of things are a
continued concern.
So, the biggest concerns range from the highest levels of
organized crime and drug trafficking to the day-to-day crimes like petty theft,
which usually involves innocent people.