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<\/p>\nOn the evening of October 9, 2013, 50-year-old elementary school teacher Laura Ram\u00edrez was run over by a car and killed on Avenida Dr. Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Vertiz near downtown Mexico City. The vehicle fled the scene.<\/p>\n
Authorities contacted Ram\u00edrez\u2019s only close family member: her daughter, Veronica, then a 22-year-old student. They asked her to come to the prosecutor\u2019s office to identify her mother\u2019s body and give a statement. Veronica arrived around 10 p.m. that night, accompanied by an uncle and a handful of friends. She had no idea how the process worked \u2014 that, for instance, she was entitled to legal representation and counseling. Through her shock and grief, however, Veronica had the presence of mind to realize that there were security cameras at the intersection where her mother had been killed.<\/p>\n
Mexico City is home to an enormous urban surveillance system, the\u00a0Centro de Comando, Control, C\u00f3mputo, Comunicaciones y Contacto Ciudadano, otherwise known as the C5. Because the hit-and-run had occurred on a major road, the system\u2019s cameras were in place to capture it. \u201cThere were at least four along the path the car took,\u201d she remembers. She immediately mentioned this to the officials. Thanks to the footage, she hoped, the police would at least be able to identify the car, track down the driver, and catch her mother\u2019s killer. An officer responded that, given the gravity of the crime, the footage would automatically be set aside. Veronica pushed: Did she need to do anything to secure the videos? The officer assured her that it was all part of official protocol: The police would request the evidence and add it to the investigation file.<\/p>\n
As Veronica stood outside the office between interviews, a man who identified himself as a legal aide for the prosecutor\u2019s office approached her and asked if they could speak privately. Veronica found the request strange, but her friends encouraged her to go, and she followed the man into a private office. He asked her to repeat her account of the incident, which he took down with a brown marker on sheets of scrap paper. \u201cThere are two things you need to do,\u201d he told her. \u201cYou\u2019re going to need the videos, and you have to take them to the morgue. For both of those things, I\u2019m going to charge you 4,000 pesos [roughly $200].\u201d The demand caught Veronica by surprise. She argued, but he gave her an ultimatum: The recordings, he pointed out, were erased once a week, and they could easily vanish. \u201cEither they\u2019ll get lost, or you\u2019ll give me the money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Initially, Veronica refused to pay the bribe. She didn\u2019t even have enough to bury her mother. But friends who had accompanied her to the station managed to scrape together 2,500 of the 4,000 pesos, which they gave to the aide. The bribe would at least ensure, they hoped, that authorities would secure the C5 footage and solve the hit-and-run.<\/p>\n
But when Veronica returned to the office to follow up on the investigation weeks later, officials claimed that the videos weren\u2019t available, despite their previous promises. Eventually, they informed Veronica that they did have two relevant clips from that night. One showed the headlights of an approaching car, but just before it came into view, the camera turned to face another direction. The other captured the intersection several hours after the accident took place. Neither involved the car that killed Veronica\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n
The officials, Veronica learned, hadn\u2019t filed the necessary paperwork. Instead of requesting the five relevant recordings, they had requested only two. \u201cBecause I didn\u2019t give them the full amount of money, it was like the fee only covered what they got me,\u201d she recalls. And since private citizens can\u2019t solicit C5 videos, she had no other recourse. Two years later,\u00a0with no further progress made, the case was closed. It was classified as \u201cunresolved\u201d and, moreover, as \u201cunresolvable.\u201d Veronica laments that, instead of helping her find her mother\u2019s killer, \u201cthis technology, which is supposed to be an instrument of justice, became a chip for extortion.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Since the 2009 inauguration of the C5 (then known as CAEPCCM or C4i4), Mexico City\u2019s authorities have prided themselves on having one of the most ambitious and sophisticated video surveillance systems in the world. The C5\u00a0encompasses\u00a0more than 15,000 units, with more than 30,000 cameras, 12,700 loudspeakers, and 15,000 panic buttons, spread over 1,485 square kilometers.\u00a0Each unit includes environmental sensors to detect unusual weather, seismic events, gunshots, and explosions. Everything runs on a fiber-optic network, and data is channeled to control rooms and mobile response units linked to 911 call centers and a missing-persons hotline. In addition, there are four command-and-control centers (known as C2), which focus on specific neighborhoods, and mobile units that can be deployed to monitor large public events. On major highways, cameras are equipped with software to automatically detect license plates. The city has spent more than $660 million (about MX$13 billion) in total on the infrastructure and software, and in 2019, another billion pesos (about $50 million) was budgeted to replace and update cameras.<\/p>\n
Mexico City proper has nearly 9 million inhabitants, and when one includes the surrounding metropolitan area \u2014 a region nearly 10 times the size of New York City \u2014 that number reaches 22 million. Within it, one finds densely packed self-built settlements, rural farming communities barely reachable by paved roads, and some of the most desirable real estate in Latin America. Climbing property values, however, are a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico City, formerly known as DF, the Distrito Federal, was notorious for its pollution and high crime rates, which earned it the nickname \u201cEl Defectuoso\u201d \u2014 the Defective.<\/p>\n
As the city\u2019s authorities worked to change the capital\u2019s image, the C5 was supposed to fulfill a world-class promise. In exchange for near-constant surveillance, residents would see their home become cleaner, safer, more data-driven, a destination for both tourists and capital. But that hasn\u2019t happened. Mexico City\u2019s district attorney estimated last year that\u00a094% of crimes in\u00a0her jurisdiction go unreported. Of the fraction of homicides that have been reported, more than\u00a086% remain unresolved. Furthermore, only a tiny number of police investigations involve evidence taken from C5 cameras. According to an ex-C5 official, Rafael Prieto Curiel, only 0.002% of crimes committed in Mexico City are captured on tape.<\/p>\n
A handful of high-profile cases over the years have relied on the C5 system. But it\u2019s far more common, clich\u00e9 even, for police to tell victims that the relevant camera wasn\u2019t working at the moment of the crime, or, as Veronica experienced, that the footage is no longer available. According to an as-yet-unpublished report from the think tanks Data C\u00edvica and R3D, approximately 60% of crimes in the city take place within 200 meters of a C5 camera, but police use C5 footage in less than 1% of investigations. This isn\u2019t the result of technical problems: According to government data, approximately 14,000 of the 15,000 modules are functioning at any given time. Nor is it a matter of storage capacity; most cameras auto-delete every seven days, and official protocol dictates that all videos related to a crime be saved once a report has been filed.<\/p>\n
The C5 is a powerful tool. But like any tool, it\u2019s only as useful as the person who wields it. Just as the C5 can help solve investigations, it can also be leveraged by police and prosecutors\u2019 offices to support existing forms of criminality. In Veronica\u2019s case, C5 footage became collateral for extortion. In other instances, police have been known to leak confidential photos and videos to the crime press, the\u00a0nota roja. \u201cIf the videos benefit the police or the prosecution, they\u2019re leaked to the media,\u201d says Alejandro Jim\u00e9nez, a criminal defense lawyer who has come up against the system\u2019s limitations in court. \u201cIf the videos make them look bad, the police disappear the footage.\u201d To those allegations, officials tend to repeat the same lines: The cameras weren\u2019t working. The footage was lost. That incident never happened.<\/p>\n
And when police themselves are involved in crimes, impunity is all but guaranteed.<\/p>\n
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Late on a\u00a0Thursday night in February 2017, Carlos \u2014 whose name has been changed because of fear of retaliation \u2014 stumbled out of El Botell\u00f3n, an upscale tapas bar in the trendy Condesa neighborhood. The 26-year-old had been drinking with friends since the afternoon. They had started at a nearby cantina, then migrated to the bar, and by the time Carlos called his Uber, the day had taken its toll on him. While waiting for his ride on Tamaulipas, an avenue home to a smattering of trendy bars, cafes, and restaurants, Carlos tripped and fell onto the sidewalk. As he pulled himself up, two police officers approached and began to berate him. \u201cThey told me I was way too drunk, that it was public indecency,\u201d he recalls. The officers grabbed him, one from behind, and attempted to wrestle him into a police car. He felt a blow to the face. After that, he remembers nothing.<\/p>\n
It was still dark when Carlos woke up and found himself sprawled on the asphalt of a residential street. His legs ached, his face felt tender, and his leather jacket was matted with blood. As he gathered himself, Carlos registered his surroundings: He was in the upper-middle-class N\u00e1poles neighborhood \u2014 several kilometers south of the bar where he had been drinking. Between the bar and the spot where he had awoken, if they\u2019d taken the most direct route, Carlos and the police would have passed a few dozen C5 cameras at least. On his way to work, still visibly injured, Carlos ran into two coworkers who, shocked by his appearance, called for emergency help.\u00a0A police escort took him to the city\u2019s law enforcement headquarters, the Secretaria de Seguridad Ciudadana building on Avenida Insurgentes.<\/p>\n
At police headquarters, Internal Affairs officials took down his account. After his report was filed, Carlos continued chatting with one of the officials, who offered to show him footage from the previous night. The man pulled up videos of the police car in question and opened a GPS tracker that showed part of the car\u2019s route. \u201cYeah, it was more or less over here,\u201d the official pointed out. There seemed to be an easy solution to the incident: They just had to identify the officers on duty. Thanks to the C5, all the evidence was there.<\/p>\n
But the official seemed to want to leave the investigation at that. \u201cHe made it clear that he was scared,\u201d Carlos says. Carlos also knew that his attackers could easily come after him again if he was too insistent or tried to file another report. Frustrated, he asked why the officers thought they could get away with this kind of criminal behavior, especially knowing they would be caught on tape.\u00a0The official avoided the question. \u201cPolice like that are out there,\u201d he told Carlos with a shrug. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any control over them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A culture of police impunity is a big reason why Mexico ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world; it is currently listed\u00a0130th out of 180\u00a0on the Global Corruption Perception Index.\u00a0Corruption pervades nearly all sectors of the country\u2019s society. Officials routinely demand bribes to get children a place in their parents\u2019 school of choice, to secure a company a major government contract, or to get a citizen out of a traffic ticket. A fifth of Mexico City\u2019s\u00a0residents report having been victims of this graft\u00a0\u2014 the highest percentage in the country. When it comes to police, however, the problem is particularly egregious. In 2017, Mexico had more cases of police corruption than actual police:\u00a0There were 1.6 cases reported\u00a0for every officer. Even within departments, lower-level officials are\u00a0regularly extorted and forced to pay\u00a0illegal dues to their superiors. In certain regions, entire police forces are known to work hand in hand with organized crime. According to the national institute of statistics,\u00a0only an estimated 1%\u00a0of all reported corruption cases end in a criminal conviction.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no single cause behind the corruption endemic in Mexico\u2019s police and justice systems. Some security consultants point to low police salaries, which prime officers to accept bribes. The U.S. State Department blames a lack of training and funding for law enforcement and public officials. Others cite failures in accountability. And others still see the police as embedded within a violent state structure dedicated to protecting the elite. Regardless of its roots, corruption has been identified at every level of the country\u2019s police force, justice system, and government. Journalists and human rights activists who speak out against it are regularly murdered.<\/p>\n
At the same time, though, the problem is common knowledge. Activists, foreign diplomats, politicians, and members of the public routinely describe corruption as among the country\u2019s most urgent priorities. As Veronica experienced, justice officials frequently attempt to extort crime victims who want to report them. And as Carlos saw, police are disinclined to pursue lines of investigation that might lead to their colleagues. This raises further questions: If everyone knows the police are corrupt, why would the local government\u00a0spend billions to increase its surveillance capacity? Why would Mexico City\u2019s officials and business leaders, in their quest for a safer capital, propose cameras as the answer? For years, the government has touted the ever-expanding C5 as part of its crime-fighting strategy. But could the C5 ever really solve the city\u2019s crisis of violence? And do leaders actually expect it to?<\/p>\n
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Over the past\u00a0two decades, Mexico City has undergone a makeover. As many a lifestyle blog has gushed, the central districts of the city are now world-renowned for their artistic, architectural,\u00a0and gastronomic offerings. Within three years of\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0naming it the No. 1 travel destination of 2016, tourism had increased by nearly a third. In turn, rents have shot up dramatically, and\u00a0evictions in the central districts have spiked. Long-term tenants of old buildings have been forced out to give way to Airbnbs, which\u00a0often charge per night what a native\u00a0chilango, as the city\u2019s residents are called, would pay for a week or even a month. To draw that kind of money, the capital had to shed the reputation of crime and insecurity that dogged it for decades.<\/p>\n
As Mexico City underwent an economic and cosmetic transformation, so too did its security strategy. David Ram\u00edrez, an analyst at the think tank Mexico Eval\u00faa, describes the transition to Mexico\u2019s present-day approach to law enforcement as starting in the late 1990s, when officials adopted a community policing model. The idea was to divide the city into sectors and assign dedicated police officers to each, so as to facilitate relationships among police, business owners, and residents. When now-President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador took over as mayor in the early 2000s, he pushed these initiatives even further. In consultation with\u00a0former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose tenure was characterized by aggressive policing of low-level crime, L\u00f3pez Obrador embarked on a program to revitalize the downtown Centro Hist\u00f3rico.<\/p>\n
The Centro Hist\u00f3rico is home to such iconic landmarks as the Torre Latinoamericana, the first skyscraper in Latin America; Palacio de Bellas Artes, an art nouveau opera house and storied music venue; the National Palace; the Metropolitan Cathedral; the main square, known as the Z\u00f3calo; and the imposing pre-Hispanic Templo Mayor. The area was notorious in the early aughts for being unsafe, but the plan was to turn it into a tourist mecca. \u201cOne of the commitments [L\u00f3pez Obrador] made to business owners was better security,\u201d Ram\u00edrez says. \u201cThey started to install cameras, panic and alarm buttons.\u201d Among Giuliani\u2019s recommendations was to adopt a version of \u201cbroken windows\u201d\u2013style policing, which emphasizes zero tolerance for crimes like graffiti and outdoor urination. At the same time, Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, one of the wealthiest people in the world and the CEO of the telecommunications company Telmex, invested heavily in the Centro Hist\u00f3rico. He helped fund the\u00a0contract with Giuliani\u2019s consulting firm, purchased a swath of old buildings in the area, and created the Centro Hist\u00f3rico Foundation, which poured money into restoration efforts.<\/p>\n
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In 2006, L\u00f3pez Obrador was replaced by Marcelo Ebrard, now the country\u2019s foreign minister, who continued his predecessor\u2019s mission. A west-to-east stroll through the Centro Hist\u00f3rico is\u00a0a virtual walking tour of his accomplishments.\u00a0Ebrard refurbished the gold-domed Monumento de la Revoluci\u00f3n and its surrounding plaza, where teenagers now gather to make out and buy corn on the cob from street vendors on weekends. He repaved and illuminated Ju\u00e1rez, the boulevard that stretches into the heart of the city center. Along its northern edge, Ebrard also renovated the sprawling Alameda Central, largely ridding the now immaculately manicured park of street vendors. At the end of the Alameda is the Bellas Artes opera house, across from which stands the Telmex tower, the icon of Slim\u2019s empire. Over it all, looms the Torre Latinoamericana. Of its 44 floors, Slim owns eight.<\/p>\n
The mogul played a major role in the neighborhood\u2019s transformation. In 2009, three years into Ebrard\u2019s six-year term, the city\u00a0unveiled the \u201cCiudad Segura\u201d program,\u00a0which created the infrastructure for C5. Telmex, along with the French telecommunications company Thales, won the contract to install 8,000 cameras at a price of nearly $400 million \u2014 more than MX$5 billion. That program began in the Centro Hist\u00f3rico, where nearly every block features some symbol of Slim\u2019s empire. Just past the Torre Latinoamericana is the Casa de los Azulejos, a blue-tiled 18th-century palace Slim acquired and converted into a franchise of Sanborns, his department store and diner. Down on the pedestrian street of Madero, his Museo del Estanquillo holds a spot among Mexican and international chains and colonial-era churches. On a typical weekend afternoon, the street is packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists visiting the city and families on outings.<\/p>\n
The C5 complemented the broken-windows strategy. The cameras have been especially useful in helping authorities identify what they call \u201cadministrative faults\u201d: smaller offenses, such as graffiti, littering, and public drinking. Data on crime in Mexico City is sparse, but Leonel Hern\u00e1ndez, from the think tank Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano, notes that the Centro saw a decrease in certain low-level crimes after the C5 was installed \u2014 mugging rates, for instance, improved in the previously ill-lit Alameda. The number of foreigners arriving at the Mexico City airport went from just\u00a0under two million in 2009 to almost five million\u00a0in 2019. (The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on Mexico\u2019s tourism industry, however \u2014\u00a0in June 2020, officials reported\u00a0an estimated 75% decrease\u00a0in visitors nationwide.)<\/p>\n
But the rise in tourism \u2014 and surveillance \u2014 has not corresponded with a reduction in all crime. In fact, since the implementation of the C5 system in 2011, violent crime in Mexico City, as in the rest of the country, has actually risen. (In Mexico, violent, or \u201chigh-impact,\u201d crime includes homicide, femicide, kidnapping, trafficking, mugging, robbery, extortion, rape, and drug distribution.) What\u2019s different in the capital is the nature of crime. Mexico City rarely sees the kinds of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and grisly mass murders that have become common elsewhere in the country since the beginning of the drug war in 2006. Those acts are usually seen as warnings to the government or to rival gangs. In Mexico City, such graphic incidents don\u2019t take place on a massive scale. When there is an exception, an act of lurid violence, the victims are typically poor people whose deaths are easily overlooked.<\/p>\n
As tourism entrepreneur Roc\u00edo Vazquez notes, the particular dynamics of crime and punishment in Mexico City \u2014\u00a0namely, the crackdown on small, broken windows\u2013style offenses \u2014 have enabled travel companies to sell it as a safe destination for visitors. Vazquez, who owns a food tour company in the capital, takes issue with that line, but she concedes that it does contain some truth: \u201cI think the city is getting more dangerous, but the tourist experience has gotten safer.\u201d Aside from the occasional pickpocketing on the subway, visitors remain in a relatively secure bubble. She attributes this partly to initiatives focused on protecting them: concentrating emergency-response capacity in tourist zones, for example, and\u00a0the recently implemented \u201ctourism police.\u201d\u00a0Vazquez is critical of this approach. \u201cOf course, tourists should be safe, but never above the people who live here,\u201d she says. As the C5 cameras monitor the streets, they determine, little by little, whom the city really serves.<\/p>\n
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To Juan Manuel\u00a0Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n, the system is simply a tool with enormous potential to improve governance in North America\u2019s largest city. An engineer by training, Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n is a wiry man in his late 40s\u00a0who has served as head of the C5 since 2018. I met him on a humid September afternoon at the C5 headquarters,\u00a0a complex in the eastern part of the city, with thick gray walls that enclose nearly an entire block. Inaugurated by Ebrard in 2011, the grounds are manicured and pleasant, a crisp, sprawling lawn set off by sleek architecture. As I entered the main building, a camera angled at the door took my temperature and registered whether I was wearing a face mask. (During the pandemic, the C5 system has been used to\u00a0monitor the prevalence of mask usage\u00a0throughout the city.)<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n greeted me in a brightly lit conference room with a large convex window. The ground-floor command center stretched below us, 14 desks wide and a dozen deep. Each workstation was manned by a police officer attending to three or four screens of varying sizes. A massive display depicting a map of Mexico and more than 20 thumbnail camera streams from throughout the city stretched across the far wall, evoking a NASA control center. It was nearly rush hour, and live feeds of all the major highways ran alongside those of smaller roads, street corners, and metro stations. Since it\u2019s impossible to watch all cameras at every moment, officers are instructed to be mindful of behavior patterns. As people tend to withdraw cash in the mornings, for instance, that\u2019s when C5 workers pay extra attention to cameras trained on ATMs.<\/p>\n
Monitoring events as they unfold is an art unto itself. Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n described the skills of dispatchers who could home in on suspicious characters and track them from one camera feed to the next. He chuckled as he noted that some employees had gotten particularly adept at identifying potential muggers. Of course, even if a dispatcher successfully predicts a mugging, they can\u2019t stop it in real time. What they can do, though, is guarantee a quick police response. Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n proudly told me that almost 70% of crimes captured on the surveillance cameras result in an arrest, compared to 15% of all crimes reported through the traditional system.<\/p>\n
In addition to monitoring video streams, dispatchers also manage input from six other sources, including 911 calls, panic buttons, police on the ground, and the city-run mobile app and social media accounts. (A glance at the latter reveals reports of fallen lampposts, blocked driveways, punctured water mains, and complaints about public urination.) To Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n, the most important part of a command center like his is not the technical apparatus but the protocols that dictate how people use it. \u201cWhenever one thinks of command centers, the first thing that comes to mind are the cameras,\u201d he says. \u201cBut what a center really needs is for a response to an incident to be holistic and unified.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a perfectly working system, the call-taker makes no decisions and spends no more than a minute and a half gathering information: the person\u2019s name, the incident, and the location. They then select from a menu of more than 300 preprogrammed options, following automated prompts, before alerting dispatchers to whatever is happening. The day I visited Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n, he\u2019d recently met with the city\u2019s disaster-response services to update the rain protocol. \u201cFor that, we have 20 subclassifications: \u2018tree fall,\u2019 \u2018cable fall,\u2019 \u2018flood,\u2019 etc.,\u201d he says. \u201cIf a car accident happens in \u00c1lvaro Obreg\u00f3n, and the subcategory is \u2018crash with injuries,\u2019 the Red Cross dispatcher is informed and so are the C5 and C2 police dispatchers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n sees the C5 as a vast information-gathering tool capable of coordinating data of any kind. Dispatchers can look for traffic jams and accidents, then direct response vehicles accordingly. During the rainy season, they can track areas prone to flooding and dispatch emergency services. Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n grows excited as he explains the system\u2019s possibilities. He has an engineer\u2019s gusto for the finer points of technological innovation and will rattle off ideas in encyclopedic detail. His vision of civic improvement via technological innovation is also backed by powerful allies:\u00a0Since taking office in December 2018, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has thrown her support behind the city\u2019s commitment to tech-informed decision-making. Four years remain in her tenure, and Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n is optimistic about what the C5 can accomplish in that time. \u201cWe want to transition from a public-security command center to a true hub of operations,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
When it comes to the system\u2019s ability to deal with crime, Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n notes that the process is riddled with obstacles, and recording incidents is only the beginning. Even if the cameras work perfectly, there are many ways in which a potential case can go wrong. Murders or assaults might be filmed but never formally reported. Or they might be reported but never investigated. Investigated, but never resolved. Although dispatchers can ask to file police reports, Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n acknowledges that it will be a long time before crimes caught on video are guaranteed to make it into investigation files. Yet for the C5 to function as intended, data can\u2019t fall through the cracks.<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n admits that the cameras create a perception of safety that surpasses their true impact \u2014 a misconception that is reflected in public-opinion polling. \u201cWhenever there is a participatory budget vote,\u201d he says, \u201cthere are two projects that always win by default: [security] cameras and outdoor gyms.\u201d At the very least, city residents seem to feel as if the C5\u2019s omnipresent gaze keeps them safer.<\/p>\n
The rub is that there\u2019s no evidence to support the idea that the mere presence of cameras prevents crime. What it typically does, says Steve Trush, a security consultant who specializes in surveillance and human rights, is, rather, criminalize certain kinds of behaviors over others and disproportionately target the poor. \u201cYou might see a decrease in larceny,\u201d Trush says, \u201cbut it has no impact on white collar crime.\u201d At the C5 headquarters, Garc\u00eda Orteg\u00f3n readily admits that the cameras don\u2019t even deter most street crime. Dispatchers have seen drug deals, murders, and ransom payments happen directly beneath them.<\/p>\n
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Last June, armed\u00a0gunmen\u00a0opened fire on Mexico City\u2019s police chief,\u00a0as he drove through the upscale neighborhood\u00a0of Lomas de Chapultepec. The man survived, but the assault, which was attributed to the C\u00e1rtel Jalisco Nueva Generaci\u00f3n, resulted in the death of two bodyguards and a young woman caught in the crossfire on her way to work. A full-scale search was launched in the aftermath, and police used C5 footage to locate and apprehend 19 men believed to be responsible.<\/p>\n
Five years earlier, an even grislier multiple homicide in a quiet, upper-middle-class Mexico City neighborhood\u00a0sent a wave of fear through the capital. On July 31, 2015, five people were killed execution-style in an apartment in Narvarte. Two of them, Rub\u00e9n Espinosa Becerril,\u00a0a photojournalist, and Nadia Vera, a human rights activist, had come to the city to escape death threats in the state of Veracruz. In the days after the massacre, police gave information to the press that laid out a thorough and stigmatizing narrative. It suggested that the homicides were the result of a robbery gone awry, that Espinosa had been visiting the women in a brothel, and that drugs were involved. To support this narrative, police leaked C2 surveillance footage of three people leaving the apartment. Within weeks, authorities had arrested three suspects, whom they claimed matched the men in the video.<\/p>\n
Those familiar with the situation, however,\u00a0saw that as a smoke screen\u00a0to deflect attention from what was really going on. Both Vera and Espinosa had recently fled Veracruz out of fear of governor Javier Duarte, whose tenure was marked by violent repression and corruption scandals. Even as they left the state, they knew the government was watching them. And in the weeks before their murders, both Vera and Espinosa made statements preemptively blaming Duarte for anything that might happen to them. Despite all that, the investigation did not take possible political motivations into account. Authorities cited the surveillance footage as evidence of a robbery gone awry, and they prosecuted the case along those lines.<\/p>\n
Together, these incidents capture how Mexico\u2019s justice system treats violent crime. When the victims belong to the political elite, the system responds quickly and aggressively to catch the perpetrators. When those same elites are linked to the violence, the system either turns a blind eye or focuses on what authorities would prefer it to see. The inconvenient realities \u2014\u00a0that a politician might be enjoying support from a cartel, or that a law enforcement unit is entangled with organized crime \u2014\u00a0go unexamined. Low-level offenders are punished, and the people who order the violence are conveniently forgotten. More than five years later, while suspects in the Narvarte case have been arrested and charged, the people who may have paid them have not been prosecuted.<\/p>\n
Top officials almost never face charges in Mexico. They are untouchable \u2014 as was demonstrated, for example, by\u00a0the high-profile case of former Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who was arrested in Los Angeles last October for allegedly accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. Mexico asked for Cienfuegos\u2019 extradition, and the U.S. assented. Upon his return to Mexico, the official was promptly released, and Mexican authorities later exonerated him without pressing charges. Some criminal justice experts see instances like this as a sign of the system\u2019s fundamental brokenness. Others have a different view. \u201cThe system is completely functional,\u201d says Leopoldo Maldonado, a human rights lawyer and the Mexico and Central America director of the press freedom organization Art\u00edculo 19, commenting on the Narvarte case. \u201cIt\u2019s doing what it always does, which is guarantee the impunity of elites.\u201d<\/p>\n
As with police corruption, this modus operandi is an open secret. But international opinion does play a role in shaping the state\u2019s thinking about security: Neither the government nor the elites nor the population at large can risk scaring away tourists and international investors. The capital needs foreign visitors to feel comfortable taking Ubers, for a world-famous restaurateur to choose one of its trendy neighborhoods for her next destination eatery. And on a policy level, Mexico isn\u2019t alone in its blinkered approach to justice: The U.S., one of the country\u2019s main political and economic partners, often responds to the gravest cases of corruption and violence with a blind eye \u2014 or, worse, with complicity. The U.S. has directly funded\u00a0security forces notorious for human rights violations, and there is evidence that it has knowingly collaborated with high-ranking officials involved in corruption networks. Mexico and its allies alike walk a careful line: Don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell; maintain a fa\u00e7ade of security, democracy, and respect for human rights; keep violence and corruption just at bay.<\/p>\n
All security strategy comes down to one question: which crimes should be tolerated, and which should be punished? In other words, whose lives are worth protecting, and whose can be risked? Within the cartels, leaders decide who can be arrested or killed without upsetting the balance of power. The death of a mid-level boss, for instance, matters more than that of a street dealer or a poppy farmer. In Mexico, the justice system also runs on this logic. It\u2019s smarter to prosecute a neighborhood drug dealer than the capos or politicians who supply them. It\u2019s easier to track down paid assassins than the person who hired them. It\u2019s quicker to arrest the muscle than the mastermind. Security cameras alone can\u2019t upset that calculus.<\/p>\n
While the C5 documents existing patterns of violence, the system\u2019s failure captures a more sweeping problem with criminality and justice in Mexico. Corruption and impunity take place far beyond the purview of street-level surveillance, sometimes among those who ostensibly work against it. \u201cAs Mexicans, we grow up with this idea that the police are corrupt,\u201d Veronica said. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t report a crime because it\u2019s really tiring; you shouldn\u2019t report it because nothing happens. I was really conscious that, at the end of the day, our system is useless.\u201d This feeling is widespread. In Mexico, locals refer to \u201cthe simulation\u201d \u2014 the notion that the justice system is an elaborate charade meant to maintain the illusion of a functioning democracy. Officials pantomime carrying out investigations, pose bureaucratic obstacles to stall criminal inquiries, conveniently misplace documents, open files and close them with excuses about inconclusive evidence. Sometimes this is due to simple negligence; in other instances, it\u2019s driven by more sinister motives. Often, it\u2019s hard to tell the difference. Whatever the reason, it\u2019s accepted that the system usually ends up protecting the same people \u2014 those whose real estate investments may be threatened by front-page massacres, whose tourism empires require the elimination of street vendors, whose political careers rely on squashing evidence of corruption.<\/p>\n
Few in Mexico City would benefit from constant, random violence against the general population. But criminal justice experts agree that, without a commitment to addressing the factors that produce that violence \u2014 the entrenched and rotten power structures, the criminal networks, the extreme inequality \u2014 the cameras alone can\u2019t disrupt anything. Under the current system, the same people tend to be caught in the middle. The disposable criminals and disposable victims are almost always poor, often young and indigenous, at times political dissidents, invariably far from the powerful who decide their fate. Those who intervene usually find themselves subject to the same violence. The C5 is but another stage on which to playact justice. While the system works for those who built it, as things are, there is little incentive to solve a hit-and-run, a kidnapping by police, or a civilian massacre \u2014 even with 30,000 cameras\u00a0watching.<\/p>\n