Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin also known as El Chapo, in a photo released by the Mexican attorney general. Credit: Office of the Mexican Attorney General
It is questionable that the re-arrest of Joaquin Guzman Loera, or Chapo Guzman, will be a meaningful step in long run and only serves to partially heal the wounds of shame that the Peña Nieto administration brought to themselves when their political appointees fell into Chapo’s money trap of corruption. Short-term gains (the re-capture of Guzman) do not equate to long-term change (meaningful judicial progress), especially when it is the third time that the U.S. and Mexican governments have had to move mountains, figuratively speaking, to get him behind bars. While many may hail Chapo’s arrest as a demonstration of a commitment to make serious inroads against drug violence and increase public safety the Mexican government, those who see his capture as a harbinger of change are in effect hoping that this one event will be the tipping point for an administration that has done little to provide a meaningful anti-crime strategy for the public and the world to rally behind. Individual arrests do not a strategy make.
Tactical operations such as this U.S.-supported dragnet against a high value target have limited value and effect if they are not followed-up by greater and widespread dismantling of the targeted organization and the incarceration of associated criminals. While in theory the Kingpin Strategy works, it is not fully effective without follow-through against the mid- to lower levels of a targeted organization. In Mexico, the continuation of the Kingpin Strategy is truncated significantly, no pun intended, with the decapitation of a criminal leader such as Chapo Guzman because there is no effort placed on those other lower level elements that should be simultaneously targeted by the agencies in the jurisdictions in which the criminals operate, typically by state and local police agencies. In the United States, federal agencies successfully employ the Task Force concept to engage state, county, city, tribal and other federal local agencies in a cooperative effort to ensure widespread impact on all levels of an criminal organization, not just the command and control personalities, or leadership figures that run the enterprise.
This all-inclusive strategy allows law enforcement agencies to investigate, arrest and incarcerate not only the Kingpins, but also the smugglers, transporters, street-level distributors, money launderers and other organizational members in a concerted effort, a significant aspect of the effort that is missing from the Mexican approach. The absence of a cohesive strategy among the various levels of government causes the application of the Kingpin Strategy in Mexico to fail and does little to provide lasting or enduring improvements in public safety and eventually in judicial reforms.
For the re-capture of Chapo Guzman to mean something and to have lasting impact, the government of Mexico needs to develop a new law enforcement model in which federal police forces engage and enjoin with the state and municipal police departments in a cooperative, Task Force setting where each level of government directs its efforts against the concurrent level of activity of the criminal organization within their individual jurisdictions.
Under this configuration, the federal police can continue to focus on the organizational leadership, or High Value Targets, while the state police and municipal police can focus on the criminals involved in support activities and/or against drug dealers operating at the street level for the same criminal organization. The closest that the Mexican government ever got to coordinated state and federal police efforts was under the Calderon administration, when Mexico engaged in a short-lived effort to homogenize law enforcement efforts and policies nationwide. This was attempted by bringing the doctrines of state police departments in line with federal law enforcement agencies under the so-called Comando Unico initiative, or plan to create a unified command among the various levels of governmental police forces. However, the attempt fell short of what was intended and a lack of interest in the concept by the Peña Nieto administration doomed that effort to failure as well.
While the re-arrest of Chapo Guzman is noteworthy as a singular event and demonstrative of effective bi-lateral law enforcement efforts, it is not the result of a meaningful Mexican law enforcement strategy and it also does not translate into a durable or effective public safety policy. As far as the Kingpin Strategy goes, the kingpin was indeed re-captured. But as far as a strategy goes, Mexico does not appear to have a viable or long-term law enforcement process in place. As a result, Mexico as a nation will continue to suffer drug-related crime and violence until a more serious and all-encompassing approach is conceived and implemented.
Gary J. Hale is the nonresident fellow in drug policy and Mexico studies at the Baker Institute. From 2000 to 2010, he served as the chief of intelligence in the Houston Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.