Republican Guard (Peru)
The Peruvian Republican Guard (Guardia Republicana del Perú) was a Peruvian security force responsibility for border control, custody of the prisons, and guarding significant government buildings.
History
The Republican Guard originally started as a regiment of the Peruvian Gendarmerie (Gendarmería Nacional del Perú) which was founded in 1852. In 1919 the Republican Guard was separated from the Gendarmerie and enlarged and its duties expended to patrolling the land frontiers, security of prisons, security of private and public places of national importance, and to assist in maintaining peace and order, and preserving the security of the state.[1]
Entrance into the Guard was voluntary and by the 1980s the it numbered over 5,000 men. It was equipped with light infantry weapons, mostly carbines and submachine guns, and riot gear.
The Guard formed its own Parachute squadron in 1963. For most of its existence the Guard recruited directly from the Peruvian Army and lacked its own training facilities, but then in 1973 it opened a Superior School for senior officer training. The Republican Guard Instruction Center was opened in 1977 and it was responsible for the training of all Guardsmen. It later absorbed the Superior School.
The Republican Guard became the Security Police (PS) in 1986(PS), during the police reorganization, it continued to have responsibility for border control, custody of the prisons, and guarding significant government buildings.[2] The PS grew the most rapidly of all the police forces in the 1980s; from 6,450 in 1980 to 21,484 in 1986. Some 20 percent of the force was detailed to prison duty, with a large portion of the rest distributed among public buildings and 177 border stations. Budget difficulties have delayed the opening of more border control stations. The growing drug-trafficking problem across Peru's borders, particularly with Colombia and Brazil, provided the PS with additional challenges. The additional border posts were envisioned as one way to respond, because most were proposed for areas where the drug trafficking was believed to be concentrated. However, the growing prison population during the 1980s posed more difficulties for the PS; many had to do with the prisoners accused and/or convicted of terrorism.
In 1991 the Security Police became a part of the National Police of Peru in compliance to national security laws.
Issues
In December 1989, two police officers were found guilty of abuses in the prison massacre by a Court of Military Justice and were sentenced to prison terms. The other sixty-nine police members and six army officers accused were acquitted, but in June 1990 the not-guilty verdicts of eight of the police officers were overturned in a Military Appeals Court. One officer was sentenced to one month in jail, the other seven to six months.
See also
References
- ^ Article 1 of Supreme Decree of August 7, 1919 reads: "The police battalions Nos. 1 and 2 has the same regimental organization of army corps, with its current budget and called the " Republican Guard " , commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel, with 27 officers and 431 individuals of all ranks, divided into 2 companies of 2 battalions each, 1 section of machine guns and banda music. "
- ^ http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field%28DOCID+pe0161%29
- Armed Forces of Latin America by Adrian English, 1984, Janes's Publishing, ISBN 0-7106-0321-5
- The Military Balance, The International Institute of Strategic Studies, 1983
- A Country Study: Peru, Library of Congress 1981 and 1993