Balacera

Hardly a day goes by without the word “balacera” showing up in the newspaper here. Balaceras are shootouts. They often occur between the police and drug cartels, competing drug cartels, or, on the very rare occasion, between different divisions of the police. Oops.

One such inter-police shooting occurred just the other day in a restaurant in Cobán. Three members of the Special Division of Criminal Investigations (Deinc) skirmished with three members of the Office of Professional Responsibility (ORP). The guys from the ORP had set up a sting operation against the agents from the Deinc who were supposedly extorting a Cobanero for some $10,000. The Deinc agents claim that the supposed victim of extortion is actually the head of a lucrative car stealing business in the area and through his connections in the upper echelons of the ORP had the investigation being conducted by the Deinc stopped.

Slightly confusing? Perhaps. But it does not concern me whether the Deinc or the ORP or both are corrupt. What I find most amusing about this story is the shootout. Here is how the newspaper Nuestro Diario described it:

Elementos de la Deinc abrieron fuego en contra de los investigadores de la ORP y se produjo la balacera que culminó con la captura de los tres agentes policíacos…En el intercambio de disparos, nadie resultó herido.

(Elements of the Deinc opened fire against investigators of the ORP and produced a shootout that culminated in the capture of the three police agents…In the exchange of shots, no one was injured.)

In a shootout between six law enforcement officers in the enclosed area of a restaurant, not a single person was able to actually hit somebody with a bullet?

Wow. That is either sad or suspect. I am leaning towards sad. Sad, not as in ‘Oh gee, I wish someone would have been killed or injured,’ but sad as in, ‘Man, that is some really bad marksmanship!’ Maybe training is focused more on evasive tactics than accuracy with a firearm.

As a joke about the poor shooting skills of the police force in reference to the sniper slogan, ‘One Shot One Kill,’ a officer once told me, “En Guatemala no es así. Aquí es ‘Veinte tiros, tal vez un herido.’” (“In Guatemala it’s not like that. Here it is ‘Twenty shots, maybe one wounded.’”) After reading this story, pienso que sí, él tiene razón.