Venezuela
Death Squads
24 min 35 sec
[4 June 2002]
Suggested Link: The ABC has given undertakings not to broadcast this story inside Venezuela and have therefore decide to not supply it to the North, Central or South American markets.To protect the identity of several figures we are bound not to put sections on the web or post its transcript. We request those who take this story do the same. Thanks.Caracas CopsIn today's program, the super cop dishing it out to the criminals of Caracas. He's the police chief who cleaned up New York which eight years ago had more than two thousand murders each year. But after a breathtaking turnaround begun under Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, it's on target this year for fewer than four hundred. Now Bill Bratton has a new assignment. He's chosen to be cast as the gringo who calls high noon in one of Latin America's meanest cities. The author of the controversial policing strategy known as 'zero tolerance' is now advising the local force in Venezuela's capital. And as Tim Lester reports, the challenge is far greater than anything Bill Bratton faced in the Big Apple.
Training police recruits Music 02:00
Lester: Training to keep the peace, or to kill the problem? 02:06
Lester: In Venezuela, there are two views about these still green police recruits. One sees them at the vanguard of a law and order revolution -- a rare chance to defeat violent crime in a place where it thrives. 02:26
The other view has them as likely recruits to a brutal, secret war where crime is the stated enemy, but theres no line between law and murder 02:46
where police write tickets, direct traffic and kill. 03:03
Music
Streets of Caracus Lester: Saturday night and Venezuelas capital is braced for the surge of violence expected each weekend. 03:10
Caracas University Hospital Typically, by Monday morning, eighty to one hundred Venezuelans are dead attacked, stabbed, shot over the two day break. 03:28
At Caracas University Hospital, accident and emergency doctors have become almost shockproof. 03:44
Rachadell Rachadell: Now, the amount of trauma you see here is mostly wounds, not car accidents. 03:525
Scorzza Scorzza: Okay, what we're seeing here is a twenty-nine year old man who got a gunshot in his right leg.
Lester: The shooting has started Eladio Jose Bastidas and his five-year-old son. 04:06
Rachadell Rachadell: And his kid got shot too, but it was just like a flesh wound on one knee, so hes out of danger. 04:13
Lester: The doctors say this is classic Caracas gang warfare: terrify the enemy with a bullet in the leg; Its a signal Were prepared to kill you. 04:21
Victim Victim: I dont know who it was. I don;lt know any of them. 04:31
Lester: If it is gang rivalry, Mr. Bastidas probably does know who shot him, and hes still in danger even here. 04:45
Venezuelan gangs often pay hospital visits. Theyve done so twice in this hospital alone, in recent months. 04:53
Rachadell Rachadell: We dont even know who it was and, and what happened. He just came in here and shot him. Lester: A gunman burst into the hospital, carried out an execution, and left? Rachadell: And walked out. 05:01
Lester: How many similarities are there with what you did in New York and what youre doing here? 05:17
Bratton Bratton: There are a lot of similarities. One, a lot of crime. Two, it is the number one concern of the population. Three, it is growing. Four, the police are thought to be ineffective in dealing with it.
Nunez Nunez: We hop around the crime hops around, so we have to hop around Caracas to keep up with it. 05:34
Nunez on motorbike Lester: In Caracas, Jefe Ricardo Nunez is the highest-ranking motorcycle cop, and hes a Bill Bratton convert. 05:44
When he takes us for a night raid into a suburban slum we wouldnt be safe walking in the daytime, hes not after crime bosses or drug dealers from neighbouring Colombia. Hes applying the Bratton Broken Windows philosophy: deal with petty crime first and let everyone know youre doing it. 05:54
Others call it zero tolerance. Here, theyre frisked for simply being on the street. 06:15
Nunez Nunez: When you see a person, you presume that hes committing a crime. What we do is we stop them, we check them and verify their documents. If everythings in place, we let them go. 06:24
Police in Caracus Lester: With its eight thousand murders a year, Venezuela is betting on the notion that turned New York into one of Americas safest cities. 06:44
Lester: The first crimes to tackle are the smallest of crimes. 06:59
BrattonSUPER:Bill BrattonUS police Consultant Bratton: Trying to deal with the graffiti problem, which is horrific in this city. Theres not a wall in the city that's not covered with the stuff, but it gives that sense of where are the police. Where are the controls? 07:07
Lester: Is this a bigger problem than New York in the early nineties? 07:14
Bratton: Oh, certainly. Bigger in that they have less resources to work with. A much less sophisticated police department, and a very disjointed criminal justice system to work on the problem. 07:17
Burns Burns: Whether Mr. Bratton will make a difference I doubt very much indeed, because there is no evidence his input has made any difference to me. 07:33
Lester: Scottish born Rod Burns is an asset manager and a survivor of an experience as common here as it is brutal. 07:41
Burns: These are known in Venezuela as express kidnappings -- where they keep you for two or three hours then they let you go. Theres no police involvement. They get the money very quickly from frightened families and concerned families, and they, they just disappear. 07:49
Music 08:03
Lester: Four hooded gunmen bashed him, bundled him in a car, and terrorised him on a drive around Caracas. They insisted the forty-four year old take them to his apartment. His wife and young daughter were there. 08:08
Music
Burns: I refused, at which time the person in the passenger seat put the gun in my mouth and said, Were going to kill you. 08:22
Lester: There was one other chilling aspect to Rod Burns kidnapping, and as youll see, it fits a pattern in Venezuelan crime. 08:30
Burns: I did fourteen years in the armed forces in Britain, and youre taught how to speak very quickly and move very quickly, to put pressure on the person that youre dealing with, and these chaps were very, very well trained. 08:39
Lester: Theyd had training way beyond an ordinary criminal?Burns: Beyond doubt, beyond doubt. These people, without any doubt, were either current or ex-armed forces or police. 08:53
Policia Control Lester: Policia Control, Caracas -- the pivot point for all police operations in the city. You dont have to spend long here to get a sense of the streets of Caracas at night. Just two hours ago, these officers coordinated a drug raid. Police claim it degenerated into a gun battle. Two of the eight suspects are wounded. The other six police shot them dead. Just another day at the office for the cops of Caracas. 09:11
Officer Officer: We have the following; Vargas State Police reported a confrontation between six men and the metropolitan police, which ended in their deaths. 09:40
Lester: Theres talk of police wounded by armed drug dealers 09:57
Officer: Were the weapons pistols or revolvers? Officer #2: The majority were pistols.
Lester: and of a ferocious gun battle on a suburban beach. 10:10
Vargas beach Lester: The following morning we go to Vargas beach, expecting police tape around a heavily guarded crime scene. 10:18
Hardly. All thats left is a few crusty blood patches stomped on by morning swimmers and one terrified bar owner who insists hell only talk about what he saw the police do, if we take him well away from the beach. 10:28
Saavedra Saavedra: Here, theres a lot of abuse of authority. A lot of abuse. Theyll kill you like dogs. It cant be like this. 10:47
Lester: Danny Saavedra says he was serving the six accused drug dealers drinks. 10:58
Saavedra: They werent doing anything. It was a surprise. All of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Lester: He believes just one of his customers had a weapon, but didnt get close to using it.
Saavedra: No, he didnt have time. 11:18
Policia Control Lester: So what of the gun battle resisting arrest, the injured witnesses --all discussed at police control while we were there. 11:23
Officer: The civilians resisted police attempts to arrest them. They took out their guns and shot at the police. 11:33
Lester: And all reported in the Venezuelan media? 11:49
Saavedra Saavedra: No, no. Thats a lie. I was there. There wasnt any battle.Lester: What would he call it?Saavedra: It was a massacre.
Lester: And if Caracas Police knew what Danny Saavedra was telling us that hed witnessed the law carry out a multiple execution?
Saavedra: I would no longer exist. I would no longer exist. 12:12
Simonovis Simonovis: For me, I am no longer surprised by anything. (laugh)
Lester: Hes not kidding. I thought I could shock Caracas Police Commissioner Ivan Simonovis by telling him Danny Saavedras account of police murdering six beach goers.
Lester: Commissioner, weve been told those six deaths werent the result of a shoot-out; that they were a police execution. Does that surprise you? 12:32
Simonovis: No, no, no. Im not surprised for that.
Lester: It doesnt surprise you?
Simonovis: No, no, no. Because I have, I have - I know what we have in the police organisation. 12:43
Music
Media conference on street Lester: Its here the task for the Police Commissioner implementing Bill Brattons plan starts to look daunting. 12:56
Among Venezuelan Police, theres widespread support for fellow officers who kill accused criminals.
The Commissioner has already sacked four hundred police - an effort to clean out crooked cops - but even he admits his instincts tend towards summary justice.
Simonovis Simonovis: When we cant eliminate the individual, Im filled with rage, but lamentably that is the law and it must be respected. 13:23
Vargas beach Lester: In fact the law here is no more respected than that patch of blood soaked sand; trampled by a belief that only brutal measures will stop crime.
Woman Woman: There are no alternatives. The authorities have to do things like they did last night for our society to be able to move forward. 13:41
Vargas beach Lester: Not all agree with police as executioners, though among those we spoke with on Vargas beach no one doubts it happens. 13:51
Woman Woman: The police are the same as the criminals. 14:00
Woman 2 Woman 2: Yes, it does happen, and sometimes the criminal will be the father of a family.
Man Man: Last week, a policeman tossed me in the back of his car and stole my thirty dollars. Who can you believe in this country? 14:10
Simonovis Simonovis: These things are going to change, because they have to change, because were obligated to change, but this is a question of society changing. 14:20
Lester: Arent the settings in North America, and Latin America, simply too different for your plan to succeed?
Bratton Bratton: I don't know what the situation is in your country, but most countries in this world are experiencing crime increases. America is continuing to experience a crime decrease. A lot of our experiences are transferable, replicable not cookie cutter but they can be modified to different circumstances. 14:32
Suburban Caracas Lester: But some argue Bill Bratton crossed a divide in attitudes when he came south, a change in culture where crime is concerned, mean his policing simply cant work here. 14:53
Music
Lester: Caracas is by no means Venezuelas worst case of the system turning criminal to get the criminals. 15:08
Six hours drive south west of the capital, into Portuguesa province, is a town where the business of killing has taken a quantum leap.
Acarigua This is Acarigua. The one hundred and eighty thousand who live here shop in streets lined with shotgun wielding security guards. 15:25
The graffiti reads Death to Criminals.
That seems to have been the police objective as officers burst into Mariela Mendosas home early one morning. 15:43
Mendoza Mendoza: They grabbed my sleeping brother and stood him up by his hair and took him out to the patio. 15:49
Lester: They then dragged her two other brothers out, leaving the young mother and her niece to listen.
Mendoza: I began to hear gun shots; shot after shot after shot after shot. I turned to my niece and said Theyre killing them! and she said Yes, Mariela, theyre killing them. 16:02
Lester: Local papers published pictures of the three bullet riddled corpses. The police response: theyd been caught in a gun battle. Forensic tests showed two of the young men died kneeling. 16:17
Mendoza: The witness drove by and saw what was happening. 16:32
Lester: Apparently police had blamed the Mendozas for an earlier bus robbery
Lester: Another bullet? Mendoza: Si.
Lester: though evidence since suggests the three were innocent.
Mendoza: Here, they killed one of them. 16:44
Lester: So what happens to a policeman here who not only turns killer, but kills the wrong people?
Mendoza: Theyre still working today. 16:52
Lester: The killers of your brothers are still working police officers today?
Mendoza: Yes, theyre still working, in the police force. They dont care who they kill. It isnt just my brothers theyve killed. Theyve killed lots of people. 17:02
Diaz Diaz: Here, we have whats called the Exter.Q: Do you know what that is? The Extermination Squad? Diaz: Exactly. 17:18
Lester: Acarigua ice cream sellerm Jairo Diaz is chatty about the shadowy group he knows as the extermination squad. He sees it as pest control.
Diaz: Theres rats. Theres some rats around here that are good for nothing. Some rats here will kill you for your shoes. Q: What do you think should happen to those rats? Diaz: They should send them down there, to the new cemetery. 17:35
Gonzalo Castillo Lester: Locals like mobile advertising announcer, Gonzalo Castillo, and friends at the Acarigua gambling hall, attribute more than one hundred recent executions here to the death squad. 17:54
Public opinion on this chilling campaign to cleanse the area of crime is as fickle as picking a winner. 18:12
Gonzalez: He who kills is worse than the criminal he is killing. 18:21
Lester: Though Mr. Castillo says when the murders eased last year amid a national fuss, local anger surged.
Gonzalez: Crime rose up again because the criminals saw no one was going to stop them. So the towns people yelled and begged for these groups to come back. 18:25
Lester: And a new spate of killings this year suggests the extermination squad is sensitive to public opinion. 18:51
Miguel Augusto Lawyer Miguel Augusto is another who says he doesnt support the practise, but the town certainly does. 19:01
Augusto: People sleep with more comfort at night because many criminals have been eliminated so the towns people dont complain. 19:08
Streets of Acariguas Lester: So whos behind Acariguas mass executions? 19:19
In a town where even the pizza shop has a shotgun at the door
locals dare not ask. But our efforts to find out led us to this former police intelligence officer.
de Dios Perea: At first, I didnt realise the depth of this plan. 19:38
Lester: Juan de Dios Perea agreed to take us on an unnerving drive through Acarigua, repeating a journey he made eighteen months ago to a meeting at this house. 19:48
de Dios Perea: In the meeting, I was given this list, with these names so I could organise a group to annihilate them. 19:57
Lester: Juan has no doubt what the small group of men present wanted him to do with the names on the list. 20:14
de Dios Perea: Annihilate them. Kill them. Kill them. He also offered me money. He offered money for each one of them. To begin the operation, he offered five million boliveres, for logistical and operational costs. 20:20
Lester: On this, his first trip back, Juan wants to check any links here with the person he says led that meeting and offered hm the money. 20:41
de Dios Perea: Could you please answer one question? Does Major Perez Perez visit here? Man: Does he live here? de Dios Perea: No, no. Does he come here? Are you friends with him? Man: Yes. 20:52
Lester: Juan refused the offer made at the meeting, but when the murders started anyway, went into hiding, fearing for his life. 21:04
Hes convinced he was chosen to lead the killers of Acarigua and was offered the job by the mastermind.
de Dios Perea: Absolutely. I have no doubt. Rodriguez Perez Perez has become a merchant of death. 21:18
Lester: Its an astonishing claim to make. Rodriguez Perez Perez is a Government Minister. 21:31
Lester: We think its the one just here on the left dont we. Just here.
Lester: In fact, hes the states Security Minister and his guard insists we write to request an interview. 21:45
Gunson Gunson: Dear Major Perez, Perez, we are from ABC Television, Australia. Were sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning. 21:52
Lester: But soon enough were invited for coffee
Lester: Buenos Dias, Major Perez. 33:02
Lester: and to meet the accused Merchant of Death.
Perez-Perez Perez-Perez: I deny it completely. I deny it completely. Never. 22:10
Lester: At the same time, there is no doubt, sir that you have been security minister, overseeing a police force that includes, at least in part some murderers? Fair comment?
Perez Perez: And thats why, taking that into account, in the same month of September that some of these things were happening, we asked responsibly - for the assistance of the Justice Ministry to help us solve the problem. 22:24
Lester: He insists the death squad meeting described by Juan de Dios Perea never took place. 22:44
Perez Perez: Here - Heres the list. Go kill these people. For Gods sake, no.
Lester: But Major Perez Perez does champion an argument often raised in defence of death squads.
Streets of Caracus Many Venezuelans see them as making up for a court system that simply isnt delivering justice. 23:00
Perez Perez: The public has seen my statements on radio in the press and on television, saying I oppose putting offenders through the justice system only to then release them. That is not the answer.
Lester: Indeed, one recent opinion poll suggests almost two thirds of Venezuelans support the idea of exterminating criminals. People are angry and frustrated, and its not just with the systems failure to catch the offenders. Its with Venezuelas dysfunctional justice system. 23:20
Rosell Rosell: There is impunity, without a doubt, not only with the violation of human rights but also with corruption. 23:38
Lester: Thirty-three years a judge, Jorge Rosell quit Venezuelas Supreme Court in disgust. 23:48
The court had cleared a traffic policeman of any wrongdoing after he shot dead an unarmed motorist for failing to stop.
Rosell: Fundamentally, I could not continue on the Supreme Court or in the Criminal Division because it justified the politics of extermination. It took the fight against crime as a war, took it as a military problem. 24:08
Lester: The sixty year old now lectures other legal professionals on topics including the death squads. 24:31
Moreno Moreno: Its an inescapable fact. No one can deny that its part of everyday police work to go ahead and kill, or exterminate. 24:40
Biel Biel: and lawyers, bankers, Governors and people of all levels are aware of this. 24:55
Lester: From the very highest level of Venezuelas justice system, this rebel judge watched his judicial colleagues sanction executions on the one hand, and take bribes to free criminals, on the other. 25:00
As an exercise, Jorge Rosells class surveyed spending among Venezuelan Judges 25:14
Rosell: Latest model motorcars, holidays in Europe with the family, houses on the beach, and so on. 25:19
Lester: and compared it with the Judges salaries.
Rosell: We determined that at least thirty-one judges were spending not double, not five times, not six times, but sometimes more than one hundred times their annual income. 25:29
Music
Lester: A judicial system hopelessly addicted to bribes routinely freeing criminals and so feeding the very fear that drives a public demand for death squads. 25:48
Rosell: I was a municipal, district, and supreme court judge. I passed through all these levels. It hurts me to think through all those levels there was so much corruption. Because there is so much corruption. 25:58
Streets of Caracas Lester: Venezuela is applying Bratton policing in just one impoverished area of Caracas.
Bill Bratton says murders are already down here by more than one quarter, and his approach has its supporters. Portuguesa States Security Minister is one of them. 26:21
Perez Perez Perez Perez: I was very impressed, especially when he spoke of zero tolerance. 26:34
Bratton Bratton: One of the reasons why I did this project for so little money Ill make no money on this project, its very time consuming is that it is the opportunity to show that the ideas that changed policing in America and changed the crime situation in America, are transferable. An, Im committed to that. Im committed to the concept of community policing and problem solving policing. 26:44
Lester: But that concept faces a far tougher test in Caracas than New York. 27:09
Lester: It must overcome an imposing barrier, where the law is corrupted, murder sanctioned and theres precious little separating police from criminals. 27:15
Credits: Caracas CopsReporter: Tim LesterCamera: David AndersonSound: Jason RackiEditor: Woody LandayProducer: Vivien Altman 27:31
Death Squads
24 min 35 sec
[4 June 2002]
Suggested Link: The ABC has given undertakings not to broadcast this story inside Venezuela and have therefore decide to not supply it to the North, Central or South American markets.To protect the identity of several figures we are bound not to put sections on the web or post its transcript. We request those who take this story do the same. Thanks.Caracas CopsIn today's program, the super cop dishing it out to the criminals of Caracas. He's the police chief who cleaned up New York which eight years ago had more than two thousand murders each year. But after a breathtaking turnaround begun under Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, it's on target this year for fewer than four hundred. Now Bill Bratton has a new assignment. He's chosen to be cast as the gringo who calls high noon in one of Latin America's meanest cities. The author of the controversial policing strategy known as 'zero tolerance' is now advising the local force in Venezuela's capital. And as Tim Lester reports, the challenge is far greater than anything Bill Bratton faced in the Big Apple.
Training police recruits Music 02:00
Lester: Training to keep the peace, or to kill the problem? 02:06
Lester: In Venezuela, there are two views about these still green police recruits. One sees them at the vanguard of a law and order revolution -- a rare chance to defeat violent crime in a place where it thrives. 02:26
The other view has them as likely recruits to a brutal, secret war where crime is the stated enemy, but theres no line between law and murder 02:46
where police write tickets, direct traffic and kill. 03:03
Music
Streets of Caracus Lester: Saturday night and Venezuelas capital is braced for the surge of violence expected each weekend. 03:10
Caracas University Hospital Typically, by Monday morning, eighty to one hundred Venezuelans are dead attacked, stabbed, shot over the two day break. 03:28
At Caracas University Hospital, accident and emergency doctors have become almost shockproof. 03:44
Rachadell Rachadell: Now, the amount of trauma you see here is mostly wounds, not car accidents. 03:525
Scorzza Scorzza: Okay, what we're seeing here is a twenty-nine year old man who got a gunshot in his right leg.
Lester: The shooting has started Eladio Jose Bastidas and his five-year-old son. 04:06
Rachadell Rachadell: And his kid got shot too, but it was just like a flesh wound on one knee, so hes out of danger. 04:13
Lester: The doctors say this is classic Caracas gang warfare: terrify the enemy with a bullet in the leg; Its a signal Were prepared to kill you. 04:21
Victim Victim: I dont know who it was. I don;lt know any of them. 04:31
Lester: If it is gang rivalry, Mr. Bastidas probably does know who shot him, and hes still in danger even here. 04:45
Venezuelan gangs often pay hospital visits. Theyve done so twice in this hospital alone, in recent months. 04:53
Rachadell Rachadell: We dont even know who it was and, and what happened. He just came in here and shot him. Lester: A gunman burst into the hospital, carried out an execution, and left? Rachadell: And walked out. 05:01
Lester: How many similarities are there with what you did in New York and what youre doing here? 05:17
Bratton Bratton: There are a lot of similarities. One, a lot of crime. Two, it is the number one concern of the population. Three, it is growing. Four, the police are thought to be ineffective in dealing with it.
Nunez Nunez: We hop around the crime hops around, so we have to hop around Caracas to keep up with it. 05:34
Nunez on motorbike Lester: In Caracas, Jefe Ricardo Nunez is the highest-ranking motorcycle cop, and hes a Bill Bratton convert. 05:44
When he takes us for a night raid into a suburban slum we wouldnt be safe walking in the daytime, hes not after crime bosses or drug dealers from neighbouring Colombia. Hes applying the Bratton Broken Windows philosophy: deal with petty crime first and let everyone know youre doing it. 05:54
Others call it zero tolerance. Here, theyre frisked for simply being on the street. 06:15
Nunez Nunez: When you see a person, you presume that hes committing a crime. What we do is we stop them, we check them and verify their documents. If everythings in place, we let them go. 06:24
Police in Caracus Lester: With its eight thousand murders a year, Venezuela is betting on the notion that turned New York into one of Americas safest cities. 06:44
Lester: The first crimes to tackle are the smallest of crimes. 06:59
BrattonSUPER:Bill BrattonUS police Consultant Bratton: Trying to deal with the graffiti problem, which is horrific in this city. Theres not a wall in the city that's not covered with the stuff, but it gives that sense of where are the police. Where are the controls? 07:07
Lester: Is this a bigger problem than New York in the early nineties? 07:14
Bratton: Oh, certainly. Bigger in that they have less resources to work with. A much less sophisticated police department, and a very disjointed criminal justice system to work on the problem. 07:17
Burns Burns: Whether Mr. Bratton will make a difference I doubt very much indeed, because there is no evidence his input has made any difference to me. 07:33
Lester: Scottish born Rod Burns is an asset manager and a survivor of an experience as common here as it is brutal. 07:41
Burns: These are known in Venezuela as express kidnappings -- where they keep you for two or three hours then they let you go. Theres no police involvement. They get the money very quickly from frightened families and concerned families, and they, they just disappear. 07:49
Music 08:03
Lester: Four hooded gunmen bashed him, bundled him in a car, and terrorised him on a drive around Caracas. They insisted the forty-four year old take them to his apartment. His wife and young daughter were there. 08:08
Music
Burns: I refused, at which time the person in the passenger seat put the gun in my mouth and said, Were going to kill you. 08:22
Lester: There was one other chilling aspect to Rod Burns kidnapping, and as youll see, it fits a pattern in Venezuelan crime. 08:30
Burns: I did fourteen years in the armed forces in Britain, and youre taught how to speak very quickly and move very quickly, to put pressure on the person that youre dealing with, and these chaps were very, very well trained. 08:39
Lester: Theyd had training way beyond an ordinary criminal?Burns: Beyond doubt, beyond doubt. These people, without any doubt, were either current or ex-armed forces or police. 08:53
Policia Control Lester: Policia Control, Caracas -- the pivot point for all police operations in the city. You dont have to spend long here to get a sense of the streets of Caracas at night. Just two hours ago, these officers coordinated a drug raid. Police claim it degenerated into a gun battle. Two of the eight suspects are wounded. The other six police shot them dead. Just another day at the office for the cops of Caracas. 09:11
Officer Officer: We have the following; Vargas State Police reported a confrontation between six men and the metropolitan police, which ended in their deaths. 09:40
Lester: Theres talk of police wounded by armed drug dealers 09:57
Officer: Were the weapons pistols or revolvers? Officer #2: The majority were pistols.
Lester: and of a ferocious gun battle on a suburban beach. 10:10
Vargas beach Lester: The following morning we go to Vargas beach, expecting police tape around a heavily guarded crime scene. 10:18
Hardly. All thats left is a few crusty blood patches stomped on by morning swimmers and one terrified bar owner who insists hell only talk about what he saw the police do, if we take him well away from the beach. 10:28
Saavedra Saavedra: Here, theres a lot of abuse of authority. A lot of abuse. Theyll kill you like dogs. It cant be like this. 10:47
Lester: Danny Saavedra says he was serving the six accused drug dealers drinks. 10:58
Saavedra: They werent doing anything. It was a surprise. All of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Lester: He believes just one of his customers had a weapon, but didnt get close to using it.
Saavedra: No, he didnt have time. 11:18
Policia Control Lester: So what of the gun battle resisting arrest, the injured witnesses --all discussed at police control while we were there. 11:23
Officer: The civilians resisted police attempts to arrest them. They took out their guns and shot at the police. 11:33
Lester: And all reported in the Venezuelan media? 11:49
Saavedra Saavedra: No, no. Thats a lie. I was there. There wasnt any battle.Lester: What would he call it?Saavedra: It was a massacre.
Lester: And if Caracas Police knew what Danny Saavedra was telling us that hed witnessed the law carry out a multiple execution?
Saavedra: I would no longer exist. I would no longer exist. 12:12
Simonovis Simonovis: For me, I am no longer surprised by anything. (laugh)
Lester: Hes not kidding. I thought I could shock Caracas Police Commissioner Ivan Simonovis by telling him Danny Saavedras account of police murdering six beach goers.
Lester: Commissioner, weve been told those six deaths werent the result of a shoot-out; that they were a police execution. Does that surprise you? 12:32
Simonovis: No, no, no. Im not surprised for that.
Lester: It doesnt surprise you?
Simonovis: No, no, no. Because I have, I have - I know what we have in the police organisation. 12:43
Music
Media conference on street Lester: Its here the task for the Police Commissioner implementing Bill Brattons plan starts to look daunting. 12:56
Among Venezuelan Police, theres widespread support for fellow officers who kill accused criminals.
The Commissioner has already sacked four hundred police - an effort to clean out crooked cops - but even he admits his instincts tend towards summary justice.
Simonovis Simonovis: When we cant eliminate the individual, Im filled with rage, but lamentably that is the law and it must be respected. 13:23
Vargas beach Lester: In fact the law here is no more respected than that patch of blood soaked sand; trampled by a belief that only brutal measures will stop crime.
Woman Woman: There are no alternatives. The authorities have to do things like they did last night for our society to be able to move forward. 13:41
Vargas beach Lester: Not all agree with police as executioners, though among those we spoke with on Vargas beach no one doubts it happens. 13:51
Woman Woman: The police are the same as the criminals. 14:00
Woman 2 Woman 2: Yes, it does happen, and sometimes the criminal will be the father of a family.
Man Man: Last week, a policeman tossed me in the back of his car and stole my thirty dollars. Who can you believe in this country? 14:10
Simonovis Simonovis: These things are going to change, because they have to change, because were obligated to change, but this is a question of society changing. 14:20
Lester: Arent the settings in North America, and Latin America, simply too different for your plan to succeed?
Bratton Bratton: I don't know what the situation is in your country, but most countries in this world are experiencing crime increases. America is continuing to experience a crime decrease. A lot of our experiences are transferable, replicable not cookie cutter but they can be modified to different circumstances. 14:32
Suburban Caracas Lester: But some argue Bill Bratton crossed a divide in attitudes when he came south, a change in culture where crime is concerned, mean his policing simply cant work here. 14:53
Music
Lester: Caracas is by no means Venezuelas worst case of the system turning criminal to get the criminals. 15:08
Six hours drive south west of the capital, into Portuguesa province, is a town where the business of killing has taken a quantum leap.
Acarigua This is Acarigua. The one hundred and eighty thousand who live here shop in streets lined with shotgun wielding security guards. 15:25
The graffiti reads Death to Criminals.
That seems to have been the police objective as officers burst into Mariela Mendosas home early one morning. 15:43
Mendoza Mendoza: They grabbed my sleeping brother and stood him up by his hair and took him out to the patio. 15:49
Lester: They then dragged her two other brothers out, leaving the young mother and her niece to listen.
Mendoza: I began to hear gun shots; shot after shot after shot after shot. I turned to my niece and said Theyre killing them! and she said Yes, Mariela, theyre killing them. 16:02
Lester: Local papers published pictures of the three bullet riddled corpses. The police response: theyd been caught in a gun battle. Forensic tests showed two of the young men died kneeling. 16:17
Mendoza: The witness drove by and saw what was happening. 16:32
Lester: Apparently police had blamed the Mendozas for an earlier bus robbery
Lester: Another bullet? Mendoza: Si.
Lester: though evidence since suggests the three were innocent.
Mendoza: Here, they killed one of them. 16:44
Lester: So what happens to a policeman here who not only turns killer, but kills the wrong people?
Mendoza: Theyre still working today. 16:52
Lester: The killers of your brothers are still working police officers today?
Mendoza: Yes, theyre still working, in the police force. They dont care who they kill. It isnt just my brothers theyve killed. Theyve killed lots of people. 17:02
Diaz Diaz: Here, we have whats called the Exter.Q: Do you know what that is? The Extermination Squad? Diaz: Exactly. 17:18
Lester: Acarigua ice cream sellerm Jairo Diaz is chatty about the shadowy group he knows as the extermination squad. He sees it as pest control.
Diaz: Theres rats. Theres some rats around here that are good for nothing. Some rats here will kill you for your shoes. Q: What do you think should happen to those rats? Diaz: They should send them down there, to the new cemetery. 17:35
Gonzalo Castillo Lester: Locals like mobile advertising announcer, Gonzalo Castillo, and friends at the Acarigua gambling hall, attribute more than one hundred recent executions here to the death squad. 17:54
Public opinion on this chilling campaign to cleanse the area of crime is as fickle as picking a winner. 18:12
Gonzalez: He who kills is worse than the criminal he is killing. 18:21
Lester: Though Mr. Castillo says when the murders eased last year amid a national fuss, local anger surged.
Gonzalez: Crime rose up again because the criminals saw no one was going to stop them. So the towns people yelled and begged for these groups to come back. 18:25
Lester: And a new spate of killings this year suggests the extermination squad is sensitive to public opinion. 18:51
Miguel Augusto Lawyer Miguel Augusto is another who says he doesnt support the practise, but the town certainly does. 19:01
Augusto: People sleep with more comfort at night because many criminals have been eliminated so the towns people dont complain. 19:08
Streets of Acariguas Lester: So whos behind Acariguas mass executions? 19:19
In a town where even the pizza shop has a shotgun at the door
locals dare not ask. But our efforts to find out led us to this former police intelligence officer.
de Dios Perea: At first, I didnt realise the depth of this plan. 19:38
Lester: Juan de Dios Perea agreed to take us on an unnerving drive through Acarigua, repeating a journey he made eighteen months ago to a meeting at this house. 19:48
de Dios Perea: In the meeting, I was given this list, with these names so I could organise a group to annihilate them. 19:57
Lester: Juan has no doubt what the small group of men present wanted him to do with the names on the list. 20:14
de Dios Perea: Annihilate them. Kill them. Kill them. He also offered me money. He offered money for each one of them. To begin the operation, he offered five million boliveres, for logistical and operational costs. 20:20
Lester: On this, his first trip back, Juan wants to check any links here with the person he says led that meeting and offered hm the money. 20:41
de Dios Perea: Could you please answer one question? Does Major Perez Perez visit here? Man: Does he live here? de Dios Perea: No, no. Does he come here? Are you friends with him? Man: Yes. 20:52
Lester: Juan refused the offer made at the meeting, but when the murders started anyway, went into hiding, fearing for his life. 21:04
Hes convinced he was chosen to lead the killers of Acarigua and was offered the job by the mastermind.
de Dios Perea: Absolutely. I have no doubt. Rodriguez Perez Perez has become a merchant of death. 21:18
Lester: Its an astonishing claim to make. Rodriguez Perez Perez is a Government Minister. 21:31
Lester: We think its the one just here on the left dont we. Just here.
Lester: In fact, hes the states Security Minister and his guard insists we write to request an interview. 21:45
Gunson Gunson: Dear Major Perez, Perez, we are from ABC Television, Australia. Were sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning. 21:52
Lester: But soon enough were invited for coffee
Lester: Buenos Dias, Major Perez. 33:02
Lester: and to meet the accused Merchant of Death.
Perez-Perez Perez-Perez: I deny it completely. I deny it completely. Never. 22:10
Lester: At the same time, there is no doubt, sir that you have been security minister, overseeing a police force that includes, at least in part some murderers? Fair comment?
Perez Perez: And thats why, taking that into account, in the same month of September that some of these things were happening, we asked responsibly - for the assistance of the Justice Ministry to help us solve the problem. 22:24
Lester: He insists the death squad meeting described by Juan de Dios Perea never took place. 22:44
Perez Perez: Here - Heres the list. Go kill these people. For Gods sake, no.
Lester: But Major Perez Perez does champion an argument often raised in defence of death squads.
Streets of Caracus Many Venezuelans see them as making up for a court system that simply isnt delivering justice. 23:00
Perez Perez: The public has seen my statements on radio in the press and on television, saying I oppose putting offenders through the justice system only to then release them. That is not the answer.
Lester: Indeed, one recent opinion poll suggests almost two thirds of Venezuelans support the idea of exterminating criminals. People are angry and frustrated, and its not just with the systems failure to catch the offenders. Its with Venezuelas dysfunctional justice system. 23:20
Rosell Rosell: There is impunity, without a doubt, not only with the violation of human rights but also with corruption. 23:38
Lester: Thirty-three years a judge, Jorge Rosell quit Venezuelas Supreme Court in disgust. 23:48
The court had cleared a traffic policeman of any wrongdoing after he shot dead an unarmed motorist for failing to stop.
Rosell: Fundamentally, I could not continue on the Supreme Court or in the Criminal Division because it justified the politics of extermination. It took the fight against crime as a war, took it as a military problem. 24:08
Lester: The sixty year old now lectures other legal professionals on topics including the death squads. 24:31
Moreno Moreno: Its an inescapable fact. No one can deny that its part of everyday police work to go ahead and kill, or exterminate. 24:40
Biel Biel: and lawyers, bankers, Governors and people of all levels are aware of this. 24:55
Lester: From the very highest level of Venezuelas justice system, this rebel judge watched his judicial colleagues sanction executions on the one hand, and take bribes to free criminals, on the other. 25:00
As an exercise, Jorge Rosells class surveyed spending among Venezuelan Judges 25:14
Rosell: Latest model motorcars, holidays in Europe with the family, houses on the beach, and so on. 25:19
Lester: and compared it with the Judges salaries.
Rosell: We determined that at least thirty-one judges were spending not double, not five times, not six times, but sometimes more than one hundred times their annual income. 25:29
Music
Lester: A judicial system hopelessly addicted to bribes routinely freeing criminals and so feeding the very fear that drives a public demand for death squads. 25:48
Rosell: I was a municipal, district, and supreme court judge. I passed through all these levels. It hurts me to think through all those levels there was so much corruption. Because there is so much corruption. 25:58
Streets of Caracas Lester: Venezuela is applying Bratton policing in just one impoverished area of Caracas.
Bill Bratton says murders are already down here by more than one quarter, and his approach has its supporters. Portuguesa States Security Minister is one of them. 26:21
Perez Perez Perez Perez: I was very impressed, especially when he spoke of zero tolerance. 26:34
Bratton Bratton: One of the reasons why I did this project for so little money Ill make no money on this project, its very time consuming is that it is the opportunity to show that the ideas that changed policing in America and changed the crime situation in America, are transferable. An, Im committed to that. Im committed to the concept of community policing and problem solving policing. 26:44
Lester: But that concept faces a far tougher test in Caracas than New York. 27:09
Lester: It must overcome an imposing barrier, where the law is corrupted, murder sanctioned and theres precious little separating police from criminals. 27:15
Credits: Caracas CopsReporter: Tim LesterCamera: David AndersonSound: Jason RackiEditor: Woody LandayProducer: Vivien Altman 27:31