Honduran police step up operations to stop criminal gangs

A month into a “hard-line” policy aimed at combating rampant drug and gang crime, Honduran police say they have seized hundreds of weapons and arrested suspected gang members.

Under this policy, Honduran President Xiomara Castro has used emergency powers to send security forces into crime-ridden neighborhoods.

It also plans to incarcerate more than 20,000 inmates in a new mega-prison.

The strategy is a more moderate version of the tactics of its neighbor, El Salvador. There, President Nayib Bukele has also suspended constitutional rights, launched mass trials and jailed about 2% of the adult population and thousands of minors.

There is widespread skepticism in Honduras about whether the government will be able to emulate the results of El Salvador, where crime rates have plummeted and life has been transformed.

“Unfortunately, this has been extended in order to obtain results,” said lawyer and security analyst Saul Bueso. “What results did the police really expect and what results do the citizens expect?” he added.

“They say that massacres have decreased, that assaults have decreased, but when we read the press we realize that massacres and murders continue to occur in the country,” he stressed.

Residents who have seen previous governments fail with heavy-handed tactics remain unconvinced.

“Heavy handed, right? Because I don’t think so,” said resident Norma Ochoa in the capital, Tegucigalpa, where patrols routinely pass by.

“In terms of murders, death, crime, decadence, so many things that we are suffering and, today, God is the only one who sustains us,” he said.

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