Police

I have seen a lot of police and soldiers during my trips to Latin America. I also worked for six months as a police dispatcher, so I have went on ride-alongs and spent a lot of time working with policemen.

Policemen in Mexico are kind of scary, the soldiers even more so. They are very grim-faced, spit-polished, squared off individuals. They don´t smile much, and have this look like they are ready for anything. They are heavily armed with light machine guns, assault rifles and pistols. They have been known to be corrupt, and try to shake down people for bribes. In some parts of Mexico, many people think that the police are the ones responsible for the crimes. Now, these are some generalizations, but the description of the armed forces and police as scary, grim individuals that you do not want to mess with is accurate. Costa Rica is very different. There is no army here. There are no checkpoints where soldiers search your bag, and the police here are very different. Here´s an example.

Sunday, I was standing in the park watching the fireworks on the last night of the fiesta. I watched a group of college students from California pose with a group of Costa Rican policemen. You would never see this in Mexico.

The policemen here are much older, they aren´t all pumped up and bulky with muscles. They look like very ordinary guys, some of them are older or middle aged. They are not young guys with flat tops who look like they take steroids.

Most of them carry a revolver and a nightstick. They do not have belts that are bulging with ammo and stun guns and pepper spray like cops in the U.S. . In fact the only times I have seen a bullet-proof vest was when the president came to town. But even then I did not see a machine gun of any kind, only pistols (I´m sure the presidents guards have some). The weird thing about that day was that I was able to get 30 feet from the president with no problem or being searched. Today I saw cops on the morning news with machine guns, but they were doing a drug raid, so that sort of makes sense.

Juanito

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