Venezuela: Comic Cops

The pro-Castro F.A.L.N. may not be able to gather much popular support in Venezuela, but it is adept at making mischief. Posing as government narcotics agents, several F.A.L.N. members last week abducted visiting Spanish Soccer Star Alfredo Di Stéfano, 37. From a hideout in Caracas the F.A.L.N. issued bulletins, even held a press conference to exhibit their prisoner, while Venezuelan police scurried helplessly about looking for them. Finally, 56 hours after his abduction, Di Stéfano was released unharmed. On the street the first cop he approached refused to believe he was really Di Stéfano.

The kidnaping—like the theft of touring Louvre treasures early this year —was one more brazen attempt by the F.A.L.N. to shame the pro-West government of President Rómulo Betancourt. In this it succeeded; it also succeeded in exposing the woefully inefficient and almost comic condition of the Caracas police force.

The ineptitude of the police is a sharp reversal of the days of Dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, when Venezuelan cops, although quick to torture political prisoners, at least caught crooks and hoodlums. But after the revolution of 1958, Venezuelans—fed up with ten years of police brutality—opted for heavily diluted police authority. Today, rather than one central police force, Caracas has six—all with different bosses and varying assignments. Cooperation is a sometime thing. Last week, after four men held up a Pepsi-Cola warehouse seven miles outside Caracas, an employee pursuing them down the highway stopped at a police checkpoint. "We have nothing to do with that," said the cop on duty. "Go to the technical judicial police." A few months ago, two prowl cars from different forces apparently answered the same call. A shot went off, and puzzled police in the two cars began firing at each other.

Last month Betancourt finally set up a joint police command, responsible directly to him and with complete authority over all Caracas police. Some forces are being equipped with fast new prowl cars and station wagons; and for the first time, vehicles will be dispatched through a central radio command.