 More than 5,000 Dominican police officers and soldiers have been fired in the past three years over widespread corruption, including widespread drug trafficking.
SANTO DOMINGO -- Elías Enmanuel Núñez is an ex-cop on the run.
The former lieutenant with the Dominican Republic’s National Police anti-narcotics unit accused his supervisors of protecting drug dealers and stealing dope. He was fired, threatened with death, and officially logged as one of the 5,000 crooked police officers, soldiers or anti-narcotics agents sacked in the past three years.
“I would arrest a drug dealer for having however many kilos of cocaine, and the next day the drugs I seized would be gone, and the guy would be back on his corner,” Núñez told The Miami Herald. “I did not offer myself to that kind of thing, and now I can’t even get a job as a security guard.”
Núñez eventually went public, and the colonels in question were suspended. They are among thousands of law enforcement officers that Dominican authorities acknowledge have become hit men, thieves or drug traffickers. Many formed business partnerships with the Dominican drug dealers and Colombian cartels that move massive amounts of cocaine by land and sea through the island of Hispaniola.
As more Colombian drugs move through the Dominican Republic on their way to Europe and the United States, traffickers have corrupted the very institutions charged with keeping them at bay, destabilizing already weak agencies plagued by low pay and graft.
Entire trafficking networks have been dismantled from within the armed forces, National Police and the country’s specialized quasi-military anti-drug corps. More than 20 percent of the National Drug Control Directorate, the country’s equivalent of the DEA, was fired last year, underscoring the need for massive reform in a country where U.S. anti-drug aid has dwindled.
“There is no question that most of the heavy lifting in drug trafficking in the Dominican Republic is being done by the military: They are the ones who facilitate the entry of drugs,” said Miami attorney Joaquin Perez, who represents traffickers. “They get a commission, in the form of drugs, and then find someone to sell it.”
SMUGGLING SCHEME
Earlier this month, 12 soldiers, including a captain and lieutenant colonel assigned to the Puerto Plata airport anti-drug agency were arrested in a scheme to smuggle 33 kilos of cocaine to Canada in a child’s suitcase, prosecutors announced.
An internal affairs lieutenant investigating dirty cops was murdered in January. A commission that probed last year’s high profile arrest of fugitive Puerto Rican kingpin José David Figueroa Agosto recommended the dismissal of 13 police officers, including six bosses.
The issue exploded here in August 2008, when seven Colombian men were found dead in Paya, a village near Bani, a southern Dominican city. Twenty two people — among them soldiers who posed as drug agents — were convicted of robbing the Colombians of 1,300 kilos of cocaine and then murdering them.
Gen. Rolando Rosado stepped in as head of the National Drug Control Directorate (DNCD) last year and fired 418 of his 2,000 officers.
“They have to take out what doesn’t work, and if that leaves 10 people, then they need to start over with those 10 people,” said Jordy Veras, an attorney in Santiago, a city north of the capital. “The situation is very grave."
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com
Dominican Watchdog Note, Several other international media picked up the story:
http://www.againstcorruption.eu/story/drugs-and--corruption-creeping-into-dominican-police-and-military
http://insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/806-corruption-in-dominican-security-forces-aids-drug-trafficking
http://flarenetwork.org/learn/central_and_south_america/article/dominican_police_and_soldiers_are_increasingly_getting_in_the_drug_trade.htm
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