For Top U.S. Cop in Haiti, It’s a Matter of Trust

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When former New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly arrived at police headquarters here Tuesday morning, aides said he expected to meet the Haitian capital’s dreaded police chief, Lt. Col. Michel-Joseph Francois.

His mission: to launch the first joint U.S.-Haitian police patrols with Kelly’s new, yellow-capped force of multinational police monitors, thus laying the cornerstone of a future democratic police force and ultimately of America’s military withdrawal.

But as Kelly went upstairs, Francois was fleeing the country, crossing at that very moment into the neighboring Dominican Republic. And Francois’ replacement, a Haitian police major, appeared in no mood for callers. He rejected the joint patrols, denouncing the U.S. military’s detention of seven Haitian officers the previous day and expressing strong concern for his men’s safety.

Outside the meeting room, police headquarters was seething with anger. As the negotiations dragged on, Haitian police officers of all ranks muttered about wounded pride, hated Americans and civil war.

It was an inauspicious beginning to the international task of rebuilding, re-educating and redeploying a police force in a nation that has had the worst record of police-sponsored terrorism and human rights abuses in the Caribbean.

But Kelly, a tough former U.S. Marine colonel and skillful politician, negotiated hard with the acting Haitian chief. He apologized for the policemen’s arrest, which American military sources variously called a “mistake” and a “misunderstanding” on the part of the U.S. forces that detained them during Monday’s spectacular raid on the headquarters of a violent Haitian paramilitary group. And Kelly gave his personal guarantee that the Haitian police will be respected and protected in the future.

After 3 1/2 hours, the major relented, on one condition: Kelly had to accompany a Haitian lieutenant on the first such patrol--on foot, through a tough, 10-block neighborhood of the city.

And Kelly did, touring a district teeming with poverty, filth and potential looters side by side with a Haitian officer for nearly half an hour.

So began the monolithic, multimillion-dollar, U.S.-funded challenge of checkmating, then selectively destroying and re-creating a police force in a nation where many of the law enforcers have for years been the lawbreakers.

To meet that challenge, Kelly’s International Police Monitors, along with a separate but parallel U.N. observer-trainer force of police and soldiers from Caribbean nations, must keep Haiti’s police intact long enough to prevent a law-enforcement vacuum. Yet the monitors must simultaneously disarm and decommission corrupt and brutal officers in such a way that the present force doesn’t crumble from humiliation and demoralization.

If Kelly fails, the U.S. troops will be the only law in town, forcing the U.S. Army, in effect, to become the Haitian police--a role reminiscent of America’s previous occupation here and one that U.S. forces commander Lt. Gen. Hugh Shelton has ruled out.

In Washington, the Pentagon has begun stepping up efforts to install an interim civilian police force so that U.S. troops will not have to do the job alone, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the first units of the interim police force could be in operation in Cap Haitien within a few days, and similar units are planned for selected precincts of Port-au-Prince as quickly as possible.

Navy Adm. Paul David Miller, overall commander of the U.S. operation in Haiti, was in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday discussing plans for the start of the new interim force and is expected to come up with firm plans later this week.

The civilian force will be overseen by U.S. troops and by the International Police Monitors.

As Tuesday’s rough start illustrated, little or no groundwork had been done to pave the way for Kelly and the first 54 members of the multinational force.

Briefing reporters Tuesday morning, Jan Stromsen, the associate director of the joint State and Justice Department program that is sponsoring the monitors, said they had yet to select a site for a new police academy that is central to the police reconstruction plan.

Under that plan, which was modeled after a similar U.S.-sponsored program that retrained police in El Salvador, Stromsen said the future academy is scheduled to open Dec. 15, with a first class of 375 Haitian recruits beginning a four-month course in modern criminal justice.

The first class will not be deployed until April 15--with international monitors already in place. And Stromsen confirmed that if the plan succeeds, it will take a full 18 months to build a Haitian force of 4,000. She also confirmed that the government of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which will control the new force, has yet to provide them with guidelines for recruitment of new police and recommission of old officers.

The strategy, according to Stromsen: “You begin to build a new police force as you demobilize the current police force.” When asked, though, whether she expects the current force to cooperate during that process, she said, “I think you can anticipate that some will cooperate and some won’t.”

That assessment was reflected in the mood at police headquarters during Kelly’s marathon meeting. “I was very mad when I heard of yesterday’s arrests, mad enough to kill somebody” said Haitian police Cpl. Yves Joissaint, sitting under a tree in the courtyard while Kelly’s meeting dragged on upstairs. “We don’t accept these patrols. The American soldiers are arresting us, humiliating us before the people. And we should walk with them in the streets?

“We’ll work with them if they are not taking us to be killed by the people, because that’s what they’re doing now.”

As the officer spoke, U.S. soldiers arrived with a badly beaten police agent named Eliscane Desir in handcuffs, and turned him over to the Haitian police. They had rescued him from a mob that ransacked his house and tried to kill him in the street--emboldened, one of the soldiers said, by the police officers’ arrests the day before.

Others were even more hostile.

“If it was me who was arrested yesterday, the war would have started already,” said Jean Pierre, a 45-year-old policeman in civilian clothes who has spent 12 years on the force. “For most of us, we would rather have had the invasion than this. The massacre would have taken place, and everything would be settling down now.”

But there also were officers like Cpl. Pierre Joseph Bernard, who said he was relieved the new police had arrived to begin their work. He too was hurt deeply by Monday’s detention of his colleagues. But he stressed that he has been hurt far more by the brutal orders his colleagues have been forced to carry out during the past three years under military rule.

“Look, if we Haitian policemen had been doing our job these past three years, the Americans and this multinational force would not be here today,” he said.

“You can’t say I’m happy, but it’s a fact that officers have given these orders to beat people, torture people and kill people.”

Times staff writer Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.