Crime in Puerto Rico - Police Corruption

Police Corruption

In 2008, four police officers in Puerto Rico were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), including a Lieutenant with 33 years on the force, for extortion and distribution of cocaine and heroin. In 2007, 9 police officers and their lieutenant were arrested for planting drug evidence, including cocaine, heroin, and crack, on people living in the city's low-income housing projects, prompting Puerto Rico's attorney general's office to review previous cases, making sure no innocent people were put in prison. Between 2003 and 2007, 100 officers had been under investigation and 75 others convicted under federal court for police corruption.

In 2001, one of the biggest police corruption busts in U.S. history took place in Puerto Rico, when 28 state police officers in Puerto Rico were arrested for drug-running charges. The yearlong undercover operation was initiated by the FBI, after authorities got a tip about the police possibly being involved in drug dealing, and protecting cocaine dealers and shipments and movement throughout the island. Between 1993 and 2000, 1,000 police officers in Puerto Rico lost their jobs from the department due to criminal charges. Police corruption in Puerto Rico stems from the fact that police officers make small wages and are so close to the cocaine trafficking.

Operation Guard Shack was a two-year FBI investigation into law enforcement corruption in Puerto Rico. The operation came to a conclusion on 6 October 2010 with a series of pre-dawn raids that led to over 130 arrests of members of the Puerto Rico Police Department, various municipal departments, and the Puerto Rico Corrections Department. The operation began at 3 a.m., when 65 tactical teams, including FBI SWAT and the Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), fanned out across the island in a series of sneak attack arrests. On hand were a range of Bureau personnel—crisis negotiators, evidence response team members, canines and their handlers, and 80 medical personnel from first responders and nurses to a trauma surgeon and a veterinarian. The central thread of the corruption was law enforcement officers providing protection and other services to drug traffickers. Over 1,000 agents of the FBI conducted the raids. Many of them were flown in secretly. The agency characterized the action as, "likely the largest police corruption case in the FBI’s history."