There's no "fine tuning" of police operations in Guatemala. Everyone is incompetent, and the UN and other "human rights" groups fuck it up even more. Average citizens are afraid to even kill thieves and extortionists due to court prosecution. Said criminals continue to run gangs from inside prisons. Most "good" people just leave as soon as they can. My ex finally called it quits when Telefonica, the multinational phone company, got extorted. Someone calls them up, tells them they owe $X/week, and then just starts shooting employees. It's getting worse, not better.
The only hope I've had here in recent times was several people, including young women, talking fondly about Rios Montt and how they wish a leader would come clean stuff up. Even a semi-indigenous person told me that (despite him supposedly being genocidal). Unfortunately GT has a preference for electing nitwits that can't even steal without getting caught. That's how incompetent they are. So it's unsure if we'll ever see a strong ruler come back in. But now more than ever are people ready for that.
Turns out, when you can't safely walk around, when you can't start a business because any day you'll get a phone call that means either bankruptcy, death, or exile, yeah damn right you start preferring a military rule. As one woman told me, "at least I could walk anywhere, anytime with my purse and no one ever troubled me".
This is a good thing usually. What are you meaning?
Civil liberties aren't worth much when you can't freely travel and live in the first place. Sure, a few innocents will lose out with an abridged justice system. But that's already happening at a high rate.
And sure, they could also just turn the country around. Get foreign countries to run ministries, get a whole new police force, increase resources to the justice system 10-fold. But tell me what's more probable, that, or just taking a hard stance, have swift summary justice and giving citizens strong defence rights?
Northern region has places with 60+ homicide rate, southern region has places with 3-4 homicide rate.
Take a look at this article: https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_unidades_federativa...
And this map with some of the highest/lowest homicide rates: http://55ca7cd0-f8ac-0132-1185-705681baa5c1.s3-website-sa-ea...
Both in Portuguese but I think it's not hard to make sense of the numbers (rate is 1/100k, map colours describe increase/decrease in violence, bottom lines show current top/bottom rates in cities with 100k+ residents).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_the_United_States_by...
From New Hampshire at 1.1, Hawaii at 1.3, and Vermont at 1.6 to Mississippi at 8.7 and Louisiana at 10.
Among OECD countries, only 3 countries are worse than the USA [1]
The USA really does rank among developing countries in a lot of different measures.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/oecd-homicide-rates-chart-201...
It would also have a GDP much like the USA, and would qualify for the OECD.
Obviously this is just about how averages work -- the high violence stats of the 10% can completely skew the average, but their low income stats can't. But it's worth remembering, every time someone tries to tell you what an outlier among rich countries the US is. It's a large, diverse, country... and often different averages are telling you facts about completely different people & places.
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/national/the-cities-with-the...
But numbers don't tell the whole story. I remember waking up and laying on the floor of my bedroom because there was a drug gang shootout with automatic AK-47s in front of my home. Seeing the blood stains of victims on a neighbor's walls (someone was executed against a wall). The sound of weapons always being a part of the night.
- Venezuela leads unsurprisingly with 89 per 100,000
- Chile has the lowest number, 3.3 per 100,000
Compare that to
- Germany: 0.3
- US: 4.9
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
That's a U.S. territory with a higher murder rate than Brazil.
This includes St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix.
I lived there for only a few years and experienced the loss of two friends due to homicide in that short time, on an island that is only 13 miles long, and 32 square miles.
Many of these crimes go unsolved despite such a small population, in such a small place, due to corruption, fear, and lack of resources.
Top homicide rate for cites in the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
US cites (sort by murder):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/ppvx8g/a-closer-look-at-n...
http://amp.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article191211704....
Population of St. Louis: 312,000
