Cuba, Police

Having been in Russia, Belgium, France, Germany, Turkey, Italy and Canada, I've had an opportunity to observe and compare the use and presence of police in a wide range of societies and environments. If I were to draw a conclusion, it would be that the more placid a society, the less noticeable the police presence. Think about it. At home in California, I go several days without seeing them and that includes even seeing their vehicles of the street.

A lot of that may have to do with the places I frequent. In France, I did not see a lot of police until I ventured near the Arc de Triomphe, then they were there in numbers, armed to the teeth. Antiterrorism, no doubt. Still, an absence of police, particularly well armed police is an indicator of confidence, I think. They aren't there because they aren't needed.

If that is the case, then Cuba's government is pretty confident in the quiescence of their public. In my five days in Havana, I covered a lot of ground, walking through almost all of its neighborhoods. I saw the parks, the hospitals, the transit hubs, the residential streets and tourist meccas. I did not see a lot of police. Even in the places where you might expect to see them, the tourist zones, where relatively large crowds congregate.

There were some places where there was a significant well armed military presence.  For some reason the area around the Plaza de la Revolucion is designated a military zone and there you find the army with their automatic weapons maintaining a perimeter around the buildings and streets they want to keep you away from. In these places you feel the coercive presence - but it is a presence I did not feel anywhere else.

Elsewhere, from time to time you might cross paths with the police and when you did, the overwhelming impression I got was that they were just hanging out. There did not seem to be a whole lot of them and there did not seem to be a whole lot for them to do. Crime does not seem to be a common occurrence in Cuba. The guidebooks and Cubans I met all told me that Havana was extremely safe. I felt safe, even walking alone down dark streets (almost all of Havana’s streets are unlit) through poor neighborhoods (all the neighborhoods I saw were poor).

How do you account for this? Community policing. Every neighborhood has its a CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) - the eyes and ears of the revolution (government)  They know what is going on and anti-social behavior (crime) is not likely to go unnoticed or unpunished.  There is no upside to crime. It doesn't happen.

So the police act mostly as facilitators (traffic circulation) and problem solvers. I observed one incident that was remarkable. A woman was having a dispute with the man, following him and shouting. He ducked into a bar and the bouncer stepped up to bar her path. More shouting and now shoving.  A policeman arrived - now she was shouting and shoving him. Imagine what happens next…

I was expecting her face in the sidewalk and cuffs. Nope, the policeman guided her to the corner, calmed her down and ended up consoling the now crying woman. The conclusion I reached is that the police are not feared and are not really seen as an instrument of oppression (they are unarmed, btw)  It made me wonder: what if there was a demonstration? Would this regime arm them? Whose side would they take? It leaves me pondering one of the big questions I had in Cuba; Why don't Cubans protest?