Haiti human rights org RNDDH expresses concern for criteria of recruitment of new police

Haïti-Pnh : Trente-huit aspirants policiers pistonnés par le palais national, selon le Rnndh 

vendredi 19 décembre 2014   

(Read the original article here)  
 
P-au-P, 19 déc. 2014 [AlterPresse] --- Le Réseau national de défense des droits humains (Rnddh) interpelle le directeur général de la Police nationale d’Haïti (Pnh), Godson Orélus, sur le risque de politisation de cette institution, dans une lettre ouverte rendue publique le 19 décembre 2014.

38 individus « pistonnés par le palais national », la plupart ne répondant pas aux critères exigés aux recrues, se trouvent actuellement à l’Académie de police, révèle le Rnddh.

« Proches du pouvoir », ces individus « sont sur le point d’intégrer la 25^e promotion de la Pnh ».
Ils auraient, auparavant, suivi une formation en Equateur, autour de la « sécurité rapprochée ».
Ils ne se sont pas inscrits dans les bureaux de la Pnh. Depuis leur arrivée à l’Académie de police, ils multiplient les écarts de conduite, dénonce le Rnddh, signalant que plusieurs ont de « grandes difficultés de lecture et d’écriture ».

Alors que selon les procédures de recrutement de la Pnh, les recrues doivent être âgées de 18 a 30 ans, 32 des aspirants policiers en question ont plus de 30 ans.

« Les incidences d’actes irréfléchis sur le fonctionnement de l’institution policière, comme 
l’intégration de ces trente-huit (38) aspirants policiers, peuvent être énormes », craint le Rnddh, parlant de menace pour le respect des droits humains et l’établissement de l’Etat de droit en Haïti.

Le Rnddh appelle la direction générale de la Pnh à prendre des mesures drastiques en urgence, pour interdire l’intégration de ces 38 personnes. [kft rc apr 19/12/2014 13:30]

Haiti police spokesman: Mass prison escape "a conspiracy carried out from inside the prison"

Lundi, 11 août 2014 09:25  

13 évadés capturés par les forces de l'ordre  

Radio Metropole  

(Read original article here)

Les forces de l'ordre sont à la recherche de plusieurs dizaines de prisonniers en cavale suite à une mutinerie à la prison civile de la Croix-des Bouquets hier dimanche. Parmi les personnes en cavale figure l'homme d'affaires Clifford Brandt, chef d'un important gang de kidnapping.  

Le porte parole de la police, Gary Desrosiers, a révélé que 13 évadés ont été capturés par les policiers quelques heures après la mutinerie dans cette prison de haute sécurité située non loin de la capitale.  

Selon les premiers éléments de l'enquête les mutins n'auraient bénéficié d'aucun appui extérieur pour réussir leur coup. Des riverains ont indiqué que plusieurs centaines de personnes étaient sorties de l'enceinte courant dans tous les sens quelques instants après une intense fusillade.  

"C'est un complot réalisé à l'intérieur de la prison qui a provoqué cette évasion. Il n'y a pas eu d'attaque venue de l'extérieur", a laissé entendre M. Desrosiers démentant ainsi les informations faisant état de l'intervention d'une voiture blindée.  
Les membres du Conseil Supérieur de la Police Nationale (CSPN) ont lancé hier soir l'enquête sur cet évasion spectaculaire de ce centre carcéral de haute sécurité. Les ministres de la justice, Jean Renel Sanon, et de l'intérieur, Reginald Delva, deux ex militaires des FAD'H, ont pu collecter les premières informations sur les circonstances de l'évasion.  

Plusieurs personnalités dont Clifford Brandt et Roodly Ethéard étaient détenues dans cette prison de haute sécurité construit en 2012 grâce à un don du gouvernement canadien. 899 personnes étaient incarcérées dans ce centre carcéral. LLM / radio Métropole Haïti

Haiti's Chamber of Deputies Declares "Long Live Impunity!"

Though it passed with very little notice in the local media and none (from what I can tell) in the foreign press, last week Haiti's Chamber of Deputies voted unanimously against lifting the immunity of two of its members, Rodriguez Séjour and N’Zounaya Bellange Jean-Baptiste,, accused of involvement in the murder of police officer Walky Calixte in Carrefour in April 2012.

Apparently Haiti's elected officials still believe, as they long have held, that they are above the laws they are elected to craft for the rest of Haiti's citizens.

You can read about the whole shameful episode in greater detail here.

RNDDH: Impunity Continues in Haiti

The Haitian human rights group Réseau national de défense des droits humains has released its report of human rights conditions in the country during the second year of the Martelly government, the full text of which can be read here.

Among some of the "highlights":

1.
After the 17 April 2012 murder of PNH officer Walky Calixte, the Haitian deputies accused of involvement in the slaying, Jean Baptiste Nzounaya Bellange and Rodriguez Séjour, still have not been charged or tried. Meanwhile, Walky Calixte's family and former colleagues in the PNH have been attacked and, in some cases (PNH officer Jean Richard Hertz Cayo), murdered.

2.

After the 18 April 2012 murder of Octanol Derissaint, allegedly by Martelly adviser Calixte Valentin, while held at the Commissariat du Canapé-vert in Port-au-Prince, Valentin continued to provide advice to the Martelly government, go out to eat and to sleep in his own home at night. On 8 November 2012, judge Fermo-Judes Paul dismissed the case. To date neither Calixte Valentin nor anyone else has been tried for the murder of Octanol Derissaint.

3.

After CEP (electoral council) president Josué Pierre-Louis is accused on 26 November 2012 of raping and assaulting Marie Danielle Bernardin, the victim is essentially treated as a criminal by Haiti's justice system and subject to threats of violence by Pierre-Louis' supporters. She withdraws the case and it is dismissed. One can only assume that M. Pierre-Louis is still a welcome guest in the halls of MINUSTAH, the government and others as Haiti prepares for it's long-delayed elections.

Anyone who wonders of the ongoing challenge posed by impunity in Haiti needs solely to look therein.

Le RNDDH se prononce contre la mise à l’écart de la PNH dans la sécurité rapprochée des hauts dignitaires de l’Etat au profit d’individus de provenanc

Le RNDDH se prononce contre la mise à l’écart de la PNH dans la sécurité rapprochée des hauts dignitaires de l’Etat au profit d’individus de provenance et d’appartenance inconnues

L’organisme des droits humains met également en garde contre des réintégrations au sein de la PNH en dehors des normes en vigueur

Publié le jeudi 15 septembre 2011

(Read the original article here)

Le directeur exécutif du Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), M. Pierre Espérance, dénonce la présence d’individus lourdement armés assurant la sécurité rapprochée de hauts dignitaires de l’Etat et qui ne font pas partie de l’unique force publique reconnue, en l’occurrence la Police Nationale d’Haïti (PNH).

Dans une interview accordée mercredi à Radio Kiskeya, le responsable de l’organisme des droits humains se dit préoccupé par une telle anomalie. Il rappelle la situation qui avait prévalu sous Aristide (2001-2004) quand la police avait été politisée et des corps paramilitaires constitués. Il relève que le comble avait alors été atteint quand le Président Aristide avait fait appel à une firme internationale de sécurité, au mépris de la force publique nationale devant remplir une telle fonction.

« C’est à l’intérieur de la PNH que doit être constituée une unité chargée de la sécurité rapprochée des hauts dignitaires », insiste M. Espérance. Il justifie sa position par le fait que, tout en créant des frustrations au sein de la PNH, la présence d’individus armés plonge dans l’embarras l’Inspection générale de la police qui ne peut en aucune manière sanctionner les éventuelles infractions commises par ces derniers.

En ce qui concerne la sécurité présidentielle, le responsable du RNDDH déclare ne voir aucun inconvénient au fait que puissent s’en occuper les trois unités spécialisées USGPN, USP et CAT Team du Palais National (siège de la Présidence).

« Tout devrait être entrepris afin de ne pas affaiblir la principale force publique nationale », insiste M. Espérance. Il met l’accent sur la nécessité de renforcer les efforts déployés depuis 2006 en vue de la professionnalisation de l’institution policière.

Le directeur exécutif du RNDDH a enfin souhaité que les lois régissant le processus de réintégration au sein de la PNH soient strictement respectées, en référence à des informations selon lesquelles des démarches en ce sens seraient en cours en faveur de plusieurs ex-policiers proches des autorités issues des dernières élections. [jmd/Radio Kiskeya]

Risque de réimplantation des gangs à Cité Soleil

Haïti-Insécurité

Risque de réimplantation des gangs à Cité Soleil

Une organisation locale tire la sonnette d’alarme

vendredi 27 août 2010,

Radio Kiskeya

(Read the original artice here)

Le Collectif des Notables de Cité Soleil (CONOCS)-Centre de Respect des Droits Humains a relevé mardi une nette recrudescence des activités criminelles à Cité Soleil, lançant un véritable SOS aux autorités pour éviter la réimplantation des bandes armées dans ce vaste bidonville du Nord de la capitale.

Selon le directeur exécutif du CONOCS-Centre de Respect des Droits Humains, le pasteur Jean Hénock Joseph, sept hommes ont violé une fillette d 12 ans le samedi 21 août à Soleil 19. Un récent raid contre le quartier de Soleil 19 mené par des hommes armés provenant vraisemblablement de Soleil 9 s’est soldé par la mort d’un handicapé et 8 blessés par balle.

Le pasteur Joseph fait par ailleurs état de nombreux cas d’agressions dans divers quartiers de la cité pour dépouiller des passants de toutes sortes d’objets, dont bijoux et téléphones cellulaires.

Face à cette situation, Jean Hénock Joseph réclame l’augmentation de l’effectif de la Police Nationale d’Haïti (PNH) à Cité Soleil, nettement insuffisant quant à présent, selon lui. Il appelle en ce sens le Haut commandement de la PNH à doter la cité d’un véritable Commissariat de police et à restituer au contingent local de l’institution des véhicules que lui avait octroyés l’Agence américaine pour le développement international (USAID).

Le responsable de CONOCS-Centre de Respect des Droits Humains a enfin appelé à la révocation et à l’arrestation des juges de Cité Soleil qui ne font que rançonner la population, notamment en exigeant de fortes sommes en échange de la libération de personnes qu’ils jettent injustement en prison.

Video on PNH'S SWAT team

This is an interesting video on the Police Nationale d’Hait's SWAT unit from Tele-Image, introduced by Valerio Saint-Louis.

Challenges to Haiti’s Security Gains

Challenges to Haiti’s Security Gains

Saturday 10 October 2009

By Michael Deibert

Presented to the Applied Research Center and the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, August 2009

(Read the original article here)

At present, Haiti is passing through a delicate and significant period, one which, while giving hints of hope, also provides ample grounds for caution.

Though there have been significant and laudable improvements in the country’s security situation under the mandate of Haitian President René Préval, inaugurated in May 2006, these gains remain fragile and Haiti’s political situation relatively tenuous, and two stubbornly recurring factors of Haiti’s political life will have to be addressed in order to concretize them.

Though he has been criticized in some quarters for ineffectiveness, I believe that it is hard to overstate the impact the restoration of relative peace around the country since Mr. Préval took office has had on the life or ordinary Haitians. Whereas only a few years ago the authority of the state extended little even in the capital, Port-au-Prince, where entire neighborhoods were held in the sway of various politically-affiliated armed gangs, citizens of the capital, including those in poorer quarters, can now largely go about their business without the ever-present fear of being kidnapped or being caught in an exchange of fire between the gangs, Haitian police and forces of the 9,000 member Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti, known by its acronym MINUSTAH. 
 Haiti’s long-crumbling road system is being gradually rehabilitated, especially in the country’s south, and its ever-erratic electricity situation has also improved somewhat. The appointment of Michèle Pierre-Louis, a respected and independent-minded civil society leader who formerly directed the Fondasyon Konesans Ak Libète (Knowledge and Freedom Foundation or FOKAL), as Prime Minister in September 2008, should also be viewed as a positive sign in a country where the Prime Minister’s office, technically the head of government according to Haiti’s 1987 constitution, has often meant little more than a rubber stamp for the presidency.

On the economic front, there has also been some good news, with the June announcement by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the the Inter-American Development Bank collectively canceling $1.2 billion of Haiti’s debt, in one broad stroke erasing almost two-thirds of the country’s outstanding debt. The latter institution went even further, approving an additional $120 million in grants to aid Haiti in improving sectors such as infrastructure, basic services and disaster prevention.

Also, in the United States, the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2008 (HOPE II), with strong support in the U.S. congress, built yet further on a 2007 measure that provided certain Haitian textiles with duty-free status when entering the United States, perhaps a boon for Haiti’s long near-moribund textile industry.

The amelioration of Haiti’s security situation is, in my view, due to several factors, not the least of which has been the steady and principled leadership of Mario Andresol at the head of the Police Nationale d’Haiti (PNH), bringing back competence and accountability to an institution that, during the 2001 to 2004 rule of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and to a lesser extent the 2004 to 2006 interim government that ruled Haiti before Mr. Préval’s election, was viewed chiefly as a highly politicized bludgeon used by Haiti’s executive branch against its enemies, real or perceived.

A projected five year UN-supported police reform program is now in its third year of implementation, currently providing Haiti with 9,200 police officers, with that number projected to grow to 10,000 by year’s end. For a police force that numbered only 3,500 at the start of the UN mission (of whom over 1,500 had to be dismissed), the target of 14,000 police officers by the end of 2011 would not seem overly optimistic. This surge in police recruits is a far cry from the situation between September 2004 and June 2005, during which a PNH officer was being murdered every five days in Haiti. On the judicial side of law enforcement, Haiti has recently re-opened its school for magistrates after being shuttered for many years.

However, there are some structural problems to Haiti’s political culture that need to be addressed if the calm that we have seen in Haiti over the least few years is to be anything but cosmetic, and if a longer process of both political and economic development can occur.

By now everyone is no doubt familiar with the litany of woeful statistics that so often get repeated about Haiti in gatherings like this: The fact that over 4 million of Haiti’s nearly 9 million people live on less than US$1 a day, that only the people of Somalia and Afghanistan suffer from higher rates of hunger, that 90 percent of Haiti’s tree cover has been destroyed for charcoal and to make room for farming, resulting in erosion that has destroyed two-thirds of the country’s arable farmland and leaves it vulnerable to torrential floods such as those caused by a trio of hurricanes that killed at least 600 people last year.


 As already noted, some steps are being taken at an international level to address Haiti’s economic woes and, though far from adequate, small steps to try and address Haiti’s environmental disaster are being taken by such indigenous groups as Tèt kole ti peyizan Ayisyen and the Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay.

Despite this, though, I believe that the two hard grains in Haiti’s political culture that must be addressed, both by the Haitian government and by the international community, if the changes I have outlined are to be anything more than temporary. These grains are those of impunity and corruption, the continuing presence of which have the ability to undermine all of the progress that we have so far seen.

The guilty pleas this past May of two Miami telecommunications executives, Juan Diaz and Antonio Perez. in connection with their roles in a conspiracy to pay and conceal more than $1 million in bribes to former Haitian officials during the Aristide’s government’s tenure is a step in the right direction, but it unfortunately has yet to be see reciprocal prosecutions on the Haitian side for those who accepted the bribes.

Despite the ratification of the UN Convention against corruption by Haiti’s parliament in 2007 and a vigorous speech about the problem of corruption in Haiti by Préval in May of that year, as a Haitian friend of mine recently told me, corruption is a low-risk, high-return initiative in Haiti, one has every chance of becoming very rich, and very little chance of being punished.

Going hand-in-hand with a culture of corruption and impunity, historically in Haiti, armed government loyalists with no formal law enforcement role have essentially became contractors of the state, a phenomenon that held true with the Tontons Macoutes of the 1957-1986 Duvalier family dictatorship, the attaché of the 1991-1994 defacto era and the chimere of Aristide’s 2001-2004 mandate. Under the aegis of the state, such affiliated members, rewarded irregularly through various forms of government largess, were allowed to exist as a competing armed group to the official security forces, and given free reign to commit some sickening crimes, such as the April 1994 killing of Aristide supporters in the northern city of Gonaives and the February 2004 massacre of Aristide opponents and civilians in the central Haitian town of St. Marc, the latter a crime for which no one has as yet been tried.

Though this phenomenon, as far I can tell, is no longer present at the heart of Haiti’s government today as it has been in the past, the aba/a-vie option of mob politics remains an attractive one to many of Haiti’s political and extra-political actors, as we saw with the riots of May 2008 and recent chaotic protests in favour of raising the country’s minimum wage. Legitimate grievances can quickly be manipulated by those seeking instability in Haiti for criminal or political gain.

Though there is a palpable difference now from the years of the second Aristide government and the interim government, when police and security services were objects of fear and distrust in the country and brazen corruption existed at the very pinnacles of power, the Haitian public now needs to feel that the police and judiciary are responsive institutions, not simply commodities that, like so much in Haiti, are for sale to the highest bidder and out of reach of the ordinary citizens.

By my count, there have been 7 UN missions in Haiti over the last 17 years, all of which had been requested by the Haitian government in power at the time. There can be 7 more over the next 17 years, but I believe if these two core issues are not aggressively and substantively addressed, the international community risks only solidifying the already deep and decidedly deserved skepticism that many Haitians have for the political process as it currently exists in the country, as evidenced by recent feeble electoral participation, and the institutions propped up by it, both local and foreign.

The people of Haiti, and by this I mean the poor majority, need to feel that they have some sort of stake in the kind of society that Haiti’s politicians, business elite and the international community are trying to create, because without the reality of a power structure that is responsive to the needs of its citizens and transparent in its governance, the window of opportunity that we are currently provided with will shut rapidly, and those hoping for its closure, and along with that continued drift and anarchy in Haiti’s political system, will once again step into the void, to the detriment of Haiti and its people.

Michael Deibert is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti. His blog can be read at www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com.

Roody Kernisant (Lame Ti Manchèt) se mouri

Roody Kernisant, a leader of the dreaded Lame Ti Manchèt, one of the deadliest of the armed bands that terrorized the residents of the Port-au-Prince district of Martissant in recent years, has reportedly “committed suicide.”

This is an extraordinarily un-Haitian and convenient end to a man who no doubt knew things that could have made many powerful people in Haiti quite uncomfortable but, according to Radio Kiskeya, cornered by a joint United Nations (MINUSTAH) and Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH) patrol, Kernisant, implicated in the murder of 18 police officers and dozens of civilians, shot himself in the head with his own .38.

If accurate, Kernisant’s suicide would make a first in my experience of having observed Haitian gang leaders for nearly a decade, who in my experience prefer to go down guns blazing, taking as many of their opponents with them as they can.

Guy Philippe nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite de la drogue et annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile

Haïti/Etats-Unis/Lutte contre la drogue

Guy Philippe nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite de la drogue et annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile

L’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide affirme ne pas vouloir prendre le maquis et être prêt à mourir héroïquement. Toutefois, il dit avoir constitué avocat tant à Port-au-Prince qu’en Floride

lundi 23 juillet 2007,

Radio Kiskeya

(Read the original here)

Dans une déclaration préenregistrée remise lundi à Radio Kiskeya, l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide, Guy Philippe, nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite des stupéfiants et met au défi quiconque de prouver le contraire.

L’ancien commissaire de police et leader du Front de Reconstruction Nationale (FRN) dénonce la perquisition opérée lundi dernier en sa résidence à Bergeau (Cayes, Sud) par des agents de la Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) des Etats-Unis et des agents du Bureau de Lutte contre le Trafic des Stupéfiants (BLTS) de la Police Nationale d’Haïti (PNH). Sans expliquer comment il a pu s’échapper, Guy Philippe soutient pourtant avoir personnellement réclamé un mandat aux agents qui lui auraient alors répondu qu’il n’en est pas du tout question. Ils auraient par la suite mis en joue et brutalisé son épouse et ses deux enfants.

Pour l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide, on était vraisemblablement venu l’assassiner plutôt que l’appréhender. « Il fut un temps, on qualifiait de communistes ceux qu’on voulait éliminer de la scène politique. Aujourd’hui, c’est l’implication dans le trafic de la drogue qui sert d’alibi au même objectif », poursuit-il.

« Il est inconcevable que des étrangers puissent débarquer de cette manière-là dans un pays souverain pour impliquer qui ils veulent dans le trafic de la drogue », déclare Guy Philippe.
« Une telle prérogative ne figure sans doute pas dans l’accord signé entre l’Etat haïtien et les Etats-Unis concernant la lutte contre le narcotrafic », ajoute-t-il.

A l’appui de sa protestation contre son implication dans le trafic de la drogue, Guy Philippe fait état d’une autorisation que les Etats-Unis lui auraient délivrée en avril 2006 pour qu’il puisse visiter ces proches dans ce pays, après une investigation ouverte en 2000 sur plainte de l’ancien président Jean Bertrand Aristide, sur son implication présumée dans le trafic de la drogue. Le leader du FRN ne précise cependant pas, dans sa déclaration, s’il s’était alors rendu aux Etats-Unis. Il avance aussi le fait qu’il fut candidat à la présidence au cours de la même année sans être nullement inquiété.

Affirmant sa disponibilité à se rendre aux autorités judiciaires si son implication dans le trafic de la drogue venait à être établie, l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile et, le cas échéant, de « mourir en Guy Philippe ». Entre-temps, il dit avoir constitué avocat tant à Port-au-Prince qu’en Floride.

Dans la même déclaration, le leader du FRN s’est montré particulièrement critique vis-à-vis d’une station privée de la capitale haïtienne, Radio Métropole, qui avait annoncé son arrestation suivie de son extradition aux Etats-Unis. Il soutient que c’est par le même média qu’il a appris l’appartenance à la DEA et au BLTS des agents qui s’étaient présentés lundi dernier en son domicile. [jmd/RK]

Reclaiming the streets

Reclaiming the streets

JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - JUNE 15, 2005

By Michael Deibert, JDW Special Correspondent

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

The UN mission in Haiti faces a daunting task in reforming Haiti's police force. Michael Deibert reports

(Read the orginal here)

When two Haitian policemen were killed in battle with an armed gang in the desperately poor Bel Air section of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on 22 May, they were the latest fatalities in a troubling cycle of violence that has seen an average of one Police Nationale d'Haïti (PNH) officer killed every five days since the end of September 2004.

It was then that, seven months after the resignation and flight into exile of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, street gangs allied with the former president (who are known as 'chimeres') launched in Haiti's capital what came to be known as 'Operation Baghdad': a series of violent attacks against police (often ending in gruesome public murders), civilians and officials of the interim government of President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.

The attacks abated somewhat at the beginning of 2005, but have recently shown signs of flaring up again.

After the killings in May, the PNH's Interim Police Chief, Leon Charles, denounced on Haitian radio what he called "the hypocrisy" of the international community's continued embargo on arms to Haiti - put in place during a military regime that ousted Aristide for three years in the 1990s.

The Bel Air episode, coming in an impoverished neighborhood where allegations of police brutality have been rife, only underlined the daunting task faced by the Civilian Police (CIVPOL) forces, part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) force attempting to lay the groundwork for legislative and presidential elections in Haiti later in 2005.
The force - numbering 620 CIVPOL personnel and 750 members of foreign police units - was put in place in Haiti after Aristide's flight and is charged with reforming a battered force that many hoped would be the humane, professional successor to Haiti's violent military, disbanded after Aristide's return in 1994.

"There was huge progress in the 1990s, that stemmed from ... some stability in a three- to five-year period [during the presidency of Rene Preval, who ruled Haiti from 1996-2001]," according to CIVPOL commissioner David Beer.

"A large number of the people in executive positions remained in place; there was some continuity in the organization. Upon the election of the Aristide government, virtually the entire executive of the organization was wiped out - either fired or quit. With the destruction of the senior management of the organization, parallel entry without proper qualifications and politicization was the start of big problems with criminality, all of which have, recently, anyway, served to demoralize the organization," Beer said.

The stories of how Aristide nearly destroyed the PNH as an institution, replacing competent and dedicated police officials with loyalists and activists of his Fanmi Lavalas political party - in a country where strengthening institutions often takes a back seat to clinging to political power - are legion, many of them revolving around the PNH's feared riot police, the Corps d'intervention et de Maintien de l'ordre (CIMO).

According to several former PNH officials, as well as the gang leaders themselves, shortly after Aristide's return to office in 2001 the PNH began regular contacts with street gangs in the capital's urban centers. Their purpose was to distribute ammunition and occasionally money on behalf of the government in a move brought on in part, some said, by Aristide's fear of another coup, such as the one that ousted him in 1991.

In addition to using their newfound firepower to attack demonstrations and opposition protests, the gangs often turned their guns on each other.

Following a fierce gang war in the capital's Cité Soleil slum in 2002, Hermione Leonard, then PNH director for the region around Haiti's capital, staged a weapons search in the zone. This was farcical, as Leonard and PNH officers had previously driven to collect and safely stash 'their' weapons from the militants, and two of the local gang leaders going by the noms de guerres Labanye and Kolobri (now both dead) were given masks and CIMO outfits so as to 'participate' in the search.

When the Aristide government was facing the threat of an armed rebellion in February 2004, a notorious gang leader and ex-Haitian Army officer (called Jeudi) from the area around the capital's port was given a CIMO uniform and sent to the northern city of Saint Marc. There he and other armed government partisans acted in concert with PNH forces and a local street gang called Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) to lay siege to the neighborhood of La Scierie, an attack during which over 20 people, most of them civilians, were killed.

Given such a pedigree and the prevailing climate of graft - a senior CIVPOL official recently estimated that, for some 8,000 PNH cheques issued every month, there are in fact only 4,500 PNH employees - it is easy to appreciate the challenges faced by the recent graduating class of the PNH academy, which included 368 new police officers, as well as 39 commissioners and 49 inspectors. The institution has also been bedeviled by a weak and ineffectual judicial system. A February report by the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) human rights group noted that only 5 per cent of the incarcerated population in Haiti had ever been tried and sentenced. In poor neighborhoods, many people say that any young man caught by the police is charged with being an Aristide gang member and liable to be summarily executed by the police.

"If you ask me if the police are still involved in human rights violations, I would say, yes, a lot," said Pierre Esperance, RNDDH's executive director.

"The change we have right now is that this government doesn't use gangs or civilians to persecute those who criticize it, but that's all. When police are involved in human rights violations, there is no effort by the government to punish them."

In addition to its institutional weakness, many observers point to the painfully slow roll-out of the UN mission in Haiti as part of the problem; as of March only $220 million of some $1.08 billion pledged to rebuild the country had been disbursed. It appears the outside world, following Aristide's return with the help of a US-led multinational force, seemed to largely lose interest in the nuts-and-bolts of building Haiti's democracy.

However, the CIVPOL in Haiti has not yet despaired, and it looks at the base of the new police force - those officers being closely vetted before being integrated into the organization - as the potential future of Haiti's law enforcement.

"There is a core of people in the organization that are extremely committed to their job," Beer said. "They work 12 hours a day, six days a week; they travel in by camionette [van] to start their week; they find places to sleep here; they don't make a whole lot of money. We, the international community, have to be prepared to be here with the resources necessary to get that done and stay here long enough to make sure it's a sustainable programme, unlike last time."