Very scary to think you are actually a policeman in NY instead of DR aranoid:
I don't need to defend Frank. He can do that himself. Neither would I ever claim to speak for him.
But I believe Frank is speaking from a vantage point very few of us can relate to.
A "mano dura" approach has it's problems, and I'm not a proponent of officers going around shooting every bad guy they encounter. But a police officer in a country where the rule of law means nothing and the court system is weak and corrupt has very little recourse in terms of actually battling crime.
This is what I believe Frank is alluding to.
It says something about our justice system in comparison to the DR that police officers in New York don't go around pulling their guns out and gratuitously shooting people who are in the midst of committing a crime.
Regardless of the inherent faults of our justice system, even the most brazen criminal knows that attacking a police officer in any way shape or form is a one-way ticket to either a very long jail sentence or the morgue. Does this exist in the DR? The morgue part yes, the jail time maybe not.
Then there are the ones who are out there terrorizing the communities in which they live who would never get into a confrontation with a Dominican cop who circumvent the criminal justice system in a way that makes chasing and capturing them an absolute joke.
Hence the "mano dura" approach as a short-term solution.
Rio de Janeiro is in the process of cleaning up their slums for the upcoming Summer Olympics and World Cup. Know how they're doing it? Not the way London did it, and their police officers don't even carry guns.
In Rio, community policing AND a mano dura approach is what's quelling the violence. The criminals know they will get crushed, and have been getting crushed for quite a while now. And the ones who refuse to get the message are being forced to stop, the hard way.
So maybe after the dust settles, community policing will take precedence over the mano dura. Only time will tell.
But the DR is nowhere near that right now, and its' citizens are crying out for protection.