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Panama News Briefs

Three kids killed, four alleged perpetrators held

Curundu burns in gang row, police show of force ineffective

by Eric Jackson, partly from other media

At about 4:30 a.m. on March 21, members of the Los Niños Sicarios gang threw a molotov cocktain into a wooden house in the S section near J. D. Arosemena Stadium in Curundu and then opened fire on people running from the burning building, hoping thus to trap their target, a member of the rival Los Niños de la Tumba Fria gang, with whom they were disputing the area as drug dealing turf, inside the conflagration. When the bomberos arrived shots were fired at them and threats were made, so that the firefighting work could only begin after the arrival of a contingent of some 130 police officers, who exchanged shots with the gang members.

By that time the whole neighborhood was in flames. In the end 137 houses were destroyed and more than 700 people were left homeless.

Some of those burned out were particularly bitter with the police, as those trying to save some of their possessions ahead of the flames were in some cases treated as looters and either arrested or detained for questions for precious minutes during which their property went up in smoke. The police also stopped some actual looting, it seems, and arrested or attempted to arrest gang members and others whom they had been looking for in connection with other causes. There were exchanges of gunfire and stones and bottles thrown at police over this latter activity as well.

At the end of the day children, Félix Asprilla, age five; Laurín Núñez, age seven; and Kiara Bethancour, age 14, were dead, the remains of the latter two at first lost in the ashes.

Within a few days two men in their early 20s, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old were under arrest and charged with arson and three counts of murder. Prosecutors claimed that there were 100 eyewitnesses, but produced but two sworn witnesses and said they had another one under protection to form the basis of the charges. Meanwhile the dailies reported that members of Los Los Niños Sicarios canvassed the neighborhood, spreading death threats against anybody who talked.

Former President Guillermo Endara, who finished second to Martín Torrijos in 2004 and is likely to run again in 2009, blasted the current administration's performance. "The first obligation of a government is to bring security to the citizenry, and up until now this administration hasn't been doing that," he charged.

So in the wee hours of March 29, Torrijos responded with his "hard hand." Some 300 police officers, many wearing masks and many accompanied by television crews and newspaper reporters from the PRD-aligned media, swept through Curundu, smashing down doors, arresting those who fit a certain profile (dark-skinned adolescent and young adult males with tattoos). No drugs and no weapons were seized, and despite National Police Chief Rolando Mirones's triumphal declaration that 15 gang leaders had been caught in the dragnet, within two days all had been released because the only "evidence" was that they fit a stereotypical profile of those to be arrested.

Meanwhile in the neighborhood, those who sought to recover the zinc roofing material from their old homes to begin rebuilding their lives were disappointed. The government quickly send in bulldozers, backhoes and dump truck to scrape up the rubble and cart it away to the landfill on Cerro Patacon. Housing Minister Balbina Herrera, not having taken the time to see who owned what, announced that new housing projects would be built and those who qualified might be allowed to move back, but meanwhile the burned out families would be relocated elsewhere.

One of those "elsewheres" was Kuna Nega, an urban Kuna community built largely without government help by its residents themselves in the 90s, and the people there immediately protested that they didn't want the gangs and social problems of Curundu for neighbors. Similar if less voluble protests came from San Miguelito, where some other fire victims were to be relocated.

The quick decision not to let residents rebuild in place had another side effect. Carted away with the rubble was also much of the crime scene evidence. It seems that the prosecutors will have to rely on witnesses to prove arson, because the physical evidence was removed before it could be fully collected and examined.

The police sweeps continued in El Chorrillo. There some 200 people were rounded up, 19 of them, the police said, turning out to be gang members. Within a couple of days all but one of those arrested --- the exception being a 29-year-old wheelchair-bound man who made his living cooking and selling small amounts of crack in his upper-floor apartment --- were released for lack of evidence.

Similar sweeps followed in San Miguelito and Colon, with similar results. In all 360 people were taken into custody during the crackdown, of whom 359 were released because it could not be shown that they had probably committed a crime.

Meanwhile, the Torrijos cabinet proposed laws to increase the time that juveniles who commit violent crimes spend in custody. Meanwhile, there were calls from within and outside of the PRD for Mirones to resign. Meanwhile, those mainstream media that habitually put a black face on crime hailed the crackdown and some citizens who used to be more supportive of the police didn't want to to be seen talking to them. Meanwhile, sociologists and reformers and clerics and advocates of greater police powers argued among themselves, on and off the nation's op-ed pages, about the sources of crime and the proper response to it.

Rich boys don't join street gangs. Gangsterism is clearly linked to poverty. But every kid that grows up poor doesn't grow up to be a criminal --- most, in fact, do not. But when there is a certain critical mass of gang activity in a neighborhood, then joining a gang becomes as much a survival strategy as an individual statement of frustration, hopelessness or boredom. When that happens a shroud of silence tends to fall over those who are not involved in gang activity and most likely deplore it: that's another survival strategy. That's what's happening in Curundu: kids join gangs for self-protection as much as for anything else, and adults maintain their silence in order to protect themselves and their families. In those situations the police operate with little information, and the practice of not assigning cops to patrol the places where they grew up as an anti-corruption measure also tends to induce blindness and deafness with respect to urban gangs.

Gang membership and violent behavior are associated with adolescence and early adulthood. Yes, you have the kids who bite and hit when they are two years old and go on bullying their way through life, often until they kill someone. But that doesn't describe most gang members. And the violent 18-year-old who wasn't a violent eight-year-old has in most cases calmed down considerably by age 30.

In Panama the notion that to explain the causes of violent behavior is to excuse it has never found a substantial number of adherents, but largely due to the influence of the Catholic Church the notion that the death penalty and more people in prison under more brutal conditions is an adequate response to crime has never gained the popularity that it has in the United States.

But still, many Panamanians are frustrated by a sense of growing lawlessness at all levels of society --- whether or not that's an accurate perception --- and the Curundu fire has served to reinforce the beliefs of those who think it true. One result that the police report is an increase in applications for gun permits. Whether increased popularity for politicians who promise law and order becomes another result remains to be seen.

Street protest against dolphin capture plan
National Assembly accepts partial presidential veto, passes Penal Code

Police sweeps, political posturing in aftermath of Curundu fire

Bocas town runs dry, US Army steps in to help
Former US Air Force intelligence officer stalks journalist's family

Top Smithsonian exec's ouster has ripple effects on STRI
Panama News Briefs