Law enforcement in Mexico City

For the federal agency, see Secretariat of Public Security (Mexico).

Coordinates: 19°25′30.5″N 99°7′7.2″W / 19.425139°N 99.118667°W / 19.425139; -99.118667 Law enforcement in Mexico City is provided by two primary agencies; the Secretariat of Public Security of the Federal District (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal), who provides uniformed or preventative police, and the Office of the Attorney General of the Federal District (Procuraduría General de Justicia del Distrito Federal) who provides plainclothes detectives and crime lab services.

Secretariat of Public Security

Secretariat of Public Security of the Federal District
Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal
Common name Federal District Police
Abbreviation SSPDF

Patch of the Secretariat of Public Security of the Federal District

Logo of the Secretariat of Public Security of the Federal District
Agency overview
Employees 100,000 officers
Annual budget $106 billion pesos (2011)
Legal personality Governmental: Government agency
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdiction* Federal District of Mexico City, Mexico
Population 8,400,000
Legal jurisdiction Mexico City
General nature
Operational structure
Facilities
Helicopters 12
Footnotes
* Divisional agency: Division of the country, over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction.

The Secretariat of Public Security of the Federal District (Spanish: Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal; SSP) is the uniformed law enforcement agency of Mexico City, headquartered in Venustiano Carranza.[1][2] It manages a combined force of over 100,000 officers in the Federal District (DF).[3]

The Federal District Police (Policial Distrito Federal) is the police department of the Federal District of Mexico. The Federal District (the DF or Distrito Federal) contains the heart of Mexico City and the seat of federal Mexican government. There are 8.84 million residents of the DF, according to 2009 estimates, and another 21.1 million people in the metropolitan region.

The SSP is charged with maintaining public order and safety in the center of Mexico City where public insecurity and crime rates are highest in the nation. As a result, there have been concurrent efforts to increase accountability and improve police effectiveness. Beginning in 1996, authorities began a dramatic restructuring of the SSP, which included replacing major officials with army officers. Recently, the most recent high-profile effort has been Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s announcement in 2002 that the DF would contract former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as a consultant to the SSP.

The SSP also regulates the huge private security industry in the DF and operates the Animal Control Unit (Brigada de Vigiliancia Animal).[4]

Organization

The DF stands out for having one of the lowest crime rates in Mexico,[5] as well as a huge uniformed "preventive police" force of approximately 34,000 officers, not to mention 40,000 auxiliary police and 15,000 banking police. These nearly 90,000 officers work for the Secretariat of Public Security of the DF (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública – SSP DF). In 2011, the SSP had a budget of about $106 billion pesos (an increase from the previous year's $89 billion pesos).[3]

Command and Staff

The organizational structure and holders of area Public Safety Department are:

Secretary of Public Safety (Secretario de Seguridad Pública): Hiram Almeida Estrada

Preventive Police

School Protection police vehicle

The 34,000 strong Preventive Police are the uniformed police of Mexico City.[6] They are organized into seven major divisions.[3] as follows:

The remaining five divisions of the Preventive Police, containing over 17,000 officers, are organized as follows:

Firefighters and Paramedics of the Escuadrón de Rescate y Urgencias Médicas (ERUM) in ITESM Campus.
Agrupamiento Cóndores Bell 206.

Complimentary Police

There are two Complementary Police (policías complementarias) which operates under the supervision of the SSP, yet is not considered to be a part of the Preventive Police. The Complementary Police contains two Security Police forces:

Police band

Private Security Directorate

The Directorate General of Private Security and Systematic Operating Procedures (la dirección general de seguridad privada y procedimientos sistemáticos de operación), regulates the activities and the provision of private security services in Mexico City, to ensure that such operations take place under the best conditions of efficiency, reliability, professionalism and legal and financial support for the benefit of the population.

Secretaries of Public Security

Government of Ramón Aguirre Velázquez (1982-1988)

Government of Manuel Camacho Solis (1988 - 1993)

Government of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano (1997 - 1999)

Government of Rosario Robles (1999 - 2000)

Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2000 - 2005)

Government Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez (2005 - 2006)

Government Marcelo Ebrard (2006 - 2012)

Government of Miguel Angel Mancera (2012 - In office)

Judicial Police of the DF

The DF is also unique for maintaining its own force of judicial police, the Judicial Police of the Federal District (Policía Judicial del Distrito Federal – PJDF), which are organized under the Office of the Attorney General of the DF (the Procuraduría General de Justicia del Distrito Federal). The PGJDF receives complaints and reports of possible crimes and investigates them. The PGJDF maintains 16 precincts (delegaciones) with an estimated 3,500 personnel, which includes 1,100 investigating agents for prosecuting attorneys (agentes del ministerio público), and 941 experts or specialists (peritos). The PGJDF budget exceeds $3 billion pesos each year.[23]

Police Corruption and Public Confidence

Corruption and severe inefficiency plague the Mexican police. Further, low pay and lack of resources have hindered efforts at improving police performance, battling corruption and professionalizing the forces. A related lack of public confidence has further eroded the ability of the police to respond to crime: A survey in 1999 found that 90% of respondents in Mexico City had “little” or “no” trust in the police. Such a lack of public confidence translates into a lack of support—that is, an unwillingness to report crimes or assist in investigations, which is crucial to solving crimes. Nationwide, only 12% of the population has expressed confidence in the police.

In 2002, an advocacy group (Transparency International) estimated that the median Mexican household spends 8% of its income on bribes (mordidas or “bites”). According to the president of the CCE (Spanish: Consejo Coordinador Empresarial; CCE), businesses spend 10% of their income in bribes.[24] On the TI scale, Mexico ranks 57th worldwide in perception of corruption, one notch better than China at 58 and well below Brazil and Peru at 45. In 1997, Mexico ranked 47th; in 1998, 55th. A management consulting firm (A.T. Kearney) reported, also in 2002, that Mexico’s attractiveness to foreign investors dropped, from fifth to ninth place worldwide, due to concerns with corruption and crime.

Private security

Mexican and Mexico City security companies have grown significantly in recent years, in response to the state’s failure to provide security. Mexico holds third place world-wide in the purchase of security equipment. Between 1998 and 1999, private security companies increased some 40 percent. The Mexican federal and state governments has had serious problems in regulating these companies, most of which are illegitimate since they lack the necessary legal permits. It was estimated in 1999, that about 10,000 private security firms operated in Mexico, yet only 2,000 had some form of official permit. According to official figures in December 2000, there were 2,984 private security companies registered with 153,885 employees. The inability to regulate or control these forces creates potential security problem. Since many of these companies are unregulated, some will engage in criminality instead of (or as a means of) protecting their clients, thus exacerbating the problem of insecurity. According to a study by the Mexico City legislative assembly, in 1998 there were more private security guards than police. A substantial number of private security guards were formerly police officers or presently work as security guards while off-duty. Private security is regulated by the Secretariat of Public Security.

See also

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.

  1. "Management Report." Mexico City Police Department. July 2008-July 2009. Retrieved on December 12, 2010.
  2. "Directorio Telefónico S.S.P.." Ministry of Public Security. Retrieved on December 12, 2010. "Sidar y Rovirosa número 169 - Col. El Parque - C. P. 15970 - Deleg. Venustiano Carranza - Tel. 5722 89 00 Ext. 8959"
  3. 1 2 3 "Mexican Ministry of External Affairs" (PDF). Sre.gob.mx. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  4. http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/brigada_vigilancia_animal.html
  5. (PDF) https://web.archive.org/20120508153419/http://international.iupui.edu/mexico/IncidenciaDelictivaViolencia2009.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 8, 2012. Retrieved November 24, 2012. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/operacion_policial.html
  7. http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/policia_proximidad.html
  8. http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/transito.html
  9. https://web.archive.org/20150412222606/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/OrgPolicial/Pages/A-Caballo.aspx. Archived from the original on April 12, 2015. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/agrupamientos.html
  11. https://web.archive.org/20150412214051/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/OrgPolicial/Pages/Femenil.aspx. Archived from the original on April 12, 2015. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  12. https://web.archive.org/20130216223236/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx:80/OrgPolicial/Pages/Policia-Ambiental.aspx. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  13. http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/erum.html
  14. "DF - Reciben Cóndores de SSP-DF nuevo helicóptero". El Universal. 2008-01-23. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  15. https://web.archive.org/20150406022632/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx:80/OrgPolicial/Pages/Fuerza-de-Tarea.aspx. Archived from the original on April 6, 2015. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  16. https://web.archive.org/20130707032550/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx:80/OrgPolicial/Pages/Granaderos.aspx. Archived from the original on July 7, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  17. https://web.archive.org/20150330005533/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx:80/OrgPolicial/PA/Pages/Historia.aspx. Archived from the original on March 30, 2015. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  18. "Policia Auxiliar del D.F". Pa.df.gob.mx. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  19. https://web.archive.org/20130730035648/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/OrgPolicial/PA/Pages/proteccion_ciudadana.aspx. Archived from the original on July 30, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  20. https://web.archive.org/20130730031912/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx/OrgPolicial/PA/Pages/furza_de_reaccion.aspx. Archived from the original on July 30, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  21. "El Portal de la Policía Bancaria e Industrial". Policiabancaria.df.gob.mx. Retrieved 2015-10-20.
  22. https://web.archive.org/20150328203156/http://www.ssp.df.gob.mx:80/OrgPolicial/PBI/Pages/Antecedentes.aspx. Archived from the original on March 28, 2015. Retrieved April 12, 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  23. "Bienvenidos al Sitio de la PGJDF". Pgjdf.gob.mx. Retrieved 2015-10-20.

External links

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