"I arrived at the airport on a Tuesday and had to install myself as the police chief on Friday. The men who came to pick me up were actually a squadron of death. I did not know. I thought they were agents of the SWAT TEAM because they were the ones wearing the black uniform and Galil guns when I left the country. When I saw them at the airport, I thought it was a provision of the chief of police or the government.
I preferred to get in the car of a friend who had also come to get me. The well-equipped men in black had come with police vehicles and police-bullet-proof vests, they made my way into the street.
Arrived at the hotel Villa Creole, they invested and placed guards. Two days later, they were still there, and by reflex, I called one of them and asked him which promotion he belonged to. He replied that he was not promoted by the police. He told me that they were assailants who helped to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
They were old attachés, a heterogeneous group. They were not trained, but they knew how to handle weapons. When I started to question them, they told me that they were forty (40) and that they were called the "Back Up Delta". They said that where the police can not intervene, it is they who intervene. My predecessor (Editor's note, Leon Charles) knew about it. They told me, for example, at Fort National, they were the ones who intervened. They said that in those neighborhoods they did not look when they were shooting.
They wanted me to integrate them into the police. They told me that it was the director of the police who sometimes gave them some money, the director of the OAVCT (Editor's note: the Office Insurance of Vehicles against Third
Parties )
or the NPC (Editor's note : National Port Authority).
When I was handed the list of members of the group, I saw that they were men I had already arrested when I was at the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police. Among them were former attachés and former police officers involved in drugs.
My first disposition was to hold a press conference and I stated that black uniforms no longer exist in the police force. If the public noticed men in black on the streets, they were not policemen. When these men were not black, they were kidnappers. "
Police plates to carry drugs
"I issued a statement announcing that all police vehicles would be marked. The numbers would be visible on the vehicles so that the public could identify them because previously, we could not really identify the police cars.
The license plates marked "Police" that resembled the other license plates were a frequent source of corruption. Since there were not many cars in the PNH, the plates were distributed in the police stations. Drug traffickers bribed police station officials and rented these 2000-dollar Haitian license plates per night. So when we said we saw police vehicles carrying drugs, that was true. These were license plates rented at the police stations. There was no control.
I identified the problem and nobody knew why I said: we will have new plates. We will do it by color: Port-au-Prince Green, Cap-Haitien, red; Jacmel, orange; Nippes, blue. At that time, the plates were stored at home, but not at the logistics of the PNH.
There were so many police officers involved in shady business, illegal and criminal activities. I had no statistics in mind when I said on the radio in 2005 after my arrival that 65% of the crimes that came to Haiti came from the police.
I understood that public opinion had to be with me. That's why everything I did, I communicated it on the radio and I explained why. There are so many things that were hidden. Once unveiled, the public was interested in what was happening within the police.
"It's not better now. Godson Orelus has screwed up everything to please Martelly. "
In this position of chief of police, one must understand his role. Once you are ratified by parliament, you normally have no relationship with either the president or the prime minister. This mentality of our policies to enslave the security forces must change. I resisted Martelly, but Godson Orelus let himself go because he wants to protect his job.
Martelly asked a lot of things. He asked to reinstate individuals who had been dismissed from the police for drug trafficking. There is Féthière who is a senator now. He was dismissed from the police long before I became director, but I knew why. The president has asked for his reinstatement for his drug activities.
I was commissioner of Pétionville. Previously, he (Martelly) worked for Colombians, he carried drugs. So, he built a network of which Sonson La Familia and the others who clustered around him. There was Fourcand, who is now a senator from the south. I destroyed at least five kilometers of tracks in the area of Côtes-de-Fer, the city of Martelly.
I knew he was working for Colombians and these men had a marina in Lully. Once he came to power, he invested he appropriated the marina. Because, in general, it was at the marina that they were going to hide, they used it as a transit position in front of the Côte des Arcadins. Small boats disappeared in these areas. In the same way at Losandieu at Côtes-de-Fer, in the Big Cayes.