Eternal police limitations
The official narrative insists that the presence of “black block” is a “minor” phenomenon against the legitimate character of social protest. However, data and evidence contradict this argument. In the day of October 2, the material losses reported by associations of merchants and insurers exceeded 25 million pesos. To this is added the affectation to public transport, the interruption of services and the damage to historical real estate. These impacts cannot be considered “collateral” or “inevitable”; They are the direct result of a policy that limits police intervention under the pretext of avoiding “repression.”
The problem is that security forces are trapped in a normative and political maze. On the one hand, the legal framework establishes clear protocols for the gradual use of force, designed precisely to differentiate between peaceful protesters and violent actors. On the other, the political leadership of the capital has chosen to apply an ideological interpretation of these protocols, instructing the police to privilege absolute passivity rather than the restoration of order. The consequence: a police force that, instead of guaranteeing rights, makes them dead letter for whom they see their safety and assets violated.
There is no intervention model
The performance of the Mexico City Police in this type of scenarios reflects a worrying distortion of the concept of public security. The authority seems to have resigned to exercise the legitimate monopoly of force, giving land to minority groups whose sole objective is to generate chaos. Inaction, far from disparaging violence, encourages it: the “black block” acts with the certainty that it will not face immediate consequences, while merchants, neighbors and common citizens are trapped in helplessness.
To this distortion is added the lack of professionalization in selective containment tactics. Capital Police has units of genrees dissolved in the speech, but de facto replaced with “risk care” bodies without sufficient preparation or sufficient equipment to intervene with surgical precision. The result is a weakened security apparatus, without tools to separate the violent from peaceful protesters, and without political support to exercise legitimate control actions.
The most serious thing is that this strategy erodes citizen trust. Every time the police remain passive in the face of street violence, a message of impunity that weakens the social fabric is sent. The common citizen, who pays taxes and respects the law, feels abandoned by a State that prefers to tolerate vandalism rather than guarantee coexistence.
Real solution proposals
It is urgent to rethink the police intervention model in demonstrations, and for this specific measures are required:
– Recover the doctrine of legitimate and proportional use of force. Police must be empowered and forced to intervene against acts of violence clearly differentiating between those who protest peacefully and those who commit crimes. This does not imply criminalizing the protest, but effectively separating both phenomena.
– Create specialized containment units. Police bodies trained in controlled dispersion techniques, selective detention and tactical intelligence in land, with auditable protocols and supervised by civil agencies are required.
– Strengthen preventive intelligence. The infiltration of the “black block” in marches is predictable: its tactics, clothing and modus operandi are known. An early monitoring and identification strategy would allow neutralizing its action before the riots scale.
– Politically responsible for the authorities. The cost of inaction cannot continue to fall on citizens and merchants. An accountability mechanism must be established where police and political heads respond for the damages derived from the lack of intervention.
– Promote continuous professionalization. Mexico City Police requires permanent training programs in human rights, mediation of conflicts and modern crowd control techniques. Passivity is not synonymous with respect for rights, but of operational incompetence.
