When Corporate Elites Won Partial Control of a Mexican City — and Then Lost It
Juan Salgado, a governance expert at the CIDE, a Mexico City university, called the new force "very impressive." "What they did was create comprehensive community police services," he said, detailing reforms
that benefited from the C.E.O.s’ largess and as well their ability to skip the usual political corruption and horse trading.
Many of the biggest stories in the last year — ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, democratic backsliding in Turkey
and in Venezuela, regime change in Zimbabwe, a destabilizing power struggle in Saudi Arabia — come down, in part, to weak institutions.
No one much minded business people acting like politicians because, he said, the real problem was politicians acting like business people.
It is one part worldly Davos elite, one part 1980s Wall Streeters working from their beach home in Florida (lots of men with tan suits, manicures
and perfect hair) and three parts cowboy culture, which suffuses this part of Mexico.
If top chief executives in Washington, where we were living, took over local police departments, reformed police practices top-to-bottom
and paid for cops’ salaries and housing, then it wouldn’t really matter if crime dropped.
We must return to our great city!" After a few years, community leaders like Mr. Torjes saw an improvement.