Getting to Know Boquete Police Captain Roberto Espinoza

[Moderator_02]

Marcelyn and I scheduled a meeting between ourselves and the Boquete Police, Captain Roberto Espinoza. That meeting was held on Tuesday, January 24^th, 2017 at Puente de Encuentro (aka Olga's) here in Boquete (behind the Dollar Store). The purpose for the meeting was to familiarize Captain Espinoza with CL, and other services that we may be able to offer him and his colleagues, and to get to know him better and publish that information to CL members. Given that my Spanish skills are not good, we invited a good friend -- Mitzi Clare Nash -- who is a licensed translator to join us for the breakfast meeting. Besides an excellent breakfast, courtesy of Olga, we had a very good conversation that lasted a bit short of one hour. What follows are the salient points that were discussed.

First, a bit of background about Captain Espinoza. He was assigned to the Boquete office in December 2016. He is originally from Boquete, and so he knows the area very well. He soon will be achieving 30 years of police service. He could retire later this year, but no firm decision has been made at this juncture. We found Captain Espinoza to be an excellent listener and logical thinker. He was easy to approach, and always very professional, with a huge smile on his face most of the time, unless deep in thought.

Boquete has 20 assigned officers. Ten of those officers are on duty at any time, and the other ten are resting and on standby in case of an emergency. They have only one (yes 1) vehicle, which is a Toyota HiLux truck. The truck on average gets about 5,000 kilometers every two weeks, and so service for the vehicle is a big issue, referring to the routine changing of oil and filters, etc. The current truck already has over 100,000 KM on it, and so there is no more factory warranty coverage. All parts and maintenance costs are strictly on the police department.

Of the 20 officers for the Boquete office, Officer Pedro Guerra is the only one who is fluent in English. If you are competent in Spanish, or have access to either Rodny Direct or Alto Al Crimen resources, then there should be no language problem while calling for police assistance. Otherwise, look around for a neighbor or friend to help when you need to contact the police.

When asked what the residents can do to help him, Captain Espinoza immediately responded without hesitation: anytime there is a crime type incident, it is very important to report it to the police, and if appropriate to make a denuncia (a sworn statement of an alleged crime), and then work with and coordinate followup reports with the Personaria (think of that as a local "district attorney"). Without the reports of every crime, it would be reasonable to expect two downsides: (a) the size of the Boquete police force might be reduced, and more importantly (b) if the police recover goods believed to be stolen but have no report to link the goods back to the rightful owner, then two undesirable outcomes are likely, first would be that the goods are not documented as stolen and so it is possible that the bad guy(s) could go free as there is no documented crime, and also you probably will never recover your stolen goods. We don't think you would like those outcomes.

You need to be aware that Panama changed its legal accusatory system in the recent past. All of the laws and regulations about how someone gets officially charged with a crime have changed. There have been a few twists in how things work. One twist is that once the police believe they have the criminal in front of them for questioning, they are restricted as to what they can say or do. One example is that the police cannot take a picture of that person. All of these procedural rules were designed so as to protect the rights of an accused person. One violation of those rights (such as taking even one picture of the accused), even if unintentional, will most likely result in invalidating all of the evidence that would be used in a legal proceeding. It is not our purpose here to educate our readers about the new accusatory system, but you need to be aware of it, and that it might adversely affect the outcome of an incident that you are involved in.

There are two issues that Captain Espinoza has very high on his list, hopefully to be achieved in the near future. First is the maintenance issue for their one truck. While it is in for service, they have no backup vehicle(s). By the way, we learned that the routine maintenance on their one truck is done (we believe he said without charge for labor) by Quick Fix, which is located across from Plaza Los Establos. (On the matter of maintenance parts and supplies, he did not solicit donations, but it sounded like if someone wanted to donate funds or the actual parts for the truck's routine maintenance that such a donation would be appreciated.)

The second important goal is that of getting a better security facility at the Caldera bypass intersection on the David-Boquete highway. This really means two separate but related items. One is a barrier/entrance gate on the Caldera bypass road. And the second is the need for a "pull off shoulder" for vehicles to be removed from the main traffic lanes for additional inspection. Apparently the mayor of Boquete has to approve these items through the construction permit process, and so the police department is putting energy into getting the security gate and the bypass shoulder planned, designed, funded, approved, and constructed.

The last area that we talked about was communications between the police and the residents. Captain Espinoza emphasized two items here: (a) use of the WhatsApp capability of mobile devices, and (b) the Vecinos Vigilantes program, which is known by gringos as Neighborhood Watch.

Here are some pictures of Captain Roberto Espinoza, and Mitzi Clare Nash (our translator friend).

 

 

[Keith Woolford]

Thanks for having this meeting and sharing the dialogue.

[MarkoBoquete]

Bud, thanks for taking the time to report to the community about the status of the police and recent policy issues. This is very helpful and Rodny will send it along to all his members. 

One question I would have is the scope of the "taking pictures" issue. Does that apply just to the police or to civilians as well? If you take a picture or video of an intruder, is that included? Can it be used as evidence? In the infamous San Carlos robbery a couple of years ago, Rodny's sister organization, the Panama Helpline in Coronado hired a Boquete detective to investigate. Turns out one of the robbers used a stolen iPhone to take selfies of himself and his family. They went up to the iCloud and were widely circulated. Does that count against the prosecution?

As for a more substantial garita at the Caldera turnoff, that has been on the books since the days of Manolo Ruiz. I hope they can finally get it done.

 

[Moderator_02]

20 hours ago, Keith Woolford said:

Thanks for having this meeting and sharing the dialogue.

Actually the suggestion to schedule this conversation goes to Joe and Linda Hart, who are CL members (@Joe Hart).

Scheduling our meeting was a bit difficult because the idea was discussed prior to the Féria, but Captain Espinoza was incredibly busy during the Féria, as one could imagine. And so it got scheduled for just after the Féria.

And it wasn't like Captain Espinoza wasn't busy after the Féria. Several times during our conversation he had to pause to respond to his walkie-talkie (and only once to a cell phone call). We all understood, after all -- he is the police captain.

[Moderator_02]

18 hours ago, MarkoBoquete said:

One question I would have is the scope of the "taking pictures" issue. Does that apply just to the police or to civilians as well? If you take a picture or video of an intruder, is that included? Can it be used as evidence? In the infamous San Carlos robbery a couple of years ago, Rodny's sister organization, the Panama Helpline in Coronado hired a Boquete detective to investigate. Turns out one of the robbers used a stolen iPhone to take selfies of himself and his family. They went up to the iCloud and were widely circulated. Does that count against the prosecution?

Mark, we didn't go that far down into the details, but from the way the conversation was going my interpretation is that the restraints were on what the police could do at the police station while processing or restraining an alleged criminal after a crime was committed. For example, the police could not take a 'mug shot' because that could infer guilt.

Crime scene evidence would be admissible and not invalidate charges being filed. That kind of evidence would be critical, but generally would be part of the documentation package compiled by the Personaria. A photo taken by a victim's smartphone or security camera coverage during an incident (or even police photos at a crime scene) only document events at a crime scene. (Disclaimer here: I am not a lawyer nor am I giving legal advice -- just an opinion.)

[Moderator_02]

Be advised that many postings in this topic were split off into a new topic because they took this discussion into a very specific theme, that of the reporting of crimes to the police and the results of such reportings. At the time of this splitting action there were 51 postings, which suggests that the split off topic is of high interest by our community.

To view the postings that were split off into a separate topic, please visit: