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 VI. Community-Police Relations
Human rights abuses, evidence of police criminality and the arrogant attitudes of some HNP
personnel all contribute to the continued fragility of police-community relations.(53) In our January 1997 report, we stressed the
critical need for the HNP to establish and maintain the trust of local communities. To
build this trust, we strongly recommended that the HNP adopt a strategy of community
policing. Unfortunately, the HNP has not made community policing a high priority. It has,
indeed, dismantled a community policing pilot project and with it a team of HNP officers
who had received training in mediation to support community policing initiatives.(54)
Community policing efforts have been undertaken in Jeremie and Cap Haďtien. The effort in
Cap Haďtien was initiated by Canadian CivPol and supported by MICIVIH, which undertook a
series of six training sessions based on conflict mediation techniques. The project
divided the city into zones and assigned two HNP agents to each zone. Twenty-five of the
180 HNP agents at the station were assigned to community policing. They patrolled the area
and identified crime problems and patterns. Operations were carried out by other HNP so
that the community police would not be tainted or targeted later. The community police
agents also appeared on radio call-in shows, and MICIVIH observers say that local people
were very happy to know their police by name.(55)
This group and the entire community policing project were recently disbanded and split up
as they moved to other areas under the national police redeployment. The community police
agents from Cap Haďtien should be reunited in a unit and deployed together as a pilot
project, preferably back to Cap Haďtien, so that their experience is not lost.
More typical is the community relations experience in Jeremie where HNP agents visit
schools and markets with loudspeakers and broadcast statements that they are not like the
old military, but there to protect and serve the people. While this has reportedly
resulted in some informal discussions with people during those visits, it is more an
exercise in civic education or police public relations. At police headquarters in
Port-au-Prince, there is a unit assigned to police-community relations, but their primary
activities to date appear to be the production of posters which are displayed in HNP
stations throughout Haiti.
HNP Director General Denizé appears skeptical about the advisability or need to undertake
community policing, particularly since it would require restructuring the way in which
local police carry out their duties. He asserted that the mission of the HNP -- "to
protect and serve" -- should be apparent in all the HNP's activities, noting that:
"This is very different from a community policing approach that postulates that
police activities can and should be structured to promote police engagement with and
responsiveness to the community."(56)
Denizé is posing a false choice; the HNP could have both a force-wide approach to
community policing and specialized units promoting and assessing the HNP's community
policing effort.
Community policing is more than an exercise in public relations; it is also a
crime-fighting strategy which seeks to reduce crime by improving information exchange
between police and community and bolstering public opinion that the police are fair and
equitable. Community policing entails specific police deployments designed to bring police
and community together to identify security concerns and appropriate responses. An
emphasis on foot patrols and assigning cops to a regular beat where they get to know local
people and problems are typical elements of community policing. Community policing offers
potential for developing cost-effective crime-fighting strategies in Haiti's under-policed
environment while also addressing issues of police culture and helping to control
vigilante groups. Currently neighborhood watch groups (brigades de vigilance) are
rarely coordinated or cooperate with the HNP.(57)
International assistance for the HNP has been inconsistent on community policing. Former
Canadian CivPol commanders described community policing as a CivPol top priority. In
October 1997, the French CivPol commander said that CivPol has orders to encourage
community policing, but as one aspect of many police techniques.(58)
While MICIVIH does not have police professionals on its staff, its close monitoring of the
HNP has provided many insights into the problems and potential of the force, and MICIVIH
assisted the Cap Haďtien project in collaboration with CivPol.
To maximize the benefit of multiple international programs, it is extremely important that
they coordinate efforts and avoid duplication and the possibility of sending conflicting
messages about police practice or political priorities as with the community policing
program. International assistance programs should be targeted to assist the HNP with the
administrative command and control problems we have highlighted in this report and to
support greater emphasis on community policing efforts.
53. In Grand Goave, the HNP had enjoyed good relations with
the community prior to the shootings described in Section I of this report. Immediately
after the shootings, townspeople ransacked houses shared by local HNP agents and burned
their possessions. When we interviewed them two weeks later, the police were clearly
demoralized and rarely left the station except in their car to respond to calls. Before
they had carried out foot and bicycle patrols.
54. Report of the Secretary-General, UN Document A/52/687,
November 18, 1997, paragraph 41.
55. Interview with MICIVIH staff, October 19, 1997.
56. Denizé interview, October 20, 1997.
57. Ibid. According to Denizé, lynching continue,
increasing or decreasing with general levels of frustration when political and economic
questions or failures of the justice system are incomprehensible to people.
58. Laparra interview, October 16, 1997.
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