20809: (Chamberlain) Haiti police need months to restore order, says chief (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Christie and Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 25 (Reuters) - It will take at least
three months for Haiti's police to restore order after a month-long revolt
ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the poor Caribbean country's new
police chief said on Thursday.
     But that timetable -- longer than many may have hoped -- depends on
how many officers in the force's demoralized ranks respond to the carrot of
paychecks being distributed from Thursday and begin to show up for work.
     "It'll take three months, not to restore security, but just to get
police in place in each area," Leon Charles, director general of the
Haitian National Police, told Reuters.
     "The Haitian National Police has to get back on its feet. If not it
will be hell," Charles said in his headquarters, a former military social
club protected by a high white wall on a Port-au-Prince hilltop.
     A decade ago, Haiti had 7,000 police officers.
     Demoralized and corrupted by politics and drugs, the force had been
whittled down to 4,000 when an armed gang attacked the police station in
the northwest city of Gonaives on Feb. 5, and fanned the flames of revolt
across the barren north.
     A month after the uprising, and U.S. pressure, drove Aristide into
exile, Charles said he was left with 2,500 officers, in a country of 8
million, to confront the well-armed former soldiers who joined the revolt
and remain in charge of many towns.
     New district police chiefs had been appointed by Thursday and officers
are trickling back to those stations not torched during the violence, but
they are not having an easy time.
     Rebels in the central town of Mirebalais took over its police station
on Tuesday while the small police garrison was sleeping at home. The police
ran in fright when they showed up and found 50 men in camouflage, armed
with military-issue weapons.
     "They freaked out but we aren't here to do them any harm," said Sgt.
Philippe Emmanuel, an ex-soldier who now calls himself the commander of
Mirebalais. "We have the heavy weapons. The police cannot provide security
so we're here to do the job."
     Eventually, seven police swallowed their fear and now share the
dilapidated station with the gunmen. One of them, Etzer Germain, summoned
to the phone by Emmanuel, said their rifles were confiscated but they were
allowed to keep their handguns.
     Charles said, "(the rebels) are looking for a job."
     Charmingly direct, the youthful police chief, who is rarely out of
sight of his muscular Haitian coast guard bodyguards, welcomed the new
government's plan to integrate rebels into the police.
     But, given that some are convicted human rights abusers, or suspected
drug smugglers, the plan would have to be implemented with care.
     Those too old to be retrained, or tainted by past misdeeds, must be
excluded, and the rebels would have to be distributed widely throughout the
country, he said.
     "We don't want another force in the HNP, we need to reinforce the
HNP," he said.
     Charles was less enthusiastic about a plan by new Interior Minister
Herard Abraham, a former general and the police chief's boss, to revive the
disbanded, and discredited, army.
     "The general has his position. It's good to have an army but now I
don't think it's the right time to have an army because we have a weak
HNP," he said.
     Charles estimated that the force would have to be 10,000-strong in
order to provide security across Haiti.
     But for now, he would be content to see a few more officers simply
show up for work.
     "The paycheck, that's the best way to do it," he said.