Chile's main police force, the Carabineros de Chile, is one of the most respected police forces in Latin America. The proportion of the population that has confidence in the police throughout Latin America averaged 35 per cent between 1996 and 2010, and 33 per cent in 2011.Footnote 1 In contrast, according to polls conducted by Diego Portales University from 2005 to 2011, the proportion of the Chilean public with confidence in the police averaged 56.1 per cent, peaking at 61.8 per cent in 2006. A poll conducted by Chile's Centro de Estudios Públicos (Centre for Public Studies, CEP) found confidence in the Carabineros to be as high as 65 per cent in 2009.Footnote 2 Indeed, since the 1990s, the Chilean public has consistently ranked the Carabineros as one of the most respected institutions in the country, at times above the Catholic Church.Footnote 3 This is striking in a country that has only relatively recently emerged from a long and brutal military authoritarian regime in which the Carabineros played an active role in not only repression but also leadership. Few new democracies have been able to restore such respect for their police forces as quickly as has Chile.
Many scholars, journalists and practitioners note the respect the country's citizens have for their police. In Chile, polls on Chileans' respect for the Carabineros are regularly and widely disseminated through the media. Some scholars follow up on public opinion polls with further measures of this respect or analyses of institutional police reforms that presumably promote respect for the police.Footnote 4 A few studies have raised critical questions about the potential consequences of Chileans' respect for their police, such as how it may limit recognition of persistent police violence.Footnote 5 Yet we know very little about what ‘respect’ means for Chileans and how it emerged so quickly after the Pinochet regime.Footnote 6 More importantly, we know little about how those Chilean actors involved in policy discussions on policing interpret the reasons for citizens' regard for the police.
Public opinion polls are important as they offer insight into what the general public thinks on a particular issue. This in turn helps guide policy-makers and others involved in policy discussions as they attempt to respond to citizens' demands. In order to make sense of the poll results, police experts develop narratives or stories that then contribute to shaping their policy positions, decisions and practices.Footnote 7 As many studies have shown, the narratives that are told, regardless of whether they are factually true or false, are important because those telling them believe them to be true.Footnote 8 The narratives identify the problems (or lack thereof) and the corresponding solutions. They draw attention to some issues and move attention away from others.Footnote 9
Unlike the public in general, police experts may make decisions based on these interpretations that can shape police reform and perceptions of policing. Police may use their discretion or assign resources to support actions or policies that they deem to be the reasons for public support.Footnote 10 For example, they might spend more money on communications or continue repressive protest policing. Political party members and government administrators may shape their policy proposals or their application of policies to respond to their interpretations of the poll results. For example, they might prioritise policies that provide more funds for police to fight crime or they might choose instead to increase police oversight. Journalists may use their interpretations to decide how to cover the police and police reform in their news reports. Editors usually emphasise stories that are thought to be what the public wants to hear in order to capture the largest possible audience. For example, journalists and editors might support police in their use of repression or, alternatively, hold them to account. During the 2006 student protest in Chile, editors and journalists detected a shift in public opinion on police repression of the protest and in response altered their coverage from supporting police action to holding the police to account.Footnote 11 Social movements and those involved in police reform may choose to focus on some reforms over others or approach reforms in a particular manner based on similar interpretations. For example, social movement organisations might prioritise work on police reforms that facilitate crime control or instead choose to advocate for reforms that increase police accountability. In this way, the stories that police experts tell about why Chileans respect the police can shape policy choices on policing.
For this reason, it is important to identify the explanatory frames used in narratives by those who are engaged in policing issues. I argue that the dominant narratives among Chilean police experts include the notion that the Carabineros may be less corrupt and more disciplined than other police forces in Latin America, but also that respect for them stems from the politics of fear and from the success of their communications strategies. Interestingly, the idea that Chileans' positive regard for the Carabineros stems from democratic police reform is not a dominant narrative. I reach this conclusion through a critical analysis of the discursive frames used by police experts to explain the Chilean people's respect for their main police force.
Respect for the Police and Democratic Governance
Respect for the police is important to democratic governance and consequently is often noted in studies of police reform in new or restored democracies.Footnote 12 If a police force is to function well in a democracy, it needs citizens to feel confident that they can safely report crimes, provide evidence and act as witnesses. However, little research has been done on how to establish or re-establish this level of respect.
The term ‘respect’ is often used interchangeably with ‘trust’, ‘legitimacy’ and ‘confidence’. Theoretically the definitions of these terms are a matter of debate, particularly as to whether confidence, trust and legitimacy stem from experience or are constructed beliefs. Many scholars assume trust emerges from people's experience with the police and thus from democratic police reform. David Bayley posits that a simple test to determine if police are democratic would be to ask: ‘do parents teach their children that when the children are away from home and need help, they should seek out the police?’Footnote 13 Similarly, Justice Tankebe found in a study of Ghana that public confidence in the police increased with satisfaction in the police's efforts to control police corruption.Footnote 14
In addition to public experience with the police and the justice system, however, Tankebe also found confidence in the police to include the perception of the police's trustworthiness.Footnote 15 Trust, like legitimacy, is argued by many scholars to stem from public perception and beliefs, and thus can be constructed.Footnote 16 Weighing experience and perception in his study of Ghana, Tankebe concludes that public perception of the police may in fact be more important than personal experience in explaining confidence in the institution.Footnote 17
In Chile, polls both reflect and contribute to the public perception that the police are well respected.Footnote 18 Many Chileans quote polls referring to the esteem that citizens have for their police as sufficient evidence that the Carabineros have successfully integrated into democracy. Of course, this line of reasoning is circular: citizens respect the successfully democratised police, and the successful democratisation of the police can be measured in part through citizens' respect for them. There are other possible explanations for Chileans' respect for the police; it may be that the general public's confidence in democracy per se is reflected in their confidence in the police, for example. Yet the proportion of the population that supported democracy in Chile in 2011 was 61 per cent, only slightly above the average for the region (58 per cent), so this does not explain the significantly higher support for the police in Chile than in the rest of Latin America.Footnote 19 Another explanation is that confidence in the police reflects the public's support for ‘iron fist’ police approaches to crime and disorder that may or may not be compatible with democracy. Yet, while support for aggressive policing is common throughout Latin America, confidence in the police remains low.Footnote 20 Finally, it is also possible, as the police expert narratives analysed in this article suggest, that public confidence in the police reflects a reform of the police's image more than a reform of their practices.
During the Pinochet regime the Carabineros became highly militarised and gained considerable autonomy. They were trained to prioritise the protection of the government and public order over the rights of citizens, and were responsible for many human rights abuses discussed later in this article. However, since the end of the Pinochet regime, the Chilean political elite has largely delegated the question of police reform to the Carabineros themselves. Although many Chileans attribute citizens' good opinion of the police to the institution's success in this regard, the Carabineros have actually initiated few substantial reforms since the return of electoral democracy in 1990. The most important reform led by the police force is the Plan Cuadrante (neighbourhood or block plan) implemented in 1999 as a form of community policing. Discursively, the plan emphasised community participation, but in practice it mainly focuses on increasing the number of police on the street.Footnote 21 Among other issues, there is no evidence that this plan made any difference to police accountability.Footnote 22
More significant law and order reforms, such as a criminal procedure reform concluded in 2005, were initiated by the government and were not targeted directly at reforming the police. Among other changes, the legal reform reduced the length of time during which Carabineros can detain someone without charges, thus reducing opportunities for torture. The reform also increased judicial oversight of the police and created a National Prosecutors' Office, which now acts as an additional check on police conduct. In addition, in 2009, a freedom of information law came into effect that had the potential side effect of increasing the transparency of the Carabineros, particularly on financial matters. In 2011, the police were transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of the Interior, a step toward demilitarisation. Finally, in 2012, the national audit office (Contraloría General de la República) authorised public officers of the National Human Rights Institute to enter police buses that were being used to detain people during demonstrations, in order to guarantee detainees' rights. However, there have been no formal evaluations of the impact of these reforms on policing. Their relative success remains anecdotal and the impressions of police experts vary widely.
Certainly, police violence and unaccountability remain important challenges. At least in the 1990s and early 2000s, torture continued to be used in police stations.Footnote 23 Between 1990 and 2004, 6,083 cases of police violence were brought to military court.Footnote 24 Since 2003 the annual human rights reports of Diego Portales University have raised concerns regarding police abuse, including torture, repression of protests and violence against indigenous people. Police violence was raised as an issue by the Chilean student movement during its protests in 2011 and 2012.Footnote 25 In addition, the Carabineros retain substantial autonomy from civilian governance; most importantly, they remain accountable to military rather than civilian courts.
There are many reasons for the slow pace of police reform in Chile. It may reflect the country's protracted transition to democracy. The military remained an important check on democracy until recently, and the electoral system continues to favour the political Right (many of whom supported the Pinochet regime). In addition, the centre/centre-left coalition governments of the Concertación (1990–2010) were required to compromise within their coalition and negotiate with the strong opposition in order to maintain power.Footnote 26 Yet, this study suggests that it is also possible that the manner in which Chilean police experts are interpreting the poll results on Chileans' respect for the police may also be slowing reforms. Police experts view esteem for the police as stemming more from perception than from experience. The former does not necessarily require police reform and may be constructed to resist police reforms.
Methodology
Many studies of citizen respect for police in Chile are quantitative and rely on public opinion polls,Footnote 27 which are very useful for helping us to understand public opinion broadly and to see differences across class, age and time.Footnote 28 Complementing these polls, this article takes a qualitative approach and focuses on the dominant explanatory frames used by those most engaged in policy debates on policing as to why Chileans evaluate the Carabineros so positively. The article is based on approximately 50 interviews with ‘police experts’.Footnote 29 These are Chileans whose work involves the police in some manner: journalists, members of civil society organisations, academics, government administrators, political party members and the police themselves (Carabineros and the Investigative Police).Footnote 30 Together, these police experts come from, and have daily contact with, people from all economic classes in Chile and have perspectives from across the ideological/political spectrum. While all police experts interviewed are based in Santiago, some, such as those affilated with the Observatorio Ciudadano (Citizen Observatory) and the Corporación Nacional de Desarrollo Indígena (National Indigenous Development Corporation, CONADI), work closely with indigenous peoples outside of the capital – for example, the Mapuche in the south of Chile. Not all police experts interviewed have confidence in the police themselves; rather, some provide their interpretation of the commonly known poll results.
In this article, I use frame analysis to understand the narratives used by police experts to explain Chileans' respect for the Carabineros. Based on the work of Erving Goffman, frame analysis involves identifying repeated vocabulary that helps order and make sense of reality in a simplified and condensed manner. Dominant frames are those that are repeated most often, resonate with their audience as familiar and, in some instances, are simply considered to be ‘reality’. Dominant frames are enduring and this assists leaders with decision-making, especially in times of uncertainty. However, they are not static. Counter-frames can challenge the dominant interpretation of events, situations or realities and potentially become new dominant frames.Footnote 31 In this case, the notion that ‘Chileans respect the police’ is a dominant frame; it is cited often and is understood as real. The reasons given by police experts provide sub-frames that either support the dominant frame or reveal possible counter-frames. The identification of explanatory frames helps us to unpack the narratives that police experts use to interpret the poll results.
This study found that police experts used four explanatory frames to understand why the Chilean police are so well respected. First, police experts held that the Carabineros are respected because ‘they are not corrupt’. Second, police experts suggested that the distinction between respect and fear is not clear: ‘Chileans do not respect the Carabineros, they fear them.’ Third, police experts argued that Chileans respect the police because of an effective communications strategy on the part of the Carabineros. This frame holds that ‘the Carabineros have constructed the public's image of them’. Finally, police experts argued that ‘Chileans respect the police because they fear crime’. Similar to the third frame, this frame views citizens' respect for the police as having been constructed by political elites and the media, who favour a positive view of the police in order to support their fight against crime.
While the dominant frame is that Chileans admire their police, some police experts chose not to address why this should be the case and instead explained why the police do not merit respect (due to incidents of violence) or why their particular community is wary of the police. This response was common among those actors who had the most direct experience with police abuse, such as those from grassroots groups, youth and those who work with indigenous peoples. This is consistent with polls in Chile which find that confidence in the police among youth and the poorer sectors of society is lower than among those who are older and from the higher economic classes. For example, Diego Portales University found that from 2008 to 2010 the percentage of the population with little to no confidence in the police stood at 42–5 per cent among the lower classes and 25–30 per cent among the upper classes.Footnote 32 Equally interesting is that some middle- to upper-class police experts interviewed chose to ignore the polls that disaggregate confidence in the police by class and age, and argued that the working class does in fact respect the police. While a qualitative study of why some sectors do not respect the police would be interesting and useful, this study centres on an analysis of police experts' perceptions of why such respect is so generally and comparatively high in Chile.
The four explanatory frames I identify above were used with relatively similar frequency, and sometimes the same police experts would draw on more than one or even all four explanatory frames. All the frames were used by state, civil society and media actors, no frame was specific to any particular actor, and no other explanatory frames were offered. Although I address each frame separately, they are not mutually exclusive but rather are interconnected in important ways. I draw on the interviews and use supplementary material to analyse the validity and implications of each of the claims.
The Carabineros are not Corrupt
A common and often initial explanation given by Chilean police experts as to why Chileans respect the police is that ‘the Carabineros are not corrupt’. Sometimes this is qualified: ‘They have very low levels of corruption. Yes, of course we could find some cases, but the cases we see on TV are a minority.’Footnote 33 Or, ‘As in other parts of the world there are some who step out of line, but here they are regarded as being uncorrupt, as being an upstanding police.’Footnote 34 Often the low level of corruption in the Carabineros is compared immediately to the rest of Latin America: ‘The level of corruption in the Investigative Police and Carabineros in this country is nothing compared to other countries in Latin America and [especially] to Argentina.’Footnote 35 One police expert explained how low levels of corruption have translated into respect for the Carabineros: ‘When you meet a police officer and can't bribe them, this gives the impression that police apply the law and that there is no possibility of negotiating with them. So, this inflexibility makes you feel that this is the norm and the police officer will be fair.’Footnote 36
Indeed, according to Transparency International, levels of police corruption do seem to be low in Chile. In 2008, 94 per cent of Chileans responded ‘no’ to the question, ‘In the past 12 months, have you or anyone living with you paid a bribe in any form to the police?’ – this was the highest negative response among the Latin American countries surveyed.Footnote 37 Comparing Chile to its neighbours, as many police experts chose to do, 86 per cent of Argentines responded ‘no’, as did 57 per cent of Peruvians and 38 per cent of Bolivians. One of the most common reasons given for why the police in Chile are not corrupt is that levels of corruption in general are low in Chile, and corruption is culturally unacceptable there. This would fit the hypothesis of many authors that politicians act as role models; if corruption is high in other state institutions, the police would see no reason to be any different.Footnote 38 In the same Transparency International survey, 81 per cent of Chileans responded ‘no’ to the question, ‘In the last 12 months, have you or anyone living in your household paid a bribe in any form?’ – only 9 per cent said ‘yes’, while 10 per cent responded ‘don't know’.Footnote 39 It would appear that while corruption is low overall, it is actually slightly lower within the police compared to elsewhere in Chilean society. Indeed, the Carabineros themselves interpret public confidence in their institution as a consequence of their unwillingness to take bribes. On their website, as well as explaining to tourists in English that the police are ranked high in public opinion polls, they warn: ‘NEVER try to bribe a Carabinero’.Footnote 40
Of course, corruption is not limited to accepting bribes. Corruption is most commonly defined as the abuse of public power for personal gain, and includes police involvement in criminal activity. Certainly, evidence of such police involvement in crime appears to be much more scant in Chile than in its neighbouring countries. However, one article published by a well-known online investigative journalism website, CIPER Chile, found that the number of known cases of Carabineros (active or retired) engaged in criminal activity rose between 2001 and 2007. There were an average of five cases per year from 2001 to 2004, 14 cases in 2006 and nine in the first six months of 2007.Footnote 41 The journalist who wrote the article, Pedro Ramírez, found the seriousness of the crimes most shocking.Footnote 42 For example, two Carabineros held up a liquor store, while another two were members of a gang that stole trucks on the highway.Footnote 43 Ramírez asked one former Carabinero, now serving time, about the internal controls set up to detect such criminal activity. He explained:
If you have a car, for example, that doesn't match with your salary, they will investigate you. But if it is a [senior officer], no … I knew a major, now retired, who travelled all over Europe with his wife because he worked in the Carabineros' casinos and received money from the suppliers for things that were paid for but never arrived. He told me this himself, directly, when I was a Carabinero.Footnote 44
Ramírez's article was based on an access to information request that he submitted to the Carabineros, but he noted that obtaining the information required a great deal of persistence. What he eventually received was not everything he had asked for but it was better than what he would have received in the past, due to new access to information laws that have facilitated journalists' ability to acquire such information.Footnote 45
Few other news providers conduct such in-depth analyses or so freely criticise the Carabineros as CIPER Chile (an issue I discuss more in the last section of this essay). However, a journalist from El Mostrador (another well-known online Chilean news source) explained that the Carabineros are ‘an institution that does have members involved in acts of corruption, it's true, but nowadays I believe people have very clearly separated the institution of the Carabineros from the bad elements'.Footnote 46 That is to say, when the police are found to be corrupt they are punished, but the Carabineros as a whole are seen as essentially honest, and corruption is not regarded as an institutional problem.
Inadequate information and police experts' ‘bad apples’ framing of corruption help maintain a positive image for the institution of the Carabineros. Police corruption is framed as a problem of individual officers rather than an institutional issue, but without full information it is difficult to know for certain whether this is true. Both factors reduce incentives for political leaders to make institutional reforms that could further limit opportunities for corruption, leaving such changes to the discretion of the Carabineros themselves, who remain the only institution with adequate information.
Finally, while low levels of corruption are an important feature of policing in a democracy, they are not the only feature. As the executive director of Amnesty International in Chile, Sergio Laurenti, put it, ‘The forces may be well trained and not very corrupt, but this does not guarantee that they carry out quality police work, as we have seen.’Footnote 47 Indeed, police abuse and police corruption, while sometimes interconnected, are also separate issues.
Respect or Fear?
From the many surveys conducted regarding respect for the Carabineros, it seems that immediately after the dictatorship the Chilean public put aside all the human rights abuses that the Carabineros had committed, and re-embraced the force. It appears that the public regard for the police was an endorsement of the Carabineros' support for democracy. Yet Chilean police experts offer a different narrative. In the words of one human rights activist, ‘People view the Carabineros not with respect, but with fear.’Footnote 48 There were also many police experts who wished to remain anonymous in this study because they did not want to be associated with criticism of the Carabineros. Some journalists simply refused to participate. One journalist, who works closely with the Carabineros and was visibly nervous, stated that he was concerned that he would be tricked into criticising the police.Footnote 49 Those who did speak about Chileans' fear of the Carabineros identified two key issues that explain the fear: the first concerns the past, and the second, the military justice system.
The subtle difference between respect and fear is not easily picked up in surveys, especially since most surveys do not ask questions about the past or its legacy today. Indeed, relative to the Argentine population, Chileans generally do not talk as openly and publicly about the past. Yet a number of police experts, mostly civil society actors, offered their analyses of the past and its lingering presence today. One member of an NGO explained:
I believe that the Carabineros still have authority over you. For me at least, and I believe a lot of people, when you see a Carabinero, you are afraid. For a generation of us, this will happen. If a Carabinero stops you and asks for your car documents, you'll jump. We are still very sensitive to authority in this country.Footnote 50
Another member of an NGO provided a story to illustrate the point:
Look, in the dictatorship, who repressed us? Who arrested us? It was the Carabineros. Who beat us up? It was the Carabineros. Afterwards, under democracy, people are still afraid of them. Look, I saw the following in a public place. A woman was with her baby, her three-year-old daughter, who was crying. The woman said, ‘Look, if you're not quiet, I'll hand you over to the Carabineros.’ There were people around and the Carabinero nearby went red, and he told the woman, ‘Please don't say that to the girl.’ But it shows you that this is the bogeyman – that is, if you don't eat your food, the Carabinero will come get you. This shows you what the Carabineros mean to people.Footnote 51
Indeed, the police were not simply passive tools of the military regime in Chile. Between September and December 1973, the Carabineros were the principal perpetrators of disappearances, abducting 248 people.Footnote 52 Even when the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (National Intelligence Directorate, DINA) took over primary responsibility for disappearances, the Carabineros were the perpetrators in 45 more cases from 1974 to 1989.Footnote 53 They also went through significant militarisation. In 1974 they were moved from their traditional home in the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Defence.Footnote 54 With this move the Carabineros acquired greater autonomy, in part due to the Ministry of Defence not being involved in the preservation of public order and in part due to the Carabineros adopting institutional regulations that guaranteed the institution greater autonomy from the ministries of state.Footnote 55 Essentially, during the dictatorship the Carabineros acted as the fourth branch of the armed forces. This was laid out clearly in the 1980 Constitution, under which, like the other branches of the armed forces, the head of the Carabineros was given membership on the National Security Council and a member of the Carabineros was to be appointed to the Senate.Footnote 56 The Carabineros only began to become more distanced from junta decision-making after an incident in 1985 known as the Caso de las Degollados (Case of the Slit Throats).Footnote 57 In this case, Carabineros were found to be responsible for the deaths of three human rights activists; the activists' bodies were found on the side of the road with their throats slit. This incident shook public confidence in the Carabineros.
Many aspects of the autonomy gained by the Carabineros during the dictatorship have not been reversed. In particular, cases of a Carabinero involved in wrongdoing against a civilian or a civilian against a Carabinero are still tried in a military court. Some police experts brought up the continued use of the military courts in this manner as a reason for citizens' fear of the Carabineros. Interestingly, José Mora Quevedo, from the Communications Department of the Carabineros, accidentally blurred the distinction between fear and respect in his narrative by referring to the military courts; he then backtracked. Here is how he explained Chileans' esteem for the Carabineros:
In Chile there still exists a lot of respect for Carabineros. In the Alameda, the principal artery of the country, if the smallest Carabinero raises his hand and stops traffic, nobody would ask why. If he is there it must be for a reason. I lived in Argentina and to be able to stop traffic they would need to park two police vehicles across the street, but not here. Here a female traffic cop can stop a truck driver in a ten-tonne truck and ask for documentation, and he would not dispute it. If he did argue back, and a lot, then he'd be taken to the military court. [This latter phrase was said emphatically, followed by a pause, after which the interviewee justified and reframed what he had said.] We have legal tools that the state has given us to empower police work and have, over many years, made people respect Carabineros… [pause] not fear them, but respect them. [Pause.] We don't want fear, we want respect… [pause] fear is different. Fear comes from being aggressive, but respect is won.Footnote 58
A member of a civil society organisation argued that the use of military courts does provoke fear among some Chileans. She explained: ‘The Carabineros are not tried in normal courts; they are still tried in military courts. So this makes people respect them, but also fear them, because they are able to do many things.’Footnote 59 While there have been positive changes to the civilian criminal justice system and some cases from the dictatorship were transferred from military to civilian courts in the 1990s, cases involving Carabineros (as victims or protagonists) continue to go to military courts. The judges in military courts are members of the armed forces who do not necessarily have any legal training and who are subject to the military chain of command.
The vast majority of cases of Carabineros involved in mistreatment or excessive force have not led to convictions.Footnote 60 Despite this low success rate, between March 1990 and December 2000, 3,877 legal complaints against police were filed by citizens in military courts.Footnote 61 At least 160 cases of torture were filed in military courts from 1995 to 2001.Footnote 62 Of course, these statistics only represent cases that were actually brought before the courts; given the low odds of success, we can presume that many – or most – cases of police violence are not. While most targets of police violence are young males from lower socio-economic backgrounds, students or indigenous people (Mapuche and Aymara), the lack of civilian legal oversight of the work of the Carabineros may lead many in these groups to ‘respect’ the police for fear of what they can do with impunity.
In sum, when Chilean police experts explain the dominant frame, ‘Chileans respect the Carabineros’, as fear, this complicates the assumed meaning of respect and reveals a possible counter-frame that ‘Chileans do not respect the police, but rather fear them’. Thus the narratives of police experts raise the possibility that polls may reflect respondents' conflation of the concepts of fear and respect, or respondents might fear telling an anonymous interviewer that they do not respect the Carabineros. This interpretation could lead some police experts to officially or unofficially reinforce ‘fear’ in order to maintain high levels of ‘respect’.
That said, neither fear nor corruption are the only explanations given by Chilean police experts for citizens' respect for the Carabineros. The experts further suggest that respect for the police is in fact the result of a clear communications strategy on the part of the Carabineros and of a broader political communications strategy of citizen security, which the next section examines.
The Carabineros' Communication Strategy
When talking about Chileans' respect for the Carabineros, police experts very often credited the Carabineros themselves with their own positive image but did not attribute this to their efforts to win public support through police reforms. Indeed, while the Carabineros' Plan Cuadrante, a form of community policing that has been one of the police force's most significant structural changes, was mentioned from time to time, the explanatory frame used was that the Carabineros have succeeded in an impressive communications campaign that has played a central role in changing their image.Footnote 63 The dominant narrative of Chilean police experts is that public respect for the police has come about primarily through a change in perception rather than experience. For example, an employee from the National Prosecutor's Office explained that the Carabineros ‘have done a good job at improving their public image since what we might call their democratic integration. They did an important job in this regard, and today they are a much valued institution, very respected by society … This is very relevant because the Carabineros police non-authorised protests in a very repressive way, yet despite this, they maintain their prestige.’Footnote 64 The employee also emphasised the amount of money the Carabineros have had to spend on this communications campaign compared to the Prosecutor's Office and the Investigative Police. Patricio Tudela, from the Investigative Police, similarly explained that the Investigative Police had little budget for communications: ‘We have few resources to put into “lobbying” or “marketing”. These two terms I often see connected with the capacity of the Carabineros, which we don't have.’Footnote 65
Indeed, members of the Carabineros themselves interpret Chileans' respect for them as, at least in part, attributable to their public relations efforts. According to José Mora Quevedo, a journalist and retired officer working in the Carabineros' Communications Department, their new strategy began during the dictatorship in the aftermath of the Caso de las Degollados in 1985, which led to profound public mistrust of the Carabineros and a crisis of legitimacy for the institution.Footnote 66 The general director of the Carabineros, General César Mendoza, a junta member at the time, was asked to resign along with four of his most senior officers.Footnote 67
Apparently, the newly appointed general director of the Carabineros, Rodolfo Stange, began to take communications seriously. For example, for the first time, the head of the Communications Department was a Carabinero with a degree in journalism, Major Luis Retaman Martínez. General director Stange brought in civilian PR advisers, people who had been directors of media communications in the private sector, and asked them to evaluate the Carabineros' communications and how the public viewed the institution. ‘He [Stange] arrived at the conclusion that all Carabineros needed to communicate. The police office in the street talking to citizens is the first line of communication.’Footnote 68 The PR advisers began to provide training for media spokespeople within the Carabineros from 1985 to 1990. Each level of command was trained on what they could and could not talk about to the media, and how to talk to the media. Since the Carabineros are a very disciplined police force, this chain of command is followed in a manner that might not occur in other countries with less police discipline.
In Mora's narrative, it was also after 1985 that the department began to become more open to journalists. He noted that the Carabineros were the first of the military government institutions to open their doors to journalists from newspapers that opposed the military regime such as Fortín Mapocho and La Época. The goal was to have the population understand the work of the Carabineros and to re-insert them back into the community. In 1986–7 the Carabineros began a campaign with the slogan ‘Un amigo en su camino’ (A friend on your road), which mostly addressed traffic accident prevention. This was a very successful campaign which many other police experts cited as contributing to Chileans' respect for the Carabineros. The campaign used a cartoon character called Pepe Grillo who talked with a Carabinero about traffic safety. One journalist described it as a ‘popular image because it was a cartoon character, and it made the slogan stick’.Footnote 69
Directly attributing Chileans' respect for the Carabineros to their PR strategy, Mora noted that in 1990 the polls revealed the Carabineros to be, for the first time, one of the institutions for which citizens had the most respect, a position they have maintained ever since. Confirming Mora's account, a national poll conducted in 1989 found that the prestige of the police forces was a respectable 4.6 to 5 out of 7 (on a scale ranging from ‘very bad’ to ‘very good’).Footnote 70 This is an astounding achievement only a few years after the Caso le las Degollados and in the final year of the dictatorship. However, the Carabineros' media strategy did not end in 1990.
According to another Carabinero, in 1997 they established their own radio station playing Chilean music aimed at youth and providing crime prevention advice such as how to stay safe on summer vacation and how to prepare students to go back to school.Footnote 71 They also began to hold seminars to teach journalists about the work of the police. Many of the PR campaigns that followed were aimed at encouraging citizens to work with the Carabineros to fight crime: for example, one used the slogan ‘Con usted, juntos podemos’ (Working together with you, we can get it done). The Carabineros no longer have communications advisers, Mora explained, but they maintain a very good relationship with the heads of all the major media in Chile.
Mora also noted that, rather than simply reacting, the Carabineros' Communications Department regularly tries to get across their version of events through their own media, as well as through the mainstream media. In Mora's words, the proactive PR strategy of the Carabineros exists ‘so that we can control and intervene in what comes out in the media. We have an office for the website, a graphic design office, an audiovisual office, because we know that communications are very important.’Footnote 72 Approximately 30 people work in the Communications Department. In addition, sometimes media-savvy general directors of the Carabineros, such as Alberto Cienfuegos (2001–5) and, more recently, the very charismatic José Alejandro Bernales (2005–8), have contributed to the department's efforts.
Police experts in Chile frame ‘Chilean respect for the police’ as, at least in part, a consequence of efforts by the Carabineros to shape this perception. In turn, this police expert interpretation may explain why communications have been such a priority for the Carabineros. Their communications strategy has been facilitated by internal discipline and relatively low levels of known corruption. However, its perceived success is not attributed solely to changes made by the police. A number of police experts also emphasise the role of media and politicians whose mutual support for ‘citizen security’ is an important factor in the receptiveness of the mainstream media to the Carabineros' PR efforts.
The Carabineros and Citizen Security
A final reason given by police experts as to why Chileans respect the Carabineros is that Chileans are afraid of crime and perceive the police as able to provide them with security. More conservative police experts put forth this argument with limited elaboration.Footnote 73 In contrast, those with a more left-of-centre political orientation offered narratives that dissected the role of political leaders and the media in promoting and constructing citizen security. Again, police experts' interpretation of public respect for the police views it as stemming from perception and not necessarily experience.
Beginning in 1988 (prior to the end of the military regime), public opinion polls began to show that Chileans were increasingly concerned about crime.Footnote 74 Sergio Laurenti explained that ‘people respect armed authority because it ensures a society with less crime. Of course this is false, because a society is safer when everyone has rights.’Footnote 75 Another human rights activist said:
The Carabineros were massively involved in the dictatorship, but what has happened is that the concept of citizen security has been introduced in our country and has stayed. Here individualism focuses on having and protecting private property. It comes from capitalism, from the neoliberalism that you know well from the United States, and has stayed in Chile. So the Carabineros fulfil the role of protector against criminals, and they fulfil this role well. But obviously people support them, or have a positive vision of the Carabineros only as protectors, which doesn't include the excesses they have committed. I believe that the same people who support this institution would disapprove or take a different view of the actions of the Carabineros if they exceeded their limits.Footnote 76
This particular activist works with poor male youths who have been victims of police excesses. His last statement used the future tense because, he explained, most Chileans do not know about the types of abuses he sees, due in part, in his opinion, to the limited coverage of these abuses in the mainstream media. He was also alluding to the fact that few surveys ask people about police excesses; the vast majority of surveys are framed in terms of how well the Carabineros combat crime.Footnote 77 Another human rights activist emphasised the role of the media in making crime such a central issue. He explained that while levels of crime are low, ‘crime is an important issue, a daily issue, and is in all the media every day. So it's pure media manipulation and it is very effective.’Footnote 78As Hugo Frühling points out, it is curious to note that Chileans hold their police in such high regard while at the same time crime rates in the country have increased steadily since 1990 and there is a high level of fear of crime and victimisation among the population.Footnote 79 In part this discrepancy could be explained by the fact that the types of crimes that have been increasing are crimes against property (particularly automobile theft) and not homicide; Chile has a very low homicide rate of approximately two murders per 100,000 inhabitants.Footnote 80 Another possible reason raised in the narratives of police experts is that the mainstream media in Chile are dominated by two major media monopolies, the El Mercurio media group and COPESA, both of which emphasise the issue of crime and the need and ability of the Carabineros to provide what they call ‘citizen security’.Footnote 81 To this end, criticism of the Carabineros in these media is limited. El Mercurio is widely considered the agenda-setting newspaper in Chile, and recently La Tercera (COPESA's national newspaper) has been emerging as a significant competitor. Most mainstream radio and TV news shows report on or even read verbatim the cover stories in these newspapers each day. Kiosks in the street will prominently display the newspapers of these two media groups; other newspapers and magazines will be displayed depending on the preferences of the person running the kiosk. Thus, for Chilean politicians, to exist is to be covered in El Mercurio.Footnote 82
The owner of the El Mercurio media group, Agustín Edwards, has actively lobbied on the issue of crime and ‘citizen security’ since 1991, when his son, Cristián, was kidnapped. To assist in this lobbying effort Edwards established a well-funded foundation, Paz Ciudadana (Citizen Peace), in 1992.Footnote 83 This is one of the few civil society organisations accorded regular coverage in the publications of the El Mercurio media group; for example, most crime statistics printed in El Mercurio come from Paz Ciudadana and not the government.Footnote 84 According to Ken Léon-Dermota, Edwards has an agreement with COPESA that Paz Ciudadana's findings will also be published in COPESA's publications.Footnote 85 Journalists at El Mercurio know the owner's position on citizen security and select cases that fit this perspective – that is, issues of crime (particularly property crime in wealthy neighbourhoods) and the positive work of the Carabineros.Footnote 86 Politicians who implement proposals for fighting crime proposed by Paz Ciudadana are rewarded with positive coverage in El Mercurio: President Lagos got a colour photograph of himself on the front page after agreeing to toughen the criminal code at the request of Paz Ciudadana.Footnote 87
While in the 1990s there were significant legal limitations to what journalists could say about the police, these restrictions no longer exist.Footnote 88 However, media self-censorship (on the part of journalists, editors or both) or self-selection persists. Only one journalist stated that he experienced censorship by his editors.Footnote 89 Many other journalists claimed that self-censorship was professionally strategic. Most media rely on crime as an important part of their news coverage. They have journalists who specialise in the police, particularly the Carabineros, and who provide them with their regular articles on crime. Although the Carabineros claim that they allow all journalists access to the information they need, many journalists explained that if they did not write positive stories about the Carabineros or follow their advice on wording, they might not be given exclusives on big crime stories or invited to press conferences. Thus, for journalists whose jobs rely on providing their newspapers or other media with crime stories, how they present the work of the Carabineros matters. Smaller media, such as community radio or alternative newspapers that do not rely on crime news, are better able to write critical reports on the police.
In sum, many police experts, especially journalists and social movement activists, argue that the priority placed on ‘citizen security’ by the mainstream news media and politicians increases the importance of media coverage of crime and helps maintain a positive image for the Carabineros. These narratives recognise that media critiques of the police exist, but hold that they are far outweighed by the daily dominance of the ‘citizen security’ discourse.
The second issue, which is interconnected and was raised by police experts in the quotes at the beginning of this section, is the relationship between security and human rights that comes into play when Chileans evaluate their respect for the Carabineros. While police abuse occurs during the arrest of particularly poor young people, statistics on this abuse are extremely hard to find, particularly in the media, and are thus known mostly to those affected and those people working with them, such as lawyers and human rights organisations.
In contrast, excessive police violence during protests (particularly, but not exclusively, protests led by students, low-income groups and indigenous groups) is regularly covered in the media. Yet, media coverage of protests in Chile often portrays the protesters as the wrongdoers and the Carabineros as playing a positive role in maintaining public order, or sometimes as victims of protester violence.Footnote 90
Police experts offered two interpretations of police repression of protest and its impact on the image of the Carabineros. The first position is consistent with the image projected in the media that Chileans do not approve of protest, especially by working-class groups or indigenous groups. According to a 2004 Latinobarómetro survey, 45 per cent of Chileans prefer to live in an orderly society even if it means fewer freedoms.Footnote 91 Police experts consistently defined public order as the use of public space in a way that does not inhibit people from moving freely from one place to another, particularly with regard to protests. Some spoke of the fear that protests evoke in people who remember the chaos of such events under President Salvador Allende. Others spoke of how protests today are different than during the dictatorship. Police experts explained that nowadays demonstrations ‘always’ attract infiltrators who throw Molotov cocktails and damage private and public property. This meant, they alleged, that the work of the Carabineros is valued and that their response is proportionate to the challenge they face.
Attempts have been made to change this image of protests. For example, during the 2006 student protests, students used the media in a strategic manner that eventually gained them public support for a period of time.Footnote 92 Demonstrations in 2011 and 2012 drew on the success of students in 2006 to further build public backing and draw attention to police abuse. This made student leader Camila Vallejo a national and international media star and focused significant media attention on police violence, including the killing of a young protester, Manuel Gutiérrez. These incidents may have contributed to a decrease in public confidence in the Carabineros over the last few years. However, the success of students in changing the dominant public perception of protests remains limited, as it has not necessarily generated public support for protests by other groups, particularly the popular sectors and indigenous peoples.
The second position is that Chileans make a distinction between the work of the Special Forces, a unit within the Carabineros responsible for policing protests, and that of the police they see regularly on the street. The Special Forces wear different clothing, with helmets, shields and batons, and are not ‘the friendly officer on the corner’. Even Federico Huneeus, the 2009 president of the Federación de Estudiantes Universidad de Chile (University of Chile Federation of Students, FECH), a student group that is regularly met with police abuse when it holds protests, noted that Chileans’ respect for the Carabineros is for the regular police, and that the Special Forces are different and are not what people are thinking about when they say they respect the police.Footnote 93
Thus, according to police experts, the Carabineros have not succeeded in turning their image around through their substantial PR work alone, and their communications strategy has had a very receptive audience within the mainstream media and political leaders. These narratives argue that the policy of citizen security places a priority on the issue of crime and on respect for the important role that the Carabineros play in this goal. While the Carabineros may be criticised for not doing enough to fight crime, critiques that tarnish the positive image of the Carabineros as an institution are avoided in order to support the fight for citizen security. This position has continued with President Sebastián Piñera, elected in 2010, who strongly supports a law and order agenda.
Police experts' narratives frame the positive image of the Carabineros as, in part, the result of the promotion of citizen security by the media and politicians. This frame suggests that prioritising citizen security helps weaken incentives for media or government to investigate police corruption or systemic violence. When they occur, cases of corruption or violence can be dismissed as isolated incidents caused by ‘bad apples’. Similarly, the emphasis placed on polls and studies on crime ignores the possible continued or residual citizen fear of the police. This police expert frame holds that respect for the police may be constructed through political, media and police communications strategies, effectively muffling alternative frames that view respect as fear.
Conclusion
Perception, not just police reform, can influence the public's respect for the police. Through analysing the explanatory frames offered by Chilean police experts, this article has shown how those leading the discussions on policing interpret the public's positive image of the police. There are two possible consequences of these narratives that merit further research.
First, public relations are important, as police experts contend that they have played a central role in constructing the positive image of the police in Chile. Likely as a result, resources have been directed to support communications. However, police can also use their positive public image to defend their autonomy and resist reforms.Footnote 94 This is an issue that is touched on by Hugo Frühling.Footnote 95 He explains that while the negative image of the police elsewhere in Latin America has forced them to ‘undertake processes of structural reform to increase their efficiency and to respond to negative perceptions on the part of the public at large, Chilean police have had to undertake only gradual changes during the democratisation period’.Footnote 96
Catalina Céspedes from the Division of Public Security in the Ministry of the Interior also emphasised how the positive image of the Carabineros allows them to assert their autonomy from the government.Footnote 97 She offered the story of a campaign for missing children that she organised with the Public Ministry, the Carabineros, the Investigative Police and the Ministry of Justice, during which the various institutions involved needed to decide on logos to put on the campaign's posters. She explained that ‘since they [the Carabineros] have such a strong image’, they were reluctant to work with the other institutions. When each institution wanted to put its own logo on the poster, Céspedes suggested simply using the logo of the Chilean government. In response, ‘the Carabineros declared that they were not a part of the Chilean government, something that was obviously very complicated. We're speaking of high-ranking leaders – not that high, but leaders.' For her, the incident illustrated the power and autonomy of the Carabineros, but this example is innocuous compared to the possibility that the Carabineros could use their positive image and effective communications to similarly defend their autonomy in other circumstances – for example, in order to remain under the jurisdiction of military courts or to resist reform in response to critiques of police violence. A positive police image, therefore, does not necessarily reflect increased accountability or successful democratic reform; indeed, it could potentially undermine such efforts.
Second, accountability is important. The narratives of police experts suggest that the positive image of the police stems in part from fear and a discourse of citizen security that stifles criticism of their actions. Policing in a democracy involves transparency and accountability, and this, in turn, requires public criticism. While access to information laws have contributed to an increase in the transparency of the police in Chile, issues of accountability remain significant. Accountability, through civilian courts, is absent in cases involving Carabineros as protagonists or victims of crimes. In this context, the accountability provided by the media and civil society becomes an important alternative, yet both are weakened when criticism of the police is perceived as undermining citizen security. Thus political projects such as ‘citizen security’ that discourage any critique of the police in order to support the fight against crime (the success of which is unclear) are problematic for democracy and police reform.Footnote 98 The appropriate balance between security and accountability in a democracy is challenging, but nonetheless important to resolve.
To be sure, police experts' narratives recognise important successes of the Carabineros that should not be dismissed. For example, known cases of corruption are much lower than elsewhere in the region, an accomplishment that has possibly been assisted by the Carabineros' discipline. However, what this article has highlighted is that police experts in Chile interpret public respect for the police not as primarily an outcome of democratic policing, but rather as the result of effective political and police communication strategies combined with fear. This interpretation could lead some police experts to emphasise policy choices aimed at improved communications rather than police reform. Indeed, many police experts argue that this has occurred. Given the potential consequences of such choices, particularly for accountability, more research is needed on the role of communications in policing in new democracies.
