From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   As Haiti’s Police Retreat, Gangs Take Over Much of the Capital   
   By Andre Paultre and Chris Cameron, March 22, 2023, NY Times   
   One by one, schools and hospitals have closed. Kidnappings are an everyday   
   risk and gang warfare rages openly on the streets. But now, the chaos that has   
   long consumed many parts of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, has spread:   
   The national police,    
   outgunned, outnumbered, underpaid and demoralized, have ceded control of most   
   of the city to gangs.   
      
   Almost no one is safe anymore, analysts and residents say. Even the wealthy   
   who have long looked down at the gang-ridden city from their homes in the   
   mountains above Port-au-Prince are no longer immune.   
      
   Gangs operate with impunity across Port-au-Prince and increasingly in wealthy   
   enclaves above the city, analysts say, tightening their grip by attacking   
   police officers and destroying police stations.   
      
   “Today, security in Haiti is not a matter of means,’’ said Youri Mevs,   
   the managing partner of an industrial park who lives in the mountains   
   overlooking the city. “It is a matter of avoiding the wrong place at the   
   wrong time. And, the wrong place    
   is almost everywhere, just as the wrong time is literally all the time.”   
      
   Ms. Mevs said she was sending some of her relatives out of the country because   
   of safety concerns.   
      
   The spreading insecurity and the widespread collapse of law and order has led   
   officials to take the astonishing step of telling residents that they should   
   take their protection into their own hands and not count on the government.   
      
   “We are asking for more citizen participation,” Gary Desrosiers, a police   
   spokesman, said, citing the example of one Port-au-Prince neighborhood where   
   “the population is standing up to prevent disorder.”   
      
   The ruthless hallmarks of gang rule have advanced beyond the capital: More   
   than 200 people were killed across the country in the first two weeks of March   
   alone, mostly from snipers randomly shooting at people in their homes or on   
   the streets, according    
   to a United Nations report released this week.   
      
   The assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, in July 2021   
   unraveled the country, tipping it into terror and disarray: There is,   
   effectively, no elected government. The acting prime minister is widely viewed   
   as inept. There is no legislature    
   since the terms of the last remaining members of Parliament expired in   
   January, the judiciary is seen as fundamentally corrupt and the national   
   police force appears on the brink of collapse.   
      
   “The police are completely absent, the authorities are completely absent,   
   the government is completely absent,” said Pierre Espérance, the executive   
   director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network.   
      
   A United Nations official in Haiti said in December that gangs controlled   
   about 60 percent of Port-au-Prince. Now analysts like Mr. Espérance estimate   
   that the figure has risen to more than 90 percent.   
      
   “The government is deeply concerned’’ about the violence, Jean-Junior   
   Joseph, a spokesman for Ariel Henry, Haiti’s acting prime minister, said in   
   a statement. He acknowledged that the police no longer have the capacity to   
   take on the gangs.   
      
   In a speech to the armed forces on Friday, Mr. Henry gave a sobering picture   
   of the country’s condition. “Despair reaches such a level that the   
   daughters and sons of the country only consider their future elsewhere,” he   
   said.   
      
   The national police force has shrunk to fewer than 9,000 members, according to   
   the United Nations, from as many as 15,000 three years ago, after many   
   officers quit or left the country, among other factors.   
      
   “The government that is being paid to give us security is giving a clear   
   statement that we are not about to protect you,” said Magali Comeau-Denis, a   
   leader of the Montana Accord, an opposition group. “When you tell me to   
   exercise self-defense, you    
   tell me to engage myself in a civil war with the gangs.’’   
      
   A spree of killings of Haitian police officers in January sparked outrage   
   among the rank-and-file, many of whom abandoned their stations and checkpoints   
   in all but a few areas. The prime minister’s residence, the National Palace   
   and some government    
   ministries remain under police patrol.   
      
   “Government officials do not have a security problem, because they have a   
   lot of bodyguards with big guns,” Mr. Espérance said.   
      
   Police officials describe a force under siege — unable to protect   
   themselves, let alone civilians. At least 12 police officers were killed in   
   January, said Mr. Desrosiers, the police spokesman.   
      
   Entry-level police officers earn less than $200 a month, which is higher than   
   the minimum wage but still not enough for many officers to perform an   
   increasingly lethal function, Gesnel Morlant, a spokesman for a Haitian police   
   union, said.   
      
   “If nothing is done, the police force could collapse in the weeks to   
   come,” he said.   
      
   The United States, Canada and other countries have provided security aid to   
   Haiti, including anti-gang and SWAT  training and armored vehicles. But police   
   officials say even more is needed to counter the firepower of the gangs, which   
   have armed    
   themselves through shipments of powerful weapons trafficked into the country   
   from the United States, including machine guns, according to a report released   
   this month by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.   
      
   Mr. Henry’s government in October appealed for outside military intervention   
   in Haiti to quell the violence, a remarkable request that underscored the dire   
   situation in a country deeply resentful of foreign intervention. The political   
   opposition called    
   it an attempt to strengthen Mr. Henry’s tenuous claim to power.   
      
   Biden administration officials are pushing to rally a multinational armed   
   force to Haiti, though the effort has stalled, largely because no country   
   wants to lead it. American military leaders do not want U.S. troops drawn into   
   another open-ended    
   peacekeeping mission after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.   
      
   Canada had expressed interest in a leadership role, according to the Biden   
   administration, but recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared to pull   
   back, telling reporters that outside intervention in the past had not worked   
   “to create long-term    
   stability.”   
      
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)