Everyone seems to agree that the Dominican police needs to be reformed. The Chief of the Police and the President-appointed reform commission and the Foundation Justice and Institutionality all have different opinions of how to go about this. The top ranks of the Police and the Presidential Commission for the Reform of the Armed Forces and National Police, as reported today by El Caribe newspaper, differ on the body that should preside over the reformed institution. President Mejia appointed a commission head by Major General Hugo Rafael Gonzalez Borrel. Other members of the presidential commission are Minister of Interior and Police Rafael Suberví Bonilla and retired general Rafael Guerrero Peralta (a former head of the Police and Drug Control Department). In this proposal a Superior Police Council would oversee Police operations. Police Chief Major General Pedro de Jesus Candelier had presented his own proposal. But the President sent his commission’s proposal to Congress for study. In the presidential commission’s proposal, a Consejo Superior Policial would be created with the Minister of Interior and Police given at the top. At present, the Police Chief should answer to the Minister, but in practice this does not occur. Other members of the new council would be the chief of the police and the attorney general. Chief of Police Candelier favors establishing a Direccion Colegiada de la Policia presided by the chief of the police, church members and media members. El Caribe newspaper also presents the opinion of Finjus, a leading judiciary and human rights defending organization (see http://www.finjus.org.do) Former district attorney Francisco Dominguez Brito, today executive director of Finjus says that the reform project in Congress is worthless. "I understand that if the reform of the structure of the police is not an in depth one, where it is ridden of the Dictator Trujillo days tradition, of being a vertical system with absolute power in all aspects, then there will not be a true reform," he told the newspaper. He said that the Police would continue to be able to extort families seeking the freedom of their relatives arrested late at night, for example. Dominguez Brito highlights the need to separate the investigate corps from the regular corps that should be at the service of the security of citizens. In his opinion, the police should be a civilian body, and the investigators should respond to the Ministerio Publico, the government legal prosecutors.
