A Comprehensive Assessment of the Municipal Police of Ciudad Juárez

By Marcos Pablo Moloeznik, Maria Eugenia Suárez de Garay, and David A. Shirk

This report presents a first look at the results from the study titled Justiciabarómetro: Comprehensive Study of Municipal Police in Ciudad Juárez, which was designed to evaluate the provision of public security in one of Mexico’s most troubled cities through the viewpoints, experiences, and opinions of law enforcement officers themselves. To do so, this study relied on two distinct methodological approaches: 1) A qualitative inquiry into the structural and organizational conditions present within the Ciudad Juárez Department of Public Security (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Municipal de Ciudad Juárez, SSPM), using a variety of techniques —including participant observation, individual and group interviews, focus group studies, field visits, seminars, and analysis of archival documents— that allowed for detailed analysis of three priority areas in police institutions: organizational and operational, intelligence and counter-intelligence, and psychology, health, and work atmosphere; 2) A quantitative analysis of the organizational culture that prevails within the SSPM through a survey of the entire police department to examine their experiences and opinions regarding their professional careers, working conditions, adherence to due process, and relations to crime and society.

San Diego: Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, 2011. 52p.