Personnel assigned to several lakeside-based district attorney agencies (Ministerio Público or MP) will stay in their jobs after successfully passing the state’s control and confidence screening process.
Rogelio Reyes, MP supervisor for Chapala, Jocotepec and Tizapán, told the Reporter that he and all other officials in his jurisdiction sailed through a battery of exams qualifying them as healthy, reliable and trustworthy officials. Each individual has also been awarded a one-time 5,000-peso pay bonus from the federal government for making the grade, he said.
Last August, Jalisco’s State Evaluation Center revealed that nearly 5,000 members of state and municipal law enforcement agencies, including some MP officials, fell short in some aspect of the testing. The vetting exams cover the evaluations of the subject’s physical and emotional and socio-economic status, as well as toxicology screening for substance abuse and polygraph testing for signs of corruption and dishonesty.
Massive dismissals and voluntary resignations have been piling up since late October when the vetting deadline came to a head. At the end of the month, Jalisco Governor Aristótoles Sandoval announced that 25 municipal police commanders would be obliged to give up their jobs, including Chapala Public Security Director Ramón del Arco Pérez.
So far Chapala’s attrition roll also includes at least 13 line officers. Chapala Mayor Joaquín Huerta has directed interim commander Moisés Torres to initiate the recruitment of new and certified candidates to fill empty posts.
Guadalajara daily Mileno reports that 109 state investigators employed by Jalisco’s Fiscalia General (Attorney General’s Office) were sacked in the course of this week for failing the aptitude exams.
Reyes echoed anecdotes local policemen have told this newspaper regarding the brutal nature of lie detector procedures that involve long hours of interrogation and accusations of treachery in the line of duty. He also confirmed that officials who are vetted have no way of learning why they failed.
Test records go into a national database to prevent unqualified individuals from moving to different localities to pick up new public security jobs.