Introduction
People have everyday contact with illegal markets. While some markets, such as human or drug trafficking, are subject to explicit moral objection, others, such as stolen objects or forgeries, are usually tolerated and in some cases are exploited. An example of this is the theft and dismantling of vehicles and the subsequent sale of the vehicles or their parts in the province of Buenos Aires. From 2001 to 2011 more than 40 per cent of the vehicle thefts in that province were due to carjackings, some resulting in murders.Footnote 1 Despite the immeasurable property damage and human harm caused, this illegal market remains in operation due to the constant demand for products derived from it. This is evidenced by the countless spare parts that are confiscated periodically from so-called ‘chop shops’ in the field.Footnote 2
The persistence, deep-rooted presence and volume of illegal activities linked to this market are possible only because of the state institutions which themselves participate in illegal markets. Indeed, the police force in the province of Buenos Aires has gone through two reform processes, and most of these efforts were aimed not only at improving arrest rates, but also – and mainly – at breaking the connection at the local level between criminals and police officers implicated in the business of chop shops. Seven years have passed since the second reform and, in spite of a considerable reduction in the number of vehicle thefts, the market is returning to previous levels of activity.Footnote 3 This is a trend that is reflected in the comments of a former undersecretary of investigations and criminal intelligence: ‘Our controls were strict and constant but there was a solid number of about 2,000 vehicles a month that we could not possibly reduce further.’Footnote 4 In other words, the illicit police structures were robust, had a great capacity to resist reform, and tended to chronically undermine exercise of monopoly of state violence by the police.Footnote 5
In this article I will argue that the resilience of these corrupt police structures is based on the constant trading of illegal protection of criminals – that is, a type of protection that consists of police officers offering lawbreakers the temporary non-application of the law as a commodity. This results in a constant stimulation of illegal activities.Footnote 6 The available literature dealing with protection takes two different approaches. One analyses how the state sells protection, mostly through taxation, within the legal sphere.Footnote 7 The second examines how criminal organisations commercialise protection, principally to other criminal enterprises.Footnote 8 However, neither the first strand of literature dealing with the state as a protection racket, nor the second strand dealing with the sale of mafia protection, adequately captures the significant phenomenon of the illegal sale of police protection. Thus, a third alternative can be considered: law enforcement agencies illegally selling protection to organisations operating in the underworld.Footnote 9 By analysing this third way using the case of the police force in the province of Buenos Aires, this article will contribute to filling this conceptual gap.Footnote 10
Given the clear attempts by police officers to obtain financial, personal or status gain in exchange for failing to apply the law, we could describe the situation as a case of corruption. In examining the conditions that make this phenomenon possible, we can observe mechanisms such as the acute sensitivity that a very corrupt police organisation has developed towards media curiosity and the insurance companies’ degree of tolerance towards changes in the numbers of vehicles being stolen. The police can also act like an informal Leviathan, imposing penalties. In short, by using the notion of protection, this article will attempt to address the complexity of well-institutionalised mechanisms that smooth out illegal transactions, prevent side effects from being detrimental to the business and thus shield the market for stolen vehicles.
Initially, a conceptual discussion will allow us to identify the three variants of protection mentioned: that offered by the state, that offered by mafia organisations, and that offered illegally by the police.Footnote 11 After indicating the characteristics of this protection as a commodity, I will demonstrate how the police's provision of protection boosts the market for stolen vehicles in the province of Buenos Aires. Whereas the literature on the relationship between politics and organised crime tends to explain the issue in terms of police corruption, this article presents empirical evidence of a phenomenon that goes beyond bribery. In fact, the complicity between the police and criminals is strongly interlocked due to both the specific demands of the illegal enterprises and the police's deployment of a variety of mechanisms aimed at meeting the demand for protection and controlling unexpected consequences, such as the media's reaction to violent events. Far from passively ‘turning a blind eye’, the way in which the police actively provide protection in exchange for money, as described in this article, suggests well-established informal mechanisms kept alive by trading illegal protection. In this regard, the observations of this study are in accordance with existing research on informal institutions in Latin America, especially those referring to social spaces governed by logics different to those involving the legal system.Footnote 12
In order to address the phenomenon of selling illegal protection, I will provide empirical evidence on the police force of the province of Buenos Aires (from the first attempt at reform in 1997 up to the present), focusing on the theft and resale of vehicles and auto parts. This was gathered over the course of three research visits, the first in December 2009 to January 2010, and the second and third in April and July 2010 respectively.Footnote 13 During these field trips, I carried out interviews and examined official documents of the police force of the province of Buenos Aires.Footnote 14 I relied on two sources of documentary evidence. First, I had access to a considerable variety of investigaciones sumariales administrativas (summary administrative investigations), investigaciones penales preparatorias (preparatory penal investigations) and memoranda, all pertaining to two tenures of office of the Ministry of Security for the province of Buenos Aires. Second, I had access to documentation of the legal proceedings against those responsible for leading chop shop rings, provided by the Dirección Nacional de Fiscalización de Desarmaderos y Autopartes (National Directorate for the Control of Auto Dismantlers and Auto Parts, DNFDA).
There is a methodological problem inherent to this type of research: since many people were reluctant to talk, let alone provide useful information, the level of the research's comparability is limited. This becomes evident especially in the case of supervision officer ‘Carlos’, one of the interviewees who was willing to talk and answer questions about the Buenos Aires provincial police force. I interviewed him three times, for a total of about eight hours. Although his accounts throughout the interviews did not contradict one another and were coherent, I triangulated the information whenever possible with official documents, other interviews and/or journalistic information. The same procedure was followed for the rest of the interviews.
The article proceeds as follows. First, I examine the concepts of protection described by Charles Tilly and Diego Gambetta in order to distinguish a third concept, illegal police protection. Then I outline the widespread phenomenon of vehicle theft in the province of Buenos Aires. Following this, I address the question of how the police suspend law enforcement, and I then present three forms of non-enforcement. Finally, I outline the three conditions the police need to fulfil in order to sell protection.
The Nature of Illegal Police Protection
For 16 years, in the town of Wilde in the province of Buenos Aires, Elbio Oscar Fernández ran a company dedicated to stealing vehicles, taking them apart and selling the parts. The nickname by which he became known, ‘El Rey del Corte’ (the ‘Cut-Up King’), can clearly be attributed to the success of his enterprise. This businessman managed to build an infrastructure consisting of various establishments, each with its own supplier, goods in stock, buyers who were offered personalised service, and employees, many of whom were Fernández's relatives.Footnote 15 Undoubtedly, the complex logistical operations required to manage the theft and dismantling of hundreds of vehicles, to establish a widespread network of communications and to sell the automobiles (or their parts) right in the city centre could not have been achieved without the protection of the police force.Footnote 16 Something similar also occurred in the western area of the conurbation of Buenos Aires, which comprises the cities of Castelar, Morón, Mercedes and Moreno. Until 2002, another group of criminals operated there under the protection of seven police officers, among them an inspector. This group also stole automobiles and altered the serial numbers on their chassis and engines. Even though these criminals were not very experienced at that point in time, the company expanded internationally and cars were exported to neighbouring Paraguay.Footnote 17 These two cases exemplify a phenomenon that goes beyond mere corruption or deviant behaviour – in this regard, as I will show, we are referring to true joint enterprises whose operation depends heavily on informal mechanisms fuelled by illegal police protection.
Up to now, protection has been analysed from the perspective of two providers: a legal one, the state, and an extralegal one, the mafia. With the process of state formation as a backdrop, Tilly defines protection as ‘the elimination or neutralisation of the enemies of the state makers’ clients’.Footnote 18 That is to say, to be allowed to trade and collect taxes, to be protected against attacks and so forth, comes in exchange for providing the state with the resources that ensure the submission of citizens. Bandits, pirates and criminals played a prominent role during state-building processes and also received protection from the holders of power, as long as their services allowed them to guarantee the resources needed to make war. Eventually, the progressive autonomy of the state sphere and the delegitimation of non-state violence created a clear delineation between two fields: the first, a legal one, where client-citizens built their trust networks under the protection of the state in return for different resources, and the second, an extralegal one, in which citizens are threatened by the state's predatory power.Footnote 19 According to this perspective, protection is offered as a means to ensure the extraction of resources, to create a state monopoly and to wage war against opponents.
As Diego Gambetta and others have demonstrated, when the state cannot protect its clients effectively or provide the trust needed for economic exchanges, an extralegal player such as the mafia can assume the role of provider of protection. In an environment characterised by distrust, the fact of being protected acts as a singular lubricant for economic transactions. By hiring mafia protection, it is possible to purchase and sell goods safely, to dissuade or get rid of potential competitors, to secure clients and to avoid being swindled – in other words, protection is a desired asset. Even when transaction costs are high and competition becomes distorted, threats to security justify the purchase of protection. However, this cannot be universal provision as it would be in a government setting because this sui generis protection and its structures are criminal.Footnote 20
A third type of protection occurs when (1) there is a state police organisation that does not neutralise or eliminate the enemies of those clients who provide resources to build the state, and (2) illegal protection is sold not by the mafia but by a state agency. If both criminals and non-criminals are regarded as clients of the state, this produces a peculiar phenomenon: the state, through the police force, provides protection to two clients – criminals and ordinary individuals – whose interests oppose one another.
The main characteristic of the police protection analysed here is that it aims to prevent formal rules from being effective. While from Tilly's or Gambetta's perspective, protection is directed towards people or specific groups, the kind of protection referred to here is meant to suspend the application of the law Footnote 21 and create spaces with a sui generis internal regulation.Footnote 22 The police organisation addressed in this work provides effective protection not only to criminal organisations but also to citizens willing to pay for a temporary suspension of the law.
Although the sale of protection and the sale of inaction bear some similarities to one another, they need to be clearly distinguished.Footnote 23 If a police officer charges someone committing a driving offence a certain amount of money in exchange for not applying the official fine, inaction and protection appear to be the same thing: protection from the law is offered through inaction. Yet, other situations force us to differentiate analytically between categories of action. An example of this would be a police officer refraining from taking action in order to create a specific demand for protection. A shopkeeper, for instance, might refuse to pay ‘additional contributions’ for protection; in retaliation, they would suffer police inaction, fall victim to a crime and thus be indirectly compelled to require the previously rejected protection. Here, inaction generates a demand for protection. Lastly, another strong reason to make a distinction between inaction and protection is that the former is carried out in an active way. In other words, inaction does not entail ‘doing nothing’. As we will see in the third section, the creation of the so-called zonas liberadas (areas where police surveillance is deliberately suspended), the detention and release of individuals and the protection of informants are the results of a complex process. To give protection to Elbio Fernández by ending police patrols in a determined area is an active inaction, given that it entails coordination, alteration of records and so forth.
Another particularity of this type of protection is that the police force has a monopoly over its provision. The provincial police force of Buenos Aires still holds the monopoly on illegal protection over chop shops and the sale of auto parts throughout the province, despite other law enforcement agencies such as the Policía Federal or Gendarmería intervening in recent years to control this activity in hotspots like La Salada and Fuerte Apache.Footnote 24 Since this police force, unlike mafia organisations, does not compete with other suppliers and, consequently, does not bother to gather information about its clients or potential competitors, the implications of this variant of illegal protection are far-reaching. As the holders of a monopoly, the police's main source of anxiety is not the possible loss of clients, but the near-complete absence of bureaucratic coordination between legal and illegal activities. As a result, the police concentrate their efforts on administrative coordination issues with the aim of meeting the accountability demanded by the judiciary and the media.Footnote 25 Rendering illegal activities invisible through the falsification of official records absorbs a considerable amount of organisational resources and requires the police to manufacture data, by carrying out armed operations or illegal detentions, that appear to show that they are actively attempting to suppress this criminal activity rather than abetting it.Footnote 26
To sum up, police protection may come in one of two forms: one that complies with the characteristics of Tilly's perspective – that is to say, protection from the enemies of the clients of the state – and the one highlighted in this article, which is offered illegally and acts as a shield, isolating state power. Certain businesses or enterprises that would normally encounter state hostility have the chance to prosper under this protective shield. The fact that this second type of protection is both illegal and provided by the police force stems from the role served by those who offer it. Here we are not referring to state agents or mafiosi, who defend the interests of their organisations, but to agents who send signals in both directions.
Stealing Vehicles in Buenos Aires
Before demonstrating the way in which the police protect the entrepreneurs of this illegal market, I will describe the latter's activities and indicate what they need to get protection in order to demonstrate why illegal police protection is both a highly coveted commodity and an effective informal tax imposed by the police force. I was able to gain only partial information about the market for stolen vehicles in Buenos Aires, involving just those cases in which business problems arose. When there is a good understanding between the police and the criminals, as there is most of the time, nothing is recorded and, therefore, we know nothing about it.
Together with human and drug trafficking, the theft and dismantling of vehicles and the illegal sale of auto parts is allegedly one of the most profitable illegal activities in the province of Buenos Aires.Footnote 27 Between 2000 and 2010, an average of 43,624 vehicles were stolen per year, or more than 119 per day. As demonstrated by Figure 1, the evolution of this phenomenon has varied considerably and is apparently sensitive to the economic climate (devaluation in 2001 and inflation after 2007), since the increase in local prices seems to stimulate illegal demand. Between 80 and 85 per cent of the stolen vehicles are cars,Footnote 28 and approximately 50 per cent are never found because they have been dismantled and/or taken outside the radius covered by satellite security systems.Footnote 29 In general the vehicles are taken to Paraguay, where there are less strict controls on infiltrating the legal vehicle fleet.Footnote 30 Regarding the geographical distribution of car thefts, the Centro de Experimentación y Seguridad Vial Argentina (Centre for Testing and Road Safety in Argentina, CESVI Argentina) indicates that the most affected area is southern Greater Buenos Aires, followed by the north, the west and, finally, the interior of the province.Footnote 31 The most common method of illegal vehicle acquisition in the first half of 2011 was theft (66 per cent of total amount of stolen vehicles), followed by carjacking (34 per cent). The vehicles most frequently stolen at gunpoint are sport utility vehicles (SUVs/crossovers) and trailer trucks.Footnote 32
Figure 1. Vehicle Theft in the Province of Buenos Aires by Year
There are no reliable statistics about the number of victims murdered during the act of vehicle theft in the province of Buenos Aires, and I was able to access a report by the Auditoría General de Asuntos Internos (General Audit of Internal Affairs) that covered only the period from 2000 to 2001. The report indicates that 37 people were murdered in 2000, and 50 the year after.Footnote 33 Considering that during the following years the number of thefts decreased, it is possible to assume that the number of victims has not increased considerably. Nevertheless, we are dealing with a number of carjacking victims nearly double that in the United States.Footnote 34
There are several methods of making illegal profits from stolen vehicles. According to the judicial investigations to which I had access, (a) the vehicles can be used for other criminal purposes and abandoned afterwards, (b) the vehicles can be taken to bordering countries to be sold on, (c) the vehicles can be sold on by changing the license plate and falsifying the car ownership papers, (d) registration of cars of illicit origin can be attempted, and (e) the vehicles can be dismantled and their parts then sold.Footnote 35 According to three former government employees who had been leading the war against illegal chop shops, the most frequently used methods are (d) and (e).Footnote 36 We will refer to method (d) when dealing with how car theft is rendered bureaucratically invisible. Method (e), dismantling the cars and selling the parts, is by far the most widespread method and the one used with most stolen cars. The greatest incentive for this illicit economic activity is the high demand for auto parts, which increases in periods of economic instability and in contexts of poverty.Footnote 37 Buying auto parts of questionable origin in Greater Buenos Aires is not frowned upon, and shops where these auto parts can be purchased are well known. There is no reliable information regarding the criminal organisations involved in this activity, either about the amount of money involved, the number of parts sold or the number of points of sale. The information that I will provide next comes mainly from official documents from the General Audit of Internal Affairs, mostly memoranda corresponding to the year 2003, when the most important offensive against this activity was launched. Since we are dealing with fragmentary information, the objective is not to provide exact amounts, but rather to show the high profitability of this illegal activity through examples. Simultaneously, I intend to show why illegal police protection is a coveted commodity and why it takes certain forms.
The investigation into the murders of teenagers Héctor Horacio Iglesia Braun and María Victoria Chiaradía on Saturday, 26 August 2000 shed light on the modus operandi of these businesses. According to Preliminary Criminal Investigation no. 22318, the murders of the teenagers had their origin in one Martín Oscar Goyeneche's hunt for a grey Chevrolet Corsa. The interest of the latter, who declared that he ‘cloned’ cars for a living, lay in having bought the remnants – scrap metal – of a grey Chevrolet Corsa, identical to the one in which the two teenagers were travelling. Once in possession of the papers from the scrapped Corsa, he needed to find a similar car with the purpose of dismantling it, selling the functioning auto parts and ‘attaching’ the papers. The person in charge of looking for and ‘lifting’ the car off the street was Rubén Oscar Martín, an employee of Juan Antonio Corona, who was a businessman involved in cutting up automobiles and selling the parts and an acquaintance of Goyeneche.Footnote 38 During the raid on Goyeneche's chop shop, an accounting book was found that contained a detailed description of the company's finances for the years 1998, 1999 and 2000. According to a report related to the case, in those three years Corona's chop shop had received cheques amounting to US$ 266,395, or an average of US$ 7,400 per month.Footnote 39 According to journalistic estimates, this was a business that turned over 744 million pesos (US$ 170.78 million) in 2003.Footnote 40 Chop shops are spread throughout the provincial territory, although – just like the vehicle thefts themselves – most are concentrated in the north and south of Greater Buenos Aires. According to statistics from the General Audit of Internal Affairs, between January and June 2003, 394 chop shops were identified and investigated. Although there are no current statistics about the number of chop shops or questionable auto parts being sold, the business still thrives, as indicated by the continuing rise in auto thefts. In November 2009 the DNFDA confiscated 970,000 auto parts that came from cars stolen in the province of Buenos Aires.Footnote 41 It is worth noting that, due to distrust in the police force of the province of Buenos Aires, the DNFDA conducts raids with a federal law enforcement agency, the Gendarmerie. In this way, the DNFDA avoids information leaks due to the well-known links between the provincial police force and the chop shops.Footnote 42
The enormous number of vehicles that are stolen in the province of Buenos Aires, and their most common fate – being dismantled, to be sold on as parts – serves to show that there are three critical moments in the ‘production line’ that are predicated on protection. These are when vehicles are stolen, when vehicles are dismantled and when auto parts are sold.
Suspending Enforcement: The Forms of Illegal Police Protection
How exactly do the police protect thieves, dismantlers and distributors? In this section I will show the specific forms of protection that the police sell, using the market for stolen vehicles in Buenos Aires as a reference point. These forms of protection do not follow Tilly's logic of state formation or the dynamic of selling mafia protection described by Gambetta. In our case, in contradiction with its promise to protect law-abiding citizens, the state sells protection to criminals.
What makes the sale of these automobiles or auto parts illegal is the theft of the merchandise itself. This illegality begins at the time of the theft and continues during the sale of the vehicle or its parts.Footnote 43 This means, as shown in the previous section, that criminal companies may require police protection at different moments. Based on the collected empirical evidence, I will now describe the three concrete forms illegal police protection takes that enable the stolen car business to thrive.Footnote 44 The first and most common form of sale of protection is arrest of people on legitimate or illegitimate grounds in order to extort money for their release.Footnote 45 People thought to have committed specific crimes, such as individuals who have stolen cars or criminals with arrest warrants pending,Footnote 46 as well as others who have not (but in general are known criminals), are arrested and then charged for their release, either in the form of cash or part of the loot.Footnote 47 This is related to car thieves’ recruitment of teenagers and the supply of police protection so they can commit crimes such as ‘lifting’ vehicles off the street. Though arrest-and-release and its derivative, recruitment, are widespread forms of sale of protection, they reach their limit when conflicts emerge. Indeed, as we will see, deaths of young men in alleged confrontations with the police seem to be a consequence of the breach of the informal contractual relationship between the police and their clients.Footnote 48
The second effective mechanism of sale of protection that stimulates the operation of the market for stolen vehicles is that of exempting areas where criminals dismantle vehicles from the rule of law. These zonas liberadas may also fulfil an essential role when criminals steal vehicles from the street or when vehicles are illegally sold on in businesses. In addition, this is a form of protection from which profits are made in other markets in Buenos Aires – the protection may cover fixed targets such as ‘kitchens’ or places to store cocaine, or moving targets such as people or vehicles.Footnote 49 In any case, the protection requires an exhaustive knowledge of the territory as well as a certain degree of logistical coordination. Supervision officer Carlos stated that ‘the person who gives the order to create a police no-go area at a specific time and street is the officer on duty or the chief officer’.
The third form of protection used to secure interests (economic or prestige), as well as to regulate the markets, is that of informants and information. Informants might be criminals, but they could equally be actors from other state institutions. A criminal's world is insecure, and quality information is a precious commodity; this is reason enough for criminals to trade information in exchange for protection and/or money. Meanwhile, the police can benefit economically or gain prestige if they manage to intercept valuable information. An example of the latter is the senior police officers who buy information related to drug cargos coming from other provinces or bordering countries and then use it to organise drug seizures that, due to widespread media interest, earn them promotions or awards.Footnote 50 As regards criminal informants, Carlos noted:
The buchón [informant] is generally a lowlife who turns in others so as to eliminate competitors. They can also be members of gangs that realise that selling information is profitable and then negotiate. One thing's for sure, if they sell crap, they'd better go to Misiones [an Argentine province distant from Buenos Aires]. The buchón is offered protection and, in the field of drug trafficking, that's paid in drugs. They're paid with part of the seized drugs, generally 10 per cent, and with the full knowledge of the district attorneys. The thing is, the law protecting undercover witnesses doesn't work and the problem for the buchón is that he has no guarantees. The information is bought in order to be used inside the institution and he is given protection up to there, and that's it.
The police can also trade protection with other agents of the state in exchange for information that they then sell to criminals. An example of this is the sale of information to the owners of chop shops or sellers of stolen auto parts. They are notified when judges or investigatory authorities plan to carry out controls or raids.Footnote 51 For these reasons, the role of the buchón, an authentic dealer of information, becomes extremely important.Footnote 52
Behind the Suspension of Enforcement
All of these three forms are present in the theft and resale of vehicles, one of the most widespread and profitable criminal phenomena in Greater Buenos Aires. The different protection formats enable the theft of the vehicles, each of which is subsequently ‘cloned’ to create a ‘clean’ vehicle or dismantled to facilitate the sale of its parts. At first sight, these suspensions of enforcement – that is, ‘turning a blind eye’ in exchange for money – would seem to be simpler than enforcing the rule of law by force, with the technical and bureaucratic effort that that entails. However, the purpose of this section is to show that, on the contrary, simplicity is only superficial. The suspension of enforcement and its sale to businessmen in the vehicle theft underworld hides three mechanisms that make it possible: threats and selective implementation of penalties, control of consequences, and bureaucratic falsification. According to the empirical evidence, these three elements are indispensable for offering the suspension of enforcement as a product. With limitations but also with a high degree of effectiveness, these three mechanisms are merged and shape the phenomenon into an informal Leviathan: the police threaten to inflict extra-legal violence, offer protection and implement selective punitive measures, while controlling the consequences of these actions and concealing them bureaucratically. This Leviathan reminds us of what Tilly said about the early stages of state-making and the line between legitimate and illegitimate violence: ‘In times of war, indeed, the managers of full-fledged states often commissioned privateers, hired sometime bandits to raid their enemies, and encouraged their regular troops to take booty.’Footnote 53
Threat and imposition of penalties
For police chiefs or lower-ranking police officers, suspending law enforcement in order to provide protection is nonetheless a risky action. For this reason, they must establish certain rules with the criminals. Based on the evidence to hand, we can state that this is an asymmetrical relation in which the police have a larger share of power. Nevertheless, the imposition of conditions by the police does not imply the existence of distant relations or the absence of cooperation in the illegal business.Footnote 54
Relations between the police and the vehicle lifters, dismantlers or ‘cloners’ in Greater Buenos Aires are established by means of the so-called ‘street service’, a group of four or five police officers whose job is to patrol their jurisdiction all day long.Footnote 55 All the knowledge that the police stations have accumulated about the territory comes from this group, which is in touch with neighbours, shopkeepers, business people, public employees and criminals, as well as from the police officers’ personal histories – for example, many of them were born in shanty towns and therefore ‘know where the cocaine kitchens are’.Footnote 56 The street service, then, as the first line of contact with the criminals, is an essential stage in the process of protection sale. There, prices and sale conditions are set, possible reprisals are communicated and strategic information is given, such as the opening and closing hours of local shops or details of possible interference by other state organisms.Footnote 57 Using official information for criminal purposes makes the street service a significant aspect in the manipulation of available information. The monopoly held by the police implies that the street service does not specialise in verifying whether illegal transactions carried out by its clients are conducted in an orderly manner. To a certain extent, it is not relevant for the police if their clients swindle or are swindled, as it is also not important to gather personal information about these clients. This is the case because the police, unlike the mafia groups described by Gambetta, do not need to defend themselves from competitors. It is why, for the purpose of selling illegal protection, it is not necessary to use mechanisms of criminal intelligence – it is only necessary to verify, as we shall see, the criminals’ ability to pay.Footnote 58
However, the police must control the reliability of the information given by criminals in order to protect themselves from useless or risky information. Here, the officer with exhaustive knowledge about the area and its inhabitants again plays an essential role and can avoid the sale of useless information by criminals by implying that he already has better information. Due to this deterrent, it is understood that at first the police will accept all sorts of information, and they will then evaluate the reliability of their partners.Footnote 59 Deterring criminals must necessarily be accompanied by the constant threat of physical violence, however. Interviewees expressed the view that the level of violence increases and the modus operandi changes in instances where criminal partners sell false information or do not comply with what was agreed upon.Footnote 60 Police have come to use the term ‘confrontation’ to refer to instances where they mete out the ‘maximum penalty’ (death) to criminals who double-cross them.Footnote 61 The secondary purpose of the murder of criminals is to send a message to the criminal underworld.Footnote 62 In this case, violence rather than money becomes the relevant medium of exchange between the police and the criminals.
This phenomenon of violent ‘confrontations’ between policemen and criminals undoubtedly shows that cooperation has its limits and that informal rules do not suffice when conflicts arise. In fact, these actions are usually extrajudicial executions which are presented to the general public as shoot-outs after the police have altered or ‘produced’ evidence of the events.Footnote 63 In this context, children and young people are a section of the population particularly exposed to police business and violence, since they are first recruited to steal and then, if they disagree or refuse, are executed. A report submitted to the General Audit of Internal Affairs by the human rights secretary of the province of Buenos Aires notes the increase in deaths of teenagers through alleged run-ins with the police in Lomas de Zamora in 2001.Footnote 64 It shows that the deaths of 14 teenagers in the district represent 41.7 per cent of that type of death in the whole province, while the figure was only 7.7 per cent in 2000. The same report links the number of dead young people to confrontations with the police during that year and concludes that both have increased considerably when compared to previous years and to other districts with the same number of inhabitants.
Control of consequences and profitability
The three aforementioned forms, apart from providing conditions of protection to certain businesses, generate side effects which can affect police officers negatively – for example, if more cars than expected are stolen, if innocent people are killed or if the profits are not certain. For this reason, the suspension of enforcement is only carried out once certain factors have been properly evaluated. Just like insurance companies, police officers who sell illegal protection also stipulate the conditions of the contract in order to avoid unintended consequences. The protector ensures that there are tolerable risk margins. Supervision officer Carlos and former minister Leon C. Arslanián agree, in different ways, that there are three aspects that police take into account: profitability, the media's impact on business and the reaction of the insurance companies. This means that the businesses have to be profitable, with low media impact, and have no considerable effect on the insurance companies. Both interviewees pointed out that, on the contrary, if there are no profits that encourage risk-taking, if the possibilities of the media becoming aware of the activity are too high or if insurance companies become suspicious, the conditions for the sale of protection are not met and will preclude it. These conditions prove essential during the process of protection sale and determine who will be able to purchase it.
Acts of violence perpetrated by police, particularly the murder of innocents and/or young people, attract the attention of the mass media.Footnote 65 This situation, within a framework of general concern caused by lack of public security, leads to political and institutional pressures which can jeopardise the jobs of the police officers involved.Footnote 66 For this reason, Carlos mentioned the tendency among officers to avoid working with paqueados (those who use freebase cocaine, or paco). When paqueados are involved, especially during car thefts, there are risks of murders being committed, which may lead to public protests or the intervention of the mass media.Footnote 67 The same risk arises during kidnappings for ransom.Footnote 68 In relation to this, Carlos said:
All the police stations depend on the district police station – that is to say, it's like a network. Nobody should stick out when doing business because if you mess up, you affect the district station and in the end you damage the other police stations and the mayor. Because of that, we avoid dealing with gangs of kids wasted on paco or dealing with kidnappers. That causes media fuss and it's very important [to avoid it].
The particularity and advantage of the business of stolen cars is that, in comparison with other lucrative and widespread forms of trafficking, the average citizen has weaker moral objections to car theft. The only exception is when episodes of violence occur and, as mentioned, this is an important aspect during the sale of protection.
The second condition that determines whether law enforcement is suspended is the reaction of the insurance companies. Here, former minister Arslanián provides a clear example:
Once I received a document developed by the COMPSTAT [Computer Statistics] system which stated that a police station reported the theft of 71 automobiles every month. How odd! Every month, 71! Therefore, we realised that there was a quota per jurisdiction – that is to say, a number of car thefts that is determined or stipulated by each police station. The quantity is set, among other factors, by the law of supply and demand, but also by the levels of tolerance of the insurance companies.
I was not able to find out how the police officers know what the tolerance limit of the insurance companies is. Nevertheless, I did learn that the relation is complex because, in many cases, insurance companies employ the ‘vehicle retrieval’ services of other companies owned by former police chiefs.Footnote 69
The third aspect that conditions the offer of protection is the profitability of the business. This aspect is simple but decisive, and if the payment is not received, the penalties mentioned in the previous section are imposed. Carlos said: ‘If you work for the cops, you leave 50 per cent. The thieves leave that money. Then you have the big purchases of equipment and the bids, but the police headquarters are in charge of that, not the police stations.’
The aforementioned conditions for the suspension of enforcement are made to ensure the profitability of the business as well as its characteristic of remaining under the radar. This last characteristic complements the third mechanism which makes possible the offer of a momentary cancellation of the rule of law by the police: bureaucratic falsification.
Bureaucratic falsification
The three forms of illegal protection discussed above could not be marketed without administrative-bureaucratic mechanisms that render them invisible. Together with the imposition of penalties and the aforementioned conditions of sale, bureaucratic falsification is the third mechanism that shapes illegal police protection. Creating ‘no-go areas’, the ‘arrest-and-release’ of people, and informant protection all require constant tampering with records or submitting certificates intended to conceal multiple irregularities that occurred during the protection sale. Consequently, the legal system considered in broad terms is an essential component when absorbing the demands of illegality and maintaining a legal appearance of police actions. This is not achieved with police participation alone, however. From many of the documents I was able to access, I could verify that the granting of certificates, authorisations, permits and so forth is something usual and without which illegal businesses could not prosper. Investigations stemming from the murders of María Victoria Chiaradía and Héctor Horacio Iglesia Braun suggest collaboration between different bodies within the judicial system, or at least omission on their part.Footnote 70 Other memoranda reveal that contact with the legal system does not necessarily mean civil servants are collaborating with illicit activity. An example of this is the purchase in public auctions of wrecked cars with car ownership papers. Once the buyers of the wrecked vehicle have bought it, they will start to search for and then steal a vehicle with the same characteristics in order to ‘clone’ it using the papers of the purchased car. This gives them a ‘new’ vehicle that may be sold as a remis (fixed-fare taxi) in Greater Buenos Aires or as spare parts.Footnote 71
In addition to their judicial participation in the promotion of this business, police are clearly active in tampering with documents. This can be verified by Administrative Summary Investigation no. 4679/702 of 2002, in which, aside from being accused of theft during December 2001, the police were accused of covering up brothels. It was also alleged that the police chief and patrol officers in Lanús were protecting chop shops. It is clear from this that protection turns into an administrative cover-up when documents are drawn up stating that, following a police inspection, there is ‘nothing unusual to report’.Footnote 72 I must also mention a bureaucratic cover-up practice that, according to the interviewees, is frequent and widespread: tampering with the police station's logbook. The logbook is the register of contact between the police and civilians within each police station and records complaints, details of people under arrest, requests for certificates and so forth.Footnote 73 Nevertheless, it is possible to tamper with the book by recording certain events selectively and with delay. In other words, this is a register that coincides only partially with what actually happens in the station. In that sense, an important former auditor of internal affairs pointed out that ‘the logbooks are delayed one hour in the entire province’ so as to ‘handle’ certain situations. For example, on some occasions, when ‘a person under arrest arrives, he is not registered because he is asked for an amount of money to be released’.Footnote 74 Just one example that confirms these fraudulent practices is the case of five people who were arrested for the alleged crime of ‘property damage, assault and resisting arrest’ that was recorded in the logbook 17 hours after arrest. As a result of this event, a sub-chief of police and a deputy police inspector were reported for ‘fraudulent falsification of the police station's logbook, specifically page 109’.Footnote 75
Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated how a key law enforcement agency, the police force of the province of Buenos Aires, is highly specialised in the sale of protection to criminals. Unlike the literature about mafia or state protection, whose common factor is an unambiguous separation between state and criminal activities, the present article is based on the idea of illegal police protection, a notion that blurs the line between the two spheres. This is conceptually necessary to understand the complexity of a twofold phenomenon. On the surface, one can observe the joint nature of the enterprise between the police force, which suspends enforcement of the law in a more or less controlled way, and the criminals, who manage ‘production’ and sale of stolen auto parts and repay the police for services rendered. This joint venture becomes visible in the different nodes of the supply chain, right from the beginning, when cars are ‘lifted’, passing through their dismantling until the final stage, when the auto parts are sold. Stopping police surveillance, directing it towards other neighbourhoods and arresting and releasing auto thieves are all activities closely interlocked with demands at different stages of this supply chain. Once we raise the question of the robustness of this complicity, however, other phenomena should be considered. In the long run, these activities could not be undertaken if specific well-institutionalised mechanisms did not offer the necessary stability and cover. In fact, the police's marked ability to perceive the limits set by insurance companies, their capacity to impose penalties, their amazing ability to detect when the mass media are getting too curious and their willingness to constantly expunge traces of their activity from the bureaucratic record all highlight the absolutely necessary role of the police in making the machinery function smoothly and discreetly. It is precisely the intricacy of this far-reaching phenomenon, which ultimately acts as a giant shield safeguarding illicit transactions, that is the reason for suggesting the notion of illegal police protection.
This article also suggests a line of enquiry for further research on law enforcement agencies and illegal markets. Drawing mainly on Tilly's and Gambetta's approaches to the study of state and mafia organisations, I argue that illegal police protection seems to be essential to the running of the market for stolen vehicles in the province of Buenos Aires. This hypothesis relies on empirical evidence that shows the very close relationship between the persistence of criminal activities and a set of deep-rooted informal mechanisms exploited by the police. In fact, existing research on Latin America reveals these strong ties and shows that the study of criminal activities also entails the study of the state.Footnote 76 In light of illegal police protection, however, this topic gains a new momentum. On the one hand, the fact that a police organisation protects two sets of clients with extremely different interests – law-abiding citizens and criminals – makes evident the seriousness of the problem related to the governance of public security. On the other hand, the existence of a type of protection that aims to extract monetary resources from criminal activities leads us to the question of whether such resources provide benefit only to individual officers or whether they support the everyday operations of the police organisation itself.
