The money from the Mérida Initiative is starting to flow, first with a couple million toward building a national database of police officers. If it had been in place a few years ago, maybe military deserter Noé Ramírez wouldn't have been in a position to sell Siedo to the Beltrán Leyva.
This is a great place to start, and much more so than military hardware, it has the potential to really attack Mexico's security weaknesses. In general, this is where the plan can make an impact. The sheer scale of the money spent is less important than it's destination, and here we have a few million dollars that is more valuable than a $100 million of F-16s would be.
One caveat: even the best police tracking system in the world doesn't mean much if it's complemented by honest oversight. It's not hard to envision a scandal in which an official tasked with maintaining the database removing a dirty cop from a police blacklist at the behest of a cartel. So, who's policing the police of the police?
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