Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has announced plans to overhaul the country's municipal police forces. The proposal would put all local police forces under the control of 32 federal state governments.
Nieto’s announcement comes after the disappearance of 43 students whom reports say drug gangs had kidnapped and killed in September. However, their bodies have not been recovered. The students’ disappearance resulted in mass protests, with the BBC reporting that many are still unconvinced with the official report that the students were murdered by a drugs gang.
Nieto’s proposal for constitutional reforms would allow the country's 1,800 municipal forces to be dissolved and taken over by state agencies. Congress would also have the ability to dissolve local governments infiltrated by drug cartels.
The overhaul would begin in Mexico's four most violent states, according to Nieto — Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Michoacan and Guerrero.
Nieto also proposed launching a single, nationwide emergency phone number. Currently, Mexico uses different phone numbers for different emergency situations, which may not even be available in all areas of the country.
According to Independent Online, some 400 000 federal, state and municipal police forces across the country have undergone anti-corruption exams with polygraph tests. This was a system that began under former President Felipe Calderon.
However, the interior ministry said this month that 13 percent of municipal officers failed the exam, compared to 10 percent of state and six percent of federal forces.
