Police with machine guns stop and search on the streets of Caracas. ‘Super cop’ Bill Bratton, famed for cleaning up New York City, hopes zero tolerance will clean up Caracas. But it seems his task will be much more difficult than in the Big Apple. A call crackles in reporting a fierce gun battle between drug dealers and the police, ‘We have a confrontation…’ But eyewitnesses tell a different story. ‘They weren’t doing anything. All of a sudden, bang, bang, bang… It was a massacre’. Police executions here are commonplace - summary justice demanded by a public disillusioned with a failing justice system. One ex-judge tells us that his investigation revealed judges with a hundred times their salary in disposable income. And in towns like Acarigua, graffiti which reads “Death to criminals” has proven chillingly accurate. The government denies the existence of death squads, and the President has pledged to purge the oil-rich country of its ‘rotten elites’. But with the line between law and murder so blurred, he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Produced by ABC Australia