Garabito Budgets For 25-Strong Police Force

http://www.thebeachtimes.com/article.php?id=2&at=1809

The Municipality of Garabito, which oversees large tracts of the Central Pacific Coast including Jacó, is to spend $800,000 to create its own municipal police force, mayor Marvin Elizondo announced this week.

Speaking to a Central Pacific Chamber of Commerce public meeting on Tuesday, Mr Elizondo said Garabito has dedicated about 30 per cent of next year’s total ordinary budget to the project.

The budget has been approved by the municipality and is being reviewed by the Comptroller General’s Office, which must sign off on municipal spending.

According to Garabito’s legal advisor, Juan Gabriel Hidalgo, who is coordinating the project, the municipality has budgeted 411 million colones (about $800,ooo) for the force, which would include salaries for 25 officers, equipment, weapons, uniforms and vehicles.

Additional funding for the construction of a state-of-the-art police station is expected to come from next year’s separate, extraordinary budget.

“This is the most direct response the local government has to the community’s request for more security,” Mr Hidalgo said, adding that “if all goes well,” the officers could be on the street by late February, next year.

The new police force would answer directly to the mayor’s office and the municipal council, Mr Elizondo said, complaining that Jacó’s Tourism Police and the Fuerza Pública, or uniformed police, are not always responsive.

During the Chamber of Commerce meeting, which touched on a wide variety of issues, one woman asked if the municipality could do anything about horses being ridden on the beach, which is illegal. Mr Elizondo said it was exactly the type of problem the municipal police could solve.

According to both the mayor and his legal advisor, the municipality came to an agreement with local police forces earlier this year where local government put up signs warning that horseback riding and camping on the beach is illegal, and created a place for confiscated horses to be kept.
The police, in turn, were supposed to enforce the law, but didn’t.

“I have seen tents and horses on the beach in front of police officers, but they don’t do anything,” Mr Elizondo told the public meeting. “They don’t give us the security we want. They don’t take away the indigents, who sell drugs in front of them. Much more unlikely will they take away the horses.”

Mr Elizondo said the municipal police force would be paid “40 to 50 percent” better than uniformed police in order to dissuade officers from taking bribes. Mr Hidalgo, however, said the actual salaries have not yet been decided upon, but said they would be higher than local police.

The officers jurisdiction will only be in Garabito, which includes Tarcoles, Punta Leona, Herradura, Jacó and Playa Hermosa.

In addition to criminal law, the police will enforce municipal laws and regulations, checking up on liquor licenses, business licenses and building permits, and are to receive training from transit police so they can give speeding tickets, search vehicles and give breathalyzer tests. Most uniformed and Tourism Police can only enforce criminal law, and not traffic laws.

The force is also to receive training from Spanish police sometime next year, and possibly from an official from Florida’s Miami-Dade police force, Mr Hidalgo said.

“Don Marvin (Elizondo) wants them to be as trained as possible,” he said.

The officers will be equipped with .40-caliber handguns, telescoping batons and tasers, as well as a 12-guage shotgun in each vehicle. The budget foresees the purchase four patrol sedans, and three four-wheel drive vehicles, likely two sport-utility vehicles and a pickup.

In addition, Mr Hidalgo said, the municipality would like to get a dune buggy-type vehicle to patrol the beach.

The patrol vehicles will each be equipped with a video camera, microphone and GPS locater that will tell the base where they are at all times, Mr Hidalgo said.

“That is going to help keep better control over suspects and corruption,” he added.

The video and audio equipment would be constantly turned on, and the vehicle’s location would be monitored from a command center at the police station, which will likely be built on one of two pieces of property currently being considered by the municipality.

The first is a 3500-square-meter plot near the elementary and high schools on the Costanera highway.

The second is 9500-square-meter section of land between the Beetle Bar and the Monkey Bar.

That area — a wooded area which Mr Elizondo referred to as “one of the conflictive in Jacó” — is currently slated to become an “ecological park,” and the municipality is considering building the police station on 2000 square meters of it.

“Its going to be Jacó’s first, and most beautiful park. And it would be good to have the police there so it doesn’t fill up with delinquents,” Mr Hidalgo said.

The legal advisor said that recruiting could begin before the end of the year, and the municipality will be looking for people with experience in security, but preferably not with other Costa Rican police forces, because “that way, it is easier to mold them.”