Julian Leyzaola is a controversial man.
The Ciudad Juarez’s new police chief is seen as a hero by many because of the way he crackdown crime in Tijuana, when he was the chief of police. For many others, his methods of fighting criminals are concerning, especially for human rights related issues.
Leyzaola likes to call things by their names. He proposes to take out the fancy names and the paraphernalia that surrounds criminals: “A hit man is an assassin… an armed group is a group of delinquents… executions are homicides,” he said in an interview with reporters early this week.
He doesn’t evade any of the questions and he seems to have a response for all of them. On the allegations of human rights abuses, for instance, he says that those allegations came from people who he fired from the Tijuana’s police force after he discovered their involvement in corruption and crime activities.
At least 24-fired Tijuana’s police officers accused Leyzaola of torture. In their testimonies before human rights commissions they said they were beaten and had electric shocks to their genitals. They said they were obliged to sign confessions that they were not allowed to read. Some of them said Leyzaola was present during the torture.
Leyzaola denies the accusations and he even says that if authorities are involved in torture, they are not different from criminals. He asks human rights commissions to investigate all sides of the story and he insists that some people use human rights organizations “as a blanket” to cover and protect themselves from justice.
In countries like Mexico, the line between law enforcement and respect for human rights is very fine, but it can turn almost invisible in situations where crime is as outrageous as it is in Ciudad Juarez right now.
For that reason Leyzaola’s affirmation that some criminals can’t be considered human is concerning. “A criminal is a criminal”, he said. “Some of them call themselves human, which I doubt considering the aberrations some of them commit, like chopping up women or locking them up and torturing them for days. And they still demand that their rights are respected? I believe that the punishment of criminals has to be in the in direct proportion to the harm they caused.”
Yes, everybody agrees that criminals should be punished. But they should be punished after a trial that clearly demonstrates their plenty responsibility and guilt in those criminal acts. People can’t be punished before with methods such as torture, forced disappearance or any other antidemocratic and barbaric strategies that have inflicted so much pain to the society in the past years.
Mexico’s justice system is far away of being perfect. Countless of cases of innocent people being detained, tortured and imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit have shown the pitfalls of the system.
Leyzaola seems to have good intentions to fight crime and that is absolutely necessary not just for Juarez, but for the entire country. But there must be a balance between law enforcement and respect for human rights. If that balance doesn’t exist, all of his efforts are going to fail because of the lack of credibility.
That balance could be achieved through transparency. If there is transparency in the ways that the police conduct their investigations and arrests, if the society can trust the intelligence of the corporation, then, we could start talking about the beginning of the change.
Leyzaola has been just three months in the position. He is careful about delivering promises, but he says that by mid next year there must be some visible changes. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Excellent post! I think Mexico can put a lot of faith in Leyzaola. This is evidenced by him firing several hundred corrupt cops and cleaning up dangerous towns. To say this man is corrupt would be difficult given his background.
Posted by: Aaron | 06/14/2011 at 05:55 AM