Bookplanet: Mexican cops study literature to become better cops

Literature classes help maligned Mexican police to go by the book
Officers go to school for reading, chess and PE as crime-ridden city broadens minds to win hearts
By Jo Tuckman (from the good old Guardian)

Pistols on their hips and submachine guns slung across their shoulders, a classroom full of shoeless police officers trample somewhat sheepishly over the volumes spread out on the floor. “Feel them enter your body,” the teacher urges the men and women in blue as they pass over Honoré de Balzac, Arthur C Clarke, Rafael Alberti, Rudyard Kipling, Octavio Paz, Ruth Rendell and others. “We must lose our fear of books, we must get to know our new friends.”

Nezahualcoyotl, a gritty working-class city of about 2 million people sprawling out from central Mexico City, has become a crucible for an unusual experiment in enlightened police training. Beset by table-topping crime figures that have resisted more conventional crime-busting efforts, the city’s leftwing council has decided to try something new.

“The principle is that a police officer who is cultured is in a better position to be a better police officer,” says José Jorge Amador, Nezahualcoyotl’s head of public security.

The experiment began early in 2005 with reading and writing classes. It has since mushroomed into an entire literature course with its own constantly expanding editorial series, called Literature On Alert. All the 1,200 officers of the municipal force are now required to attend fortnightly book groups - while off duty - if they are to have any hope of promotion.

The scheme is particularly remarkable in Mexico where, according to a 2005 study by the country’s biggest university, only 28% of the population aged over 15 read more than two books a year and 40% read none at all.

It seems close to spectacular in the Nezahualcoyotl police force, where only a fifth of the officers have the equivalent of a sixth-form education, and many have only a few years of secondary schooling or even less.

It has also aroused interest around the world. Mr Amador says he received a call from Scotland Yard last year.

The idea of getting the police reading in Neza, as the city is usually called, is part of a wider “cultural dimension” to training. This also obliges officers to learn to play chess, and encourages them to go back to school.

The tactic is multi-pronged. On one level the reading groups are designed to broaden minds, making officers more aware of what is going on in their local communities and more sensitive to the needs of the public.

But the idea is also to prove to the people that the police are no longer the scheming, corrupt low-life most Mexicans assume them to be. “We have a bad police force because society sees them as in the basement, in the sewer,” says Mr Amador, whose immediate predecessor is in a maximum-security jail for drug trafficking. “In Nezahualcoyotl we want to elevate the police so [they are] worthy of fulfilling their obligations.”

Such lofty aims are echoed by some of the officers in the workshops. Jaime Ocampo says he proudly tells people he meets in the street that “the police are different now - we read”.

Others are more excited by finding parallels with their own experiences while roaming this traffic-clogged, once notorious slum-turned-suburb of the metropolis. “I think of myself as [Don] Quixote and my buddy, my partner, as Sancho Panza, who has to watch my back,” says Pedro Martinez, referring to the Spanish classic his class read last year in a digested version. “They were a little crazy, but we are a little crazy, too.”

A short story about a lynching in a rural town by the Mexican writer Edmundo Valadez prompts a group discussion ranging from the topic of recent cases of popular justice through to the country’s current electoral dispute and the Iraq war.

Some officers are most excited about the writing project covering accounts of their own time on the job. For some this means blow-by-blow accounts of shootouts and car chases, but others invest the texts with wistful romanticism, stark noir prose or personal reflection.

Literature On Alert has already published a novel by one officer, as well as a collection of short stories.

But is a reading and writing cop really a better cop? The leading Mexican criminologist Rafael Ruiz Harrell is not convinced. “Maybe it will make them better human beings. But how this will be useful in decreasing crime is hard to see.”

Mr Amador claims there has been a drop in crime, and he credits the “cultural dimension” for it, alongside other measures ranging from obligatory exercise (for the many cops who are all too fond of their tacos) to anti-corruption purges. He is particularly proud of the city’s drop, over the past three years, from No 3 to No 8 in the national car theft league table. Mr Amador says he now rarely receives complaints, once a daily occurrence, and occasionally receives the once unheard of pleasure of a congratulatory call for all the good work.

A recent straw poll of passersby on a busy Neza street gathered mixed opinions. Some residents saw improvements in policing, while others simply guffawed at the idea that this could be possible.

But what is undeniable is that some police are having fun doing things they never imagined being an officer would involve. Not only have they read Don Quixote, they have also translated the first chapter into radio code. “In a 22 [village] of La Mancha whose 62 [name] I have no desire to remember.”