Nine hours and countless bullets have passed since gunmen began shelling Port-au-Prince’s Stanley Police Station, and a police officer in his 20s is beginning to wonder if he will make it out alive.
“The reason you haven’t heard from me is because I’m dead,” he wrote in a farewell on his family’s WhatsApp group.
The police officer’s sister was shaking as she read her brother’s farewell email, and when her message went unanswered, she called one of her best friends for news. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she sobbed.
Contrary to his expectations, Stanley* survived the recent attack on his fortress-like base, but was left severely shaken. “My biggest fear was imagining a needless death. That nothing would change if I died,” said the heavily armed gangster and police officer. continued to sow seeds of fear in the Haitian capital, despite the creation of a transitional government that is supposed to lead Haiti out of its latest crisis.
Other members of Haiti’s embattled national police have not been so lucky, facing an organized gang revolt that began in late February and plunged Port-au-Prince into anarchy and forced the prime minister to resign.
Lionel Lazar, a spokesman for Haiti’s police union Sinapoha, said 17 police officers had been killed in the first four months of this year, and “many” suffered gunshot wounds.
In the worst attack, armed criminals attacked a police station in the city’s north on February 29, killing five police officers.Video of mutilated victim spread on social media and newspaper Le Nouvellesto report. It read: “The corpse of a police officer was lying on a wheelbarrow, his uniform stained with blood.” Another photo shows a police officer being beheaded. The criminals then returned to the station in a show of brazen defiance and destroyed it with a Chinese-made front-end loader.
“It’s clear [previous] The government has failed in its security mission. “Everyone says the police are overwhelmed by recent events,” Lazar said. “There are areas that used to be easy to get to that you can no longer go to.”
William O’Neill United Nations Head Haitian human rights expert, expressed astonishment that Haiti’s under-armed and under-resourced police had been able to avoid complete overrun by criminals boasting military-grade weapons smuggled into the country, mostly from the United States. “It’s a small miracle that they’re still holding out. I don’t know how they’re doing it,” says O’Neill, who believes Haiti needs 5,000 international security forces to help police restore order. he said.
“Multinational Security Assistance Mission” supported by the United Nations, Reportedly led by 1,000 Kenyan troopsare expected to be sent to Haiti in the coming weeks to step up the fight against gangs, but questions remain about how they will be funded.
Part of the answer to how Haitian police are holding on lies in the mettle of officers like Stanley, who are on the front lines of a one-sided fight against gangs that control about 80% of the capital. These officers typically only receive up to $100 (£79) a week for hardship.
Their meager salaries give them a front-row seat to the collapse of public order. Over 2,500 people This year alone, there have been casualties and the closure of airports and ports.
Another 4,500 people were forced to flee their homes in the capital over the weekend, bringing the number of people displaced by the unrest to around 100,000, according to the United Nations migration agency.
“The gangs are in control,” said one man, who thought the situation was so dire that combat drones should be brought in to remove gang leaders from the air “like in Afghanistan.” A former security official admitted.
A spokesperson for another police union, SPNH-17, said this week called Haiti’s National Police Chief Franz Herbe resigns, citing a “critical and catastrophic” situation. another attack At the police station, senior police officials accused him of colluding with organized crime groups.
Peter, also a Port-au-Prince police officer in his mid-20s, recalled being ambushed by militants with assault rifles during a recent patrol. “It seemed like bullets were coming from everywhere at the same time,” said the police officer, who fled the car with three of his colleagues and took shelter next to a wall and a lamppost.
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Police managed to fight off the attackers after a long gunfight, but one person was injured and taken to hospital. After the shootout, Peter returned to his bullet-riddled car and continued on patrol, but was so shaken by his near-death experience that he spent the next two weeks off work.
“I realized it could have been me who was injured or killed,” he said. “Thank God it wasn’t me that day…I still haven’t told my mom.”
Lazare acknowledged that Haiti’s national police are woefully ill-equipped to fight the outlaws, who are displaying increasingly sophisticated weaponry. sophisticated social media video Similar to the one posted by a Mexican cartel.
“If the police had more weapons, they would be better able to respond to criminals,” Lazar said. “The police are about to celebrate their 29th anniversary, but they don’t have one or two helicopters to deal with the current fighting.”
Peter said that due to the lack of basic equipment, some of his colleagues are buying their own bulletproof vests and armor plates and shipping them to Haiti with logistics company DHL.In the past three years, he said more than 3,000 police officers I quit my job This is due to the deterioration of the security situation after the murder of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. Many people abandoned the country completely.
Haitian police have been absent from the streets of Port-au-Prince since the uprising began, and have faced criticism for abandoning their people to their fate. But a union spokesperson said officers were doing everything in their power to fight back “despite the difficult circumstances”.
Lazar called for further “aggressive action” to wrest control back from the insurgents. “When you’re on a football team, you can’t just defend. You also have to attack… You can’t play a 90-minute game just by defending. You’ll end up conceding goals.”
Despite the danger, Stanley and Peter said they are determined to keep fighting and are proud to be members of the Haitian police force. “We are the people’s armed forces. We are their shield,” Stanley said.
But in a city now almost entirely controlled by criminals, the shadow of death was never far away, said Peter, the family’s sole breadwinner. “So if a police officer dies in the line of duty, what is left for his family?” he asked.
*Names have been changed to protect identity
