In early July, a vigilante group of 29 police, representing the CICPC (criminal investigations police) and the DIM (military intelligence), attacked and shot dead three students in southwest Caracas erroneously suspected in the assassination of a policeman some days earlier. Two of the students were “bound and savagely beaten” and then shot six times execution-style. Reuters reported that some police involved tried to give the impression that the students had also been armed by leaving pistols and shotguns by their dead bodies. Local press has begun calling the incident the “student massacre,” and defendants will be charged with premeditated murder, attempted murder, and “improper use of firearms.” Days prior to the so-called student massacre, firebrand President Hugo Chavez announced an overhaul of the DISIP (secret police) and canned his national intelligence chief after a Colombian drug lord escaped prison after bribing guards. After the incident, Chavez called for the complete dissolution of the DIM. Further, in June, Chavez shut down a militarized police force, which had been accused of human rights abuses, along the Brazilian border. More chilling, according to EFE News, Congress was to investigate summary executions by police death squads ? termed “extermination groups” in official reports — in Aragua state and similar contentions in neighboring Guarico state. Much of the Guarico report had been filibustered until reports appeared in Aragua as well. Even still, there remain more than 20 state police forces and 300 municipal forces along with the Caracas Metropolitan Police to contend with. With all of these, and certainly other undisclosed, improprieties, Interior Minister Jesse Chacon has proposed a merger to form one national police force. Chacon contended that bringing all of the disparate forces under one umbrella is “the only way to change the ‘culture’ of Venezuelan police.”

The situation in Venezuela is remarkably similar to that of Brazil’s. Namely, in both countries, the police operate boldly and without fear of reprisal, often forming vigilante groups to seek extra-judicial justice or outright retribution, all the while instilling fear in the local communities of those who should be protecting and instilling a sense of safety and security. The National Assembly has received 2,000 criminal complaints in 2005 alone against various security forces. One official said that Venezuela’s police force problem is “structural, linked to violence, and not something recent.” Further, deaths of those ‘resisting authority’ or ‘clashing’ with police have risen by 300 percent in one decade. This equates roughly to a 1:49 ratio of police to civilian deaths.

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