U.S. TRAINING OF FOREIGN POLICE BACKFIRES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100110002-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 27, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

y Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/04/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100110002-9
U.S. Training of Foreign Police Backfires
By MARTHA HUGGINS
Congress, is expected to vote nest month
on the Reagan Administration's proposal
to grant $54 million for hardware and
"co security and democracy that suppos-
edly Central America by professionallaing its
police.
Before granting more money for police
training, Congress should review the his-
tory of these programs. U.S. training of
foreign police has improved neither the
security-of those nations' citizens nor the
democratic practices of the police and
security forces.
This type of trai:iing is not now. In the
1930s police from various Latin American
countries came to learn detective skills at
major urban police departments from New
York City to Los Angeles. After World War
II the biggest police-training programs
were conducted by the U.S. military in the
Philippines and occupied Japan.
The first worldwide U.S. effort at police
howe Administration, operating >in 26
countries with a budget of $10.2 million.
The first such programs were in Guatemala
and Vietnam, to prop up the Castillo Armes
and Ngo Dinh Diem regimes, and in Bolivia,
at the time of rising labor conflict.
The best known of the U.S. police-
training Programs began in 1962, under the
Agency for International Development's
Office of Public Safety. It eventually had a
budget of more than $50 million, with 400
public-safety advisers in 45 countries.
The Office of Public Safety was dismantled
in 1974 after congressional hearings un-
covered torture, disappearances and kill-
ings by U.S.-equipped police forces.
Many U.S. groups have trained foreign
police. Under President Dwight D. Eisen-
hower, much of this training in the United
States was carried out by the International
Assn. of Chiefs of Police. Training in this
country and abroad also was conducted by
public-administration and police-science
departments at North American universi-
ties. The most active, Michigan State,
worked closely with the Diem regime to
tighten South Vietnam's security appar-
atus.
Robert Amory, former
ft= director
of to at the Central Intelligence
Agency, am Inat Ine w
v ous or an as ons to eve o
police-training Programs. officials
UIA
have fallen outside our sphere of influence:
Yet one of the claims made most frequently
by the State Department for police training
is that it secures the loyalty of foreign
police and security forces to the United
States. But one need only look at Libya,
Iran, South Vietnam and Nicaragua-ail
recipients of
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ng-w recognize the error of that
ova ,to a training assumption.
moves "back and forth between One serious flaw in these
? programs is
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b further _.QA nwwtmHnn of U.S.
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America by denying funding for schemes
r t rely Pa d e cover ear Llopera-
-ore than 20 years of police assistance
to El Salvador have left it with serious
internal-security problems, a population
terrorized by death squads and a "profes-
sional" police force with one of the worst
human-rights records in Latin America.
In short, U.S. police training has done
the opposite of what it promised. Murat
Williams, U.S. ambassador to El Salvador
during the Kennedy Administration, told
me in an interview last month that U.S.
training of Salvadoran police in the early
1960s complicated his efforts to end the
turmoil there: How could he represent the
United States as favoring progressive
change and democracy if it was training
police who would keep students, profes-
sors,
peasor from having religious workers
and ving a voice in their
government? Police training demonstrated
to the Salvadoran people, in effect, that the
United States was against legitimate politi-
cal and social change in their country.
It should come as no surprise then that
some past recipients of U.S. police training
e
tits almost impossible to monitor
how our training and equipment are used
locally. Portable radios have been used for
torture, riot training and equipment to
silence Political
and improved
surveillance techniques
ques to violate the civil
liberties of citizens.
But some members of Congress still have
faith in the program. In a Dec. 25 letter to
the New York Times, Sen. Richard G.
Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, said that his
committee was "painfully aware of past
abuses" attributed to our police-assistance
programs. But he argued that today condi-
tions have changed substantially because
Guatemala and El Salvador recently elect-
ed presidents who had been targets of
police abuses. Thus Lugar believes that
these leaders now may want U.S. assist-
ance in reforming police practices. The.
irony is that the police forces that used
unsavory tactics against these men had
undergone many years of U.S. training.
What U.S. police training has done, and
will continue to do, is alienate the very
segments of Central American societies
students, mothers of the "disappeared,
religious workers, progressive politicians-
who want to create democratic societies.
History teaches us many lessons. Congress
should look carefully at the lessons that we
should have learned from previous police-
training programs.
Martha Huggins, a professor of sociology
at Union College in Schenectady, N. Y., is
writing a book covering 40 years of police
training in Latin America.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/04/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100110002-9