Ciudad Juarez.- They are members of elite groups from Spain, Argentina and Brazil and their presence in Juárez is due to their participation in the first International Meeting of Special Forces 2024 organized by the State Public Security Secretariat (SSPE).
This intensive course to be held in the border state was planned months in advance, after the group leaders met in Brazil at another forum and enthusiastically accepted the invitation made by this secretariat.
They are Douglas Limas Pithon, from the Coordination of Special Resources (CORE) of Brazil; Eduardo Gabino Ruiz Murillo, from the Regional Area of Operational Resources (ARRO) of Mossos d’Esquadra, in Catalonia, Spain.
Francisco José Cueto Osuna, from the Armament and Shooting Section, Local Police of Murcia, Spain; and Emmanuel Fabricio Forti, from the Halcón Special Security Directorate, Police of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
After three days of staying at this border, the group moved yesterday to the state capital and will end up in the mountains of Chihuahua, where they will be carrying out various intelligence tasks.
They exchange knowledge
For Limas Phiton, Juarez has a problem very similar to that faced in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where the most famous and dangerous is Rocinha, and going to Chihuahua is a great opportunity to exchange knowledge in the fight against common crime and behind it, organized crime.
He said that he found a very well-prepared police force in Juarez, such as the SSPE SWAT Group, “which are men with a great vocation, very well-prepared, they are men who are imbued with their mission of serving and protecting, which is what is needed to confront criminal groups.”
“Juarez and some parts of Brazil, if not most, have similarities in terms of violence,” the police chief said.
In Brazil, progress has been made in the war against criminal organizations by doing the maximum from a line of force, which is partly how it works, he explained.
Ruiz Murillo, from Catalonia, Spain, said that these meetings are very important for the exchange of knowledge, because the realities in each country are very different and knowing them allows us to make progress against crime.
“The knowledge that I am learning today in Juárez may be needed there in Spain, in Catalonia, in five or ten years, and the knowledge that we can bring from Spain may be needed here at another time, and that is what I believe is most important,” he said.
“There is latent criminality”
On his third day in Juarez, he said that what he perceived was a type of criminality greater than that in Spain.
“The truth is that the crime rate is much higher and, let’s say, the professionalism of the criminals is much higher than what we have in Spain. We have never had, for example, a ‘Black Thursday’ like they had here. This level of violence on the streets is unthinkable in Spain today,” he said.
He stressed that the city is not what is seen in the documentaries they have seen.
“One comes with the premise of what one sees in documentaries, what one sees on television, a city in constant war, and that is not what we have seen either. We have seen a city of hard-working people, of very cordial people, we have felt very supported, not only by the police, the people on the street have supported us completely, so, it is a normal city, yes, with that perspective that there is latent criminality and we notice it,” he said.
Without any magic formulas to resolve the violence that plagues this border, Ruiz Murillo said that the police are on the right path to restore social peace.
“I see that they are on the right path. What I have seen in this Police Force, I have been surprised and in a good way, is a professionalization in all areas, not only in the tactical area, where there is an excellent SWAT group, investigative, technical, we visited the C7 and they have monitored the entire perimeter of Juarez and I see that specialization, both in human resources and technical resources, it is the way to go to fight crime” he considered.
Francisco José Cueto Osuna, from the Weapons and Shooting Section of the Murcia Local Police, said that Juárez seemed like a charming city to him. “For me, apart from being a privilege and an honor to come to work and share knowledge with the SWAT, for me it is a personal enrichment when it comes to expanding my studies, being on the ground and seeing what I have studied at the university, seeing it reflected on the ground with my colleagues, suffering that tension, suffering those close looks, touching people, that is an experience that you do not get in a classroom, it is an experience that you have to have on a personal level,” he said.
The most important thing, he said, is the contribution of knowledge that they can make and above all what they will receive. “I think Ciudad Juárez is a charming city,” he said.
He mentioned that they did not observe episodes of extreme violence that have occurred due to the fights for the territories held by the cartels: the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, and now the third cartel, which is Venezuelan (Tren de Aragua), which also wants to fight for a piece of the territory. The official recommended that governments motivate their police officers with better salaries.
“To provide the police with sufficient funds so that they can concentrate on police work and not think about not making ends meet, or that their child wants to go to a good school, but they cannot provide their child with a good education, they cannot provide them with a good home,” he proposed.
Emmanuel Fabricio Forti, from the Halcón Special Security Directorate, Buenos Aires Province Police, Argentina, shared that he came with the intention of knowing how they worked with reference to the cartels. “My province is not so similar to what happens here in the state of Chihuahua, but it has its conflict problems with criminal gangs in reference to drugs, there are many murders, many kidnappings and the expectation was to come and see how the SWAT worked here in Chihuahua, the truth is that I was pleasantly surprised because I noticed a very armed group, with a lot of will, a lot of sense of belonging, a lot of experience,” he said.
Regarding possible shortcomings, which exist in all police forces around the world, he said that every special unit has axes that must be worked on daily.
“There must be constant training of the staff, constantly on a physical and mental level, which is very important and obviously in regards to shooting.”
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