A CONSTABULARY OF THUGS

By TAMMERLIN DRUMMOND

It was bad enough when Jean Bernard Charles was shoved to the ground in handcuffs four months ago in Port-au-Prince and shot to death by four Haitian police officers for no apparent reason. But then his family complained that Haiti's U.S.-trained police should not be in the business of murdering civilians. This, they quickly discovered, was a mistake. First came the warnings: if the relatives didn't shut up, they might suffer the same fate. Then came the threats: one afternoon a few officers caught up with Charles' cousin and said he was going to be arrested. When he fled, they shot at him.

Fearing for their lives, Charles' cousin and brother finally did what many Haitians are doing these days when they find themselves abused, tortured or terrorized by the police. They paid a visit to the offices of an organization called the Human Rights Fund. The group offers a number of services, including a special protection program for people who have been savaged by police officers whom the U.S. recruited, trained and turned loose on the streets of Haiti in July 1995. This, needless to say, does not come cheap. But fortunately there is a ready source of cash. That's because, like the officers who commit these crimes, the program to shelter their victims is funded by American tax dollars.

Up until now this program remained a closely held secret within the community of American and U.N. officials who administer Haiti's billion-dollar reconstruction effort. But what has not been a secret is the fact that a disturbing number of Haiti's U.S.-trained cops are thugs. Last month a Human Rights Watch/Americas report offered a shocking account of indiscipline and incompetence among the 5,000-strong force. The report cited dozens of cases of beatings, torture and murder. It also highlighted the inadequate training the officers received, and drew attention to the failure of the Haitian government to prosecute rogue cops. "It's sad," a U.S. official told TIME. "Here's a force that we invested $65 million in, and from the same account, we're now using money to protect people from it."

This is certainly not what the Clinton Administration had in mind in September 1994 when the U.S. military invaded Haiti to reinstate the country's first freely elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Shortly after Aristide's return, the U.S. created the first civilian police force in Haitian history. It was to be the cornerstone of Haiti's new democracy. With trustworthy police, U.S. officials predicted, Haiti could finally begin to deconstruct its dictatorship, reconstruct its economy and build from scratch all the judicial, political and civil institutions necessary for a working democracy.

Unfortunately, the timetable for this very impressive goal was rather tight. At the time, there was immense pressure in the U.S. to pull out the 21,000 American soldiers as swiftly as possible. When it was decided that most of those troops would leave by March 1995, the schedule for assembling the police force had to be compressed accordingly. So after only four months of training (rather than the 12 months that experts had recommended), 5,000 ill-equipped rookie cadets were deployed. Looking back, a U.S. official sums up that approach as follows: "We were stupid."

It didn't take long for trouble to surface among a number of the new officers. Their behavior ranged from the sadistic (beating a prisoner to death and dumping his body in a latrine) to the idiotic (blindly firing after a car and killing a seven-year-old girl). Last month's report cited what it called an "alarming" increase in unwarranted beatings of detainees during arrest and lockup. The report also indicated that the police have slain at least 46 people in the past two years, and that almost none of those killings could be remotely construed as a legitimate use of deadly force. In one notorious example, on Nov. 5, 1996, police shot and killed five men on a busy downtown street. One of the victims was in handcuffs.

It was in the spring of 1996, say U.S. officials, that "we began receiving a lot of reports of killings and torture." At this point, they started casting about for a way to protect the people who had witnessed these crimes. The solution was the Human Rights Fund. With the help of a $500,000 appropriation, the group has paid for the funerals of 11 people killed by the police in the past seven months and for the medical care of another 60 who were beaten or wounded. The fund also has enabled witnesses to disappear quietly by providing them with safe houses, legal aid and a stipend for living.

Sometimes, however, this protection is not enough. Shortly after one of Jean Bernard Charles' relatives moved into a safe house that the Human Rights Fund had rented for him, four men forced him into a white Nissan pickup truck (the same type of vehicle driven by the Haitian National Police). They took him to Habitation Leclerc--a remote field where the former military used to torture people. There the men broke both his knees and razored his back. When officials of the Human Rights Fund arrived at work on Monday morning, the man was slumped on the front steps. One ear was hanging from the side of his face. He is in hiding again.

U.S. officials admit that the police have had serious problems, but they insist the Haitian government is taking corrective steps. Inspector General Luc Eucher Joseph, whose office was recently set up to investigate the abuses, argues that there is no official policy of repression on the force. The problem, he says, is rogue cops, and his job is to weed them out. Some 400 have already been cited, and 13 are in jail awaiting trial on murder charges. "If you look at the overall situation," says U.S. spokeswoman Mary Ellen Gilroy, "they have made progress."

Perhaps. But Dieuseul Civil might take issue with that statement. Early last month, he took part in a demonstration in which 150 people, many carrying candles, marched in front of the National Palace to protest Haiti's economic problems. It was more of a vigil than a demonstration, but despite the peaceful nature of the gathering, a Haitian police officer fired a "Flashbang" grenade at the protesters. When the canister exploded, it blew off Civil's right hand. He went into shock when he saw his fingers lying on the street. Three weeks later, a bandage still covers the stump at the end of his wrist. "I'm trying to learn to write with my left hand now," says Civil. "I'll have a second surgery in a few weeks, and then I'm going to try to get a prosthesis." The Americans told Civil they would like to cover the cost. Angry at the police and their sponsors, he refused the offer.