U.S. is training Haiti police to combat gangs
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Kidnappings are rampant, averaging one every six hours last year, while killings are up, with 2,200 homicides in 2022, a dramatic increase over the previous year.
The size of Haiti’s national police force is less than half of what it needs to be. Corruption and collusion with gangs are serious problems. Morale is low and so is the pay. Last year, during a training exercise, officers didn’t even have bullets for target practice. And rampaging gangs made last month the deadliest for Haitian cops in recent memory, killing 14 officers.
Todd Robinson, the Biden administration official in charge of helping Haiti equip and bolster its police force, is under no illusions about the challenges he faces in helping a country root out kidnapping gangs that control at least 60% of its capital.
“We recognize that they are in a really challenging environment,” Robinson, 59, said about the Haiti National Police after seeing some of the chaos for himself during a visit to the country last month in the middle of police rioting to protest the death of six officers.
A former journalist before he became a career diplomat in the State Department, Robinson has a reputation for taking on tough assignments and delivering tough messages, especially on the topics of democracy and human rights in the region.
As ambassador to Guatemala in 2014-17, he faced expulsion threats more than once for speaking out. As chargé d’affaires in the U.S. embassy in Venezuela, a year later, he was booted out of the country by leader Nicolás Maduro after the Trump administration called his presidential victory “a sham.”
Other diplomatic posts have included the neighboring Dominican Republic, Bolivia, El Salvador and Colombia. Before becoming assistant secretary of state in charge of the Bureau of Narcotics and International Law Enforcement Affairs in September 2021, Robinson once served as its deputy assistant secretary.
His resume also includes stints as director of the International Student Management Office at the National Defense University and in the Bureau of the Western Hemisphere in Washington as a senior adviser for Central America.
Haiti, however, may prove to be one of his toughest assignments yet.
The day before Robinson landed in Portau-Prince, six police officers were killed in a gang ambush during three successive attacks on a station in Liancourt, a rural municipality in the Artibonite Valley. A seventh officer later died, bringing the total of number of slain cops for January to 14 — and at least 78 since July 2021, when the Biden administration began spending in earnest to bolster Haiti’s National Police following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
Since then, the U.S. has spent $92 million, said a State Department spokesperson. The amount has gone for training as well as new armored vehicles and equipment like ballistic vests and helmets.
“We have some vehicles coming. We are working to get more armored vehicles delivered over the next few weeks. All of this should be assigned to those that want to fight against violence and chaos in Haiti,” Robinson told the Miami Herald after inspecting some of the equipment being delivered.