Guatemala does not have enough guns to arm the latest crop of police graduates, pointing to the financial factors holding back the reform and expansion of the force.
Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said that the authorities were trying to find guns to equip 1,503 new police agents who graduated on August 1. He suggested that they could share guns with off-duty police, and said that there would be enough guns once repairs had been made to some broken ones, reported Siglo 21.It's true, as Hannah Stone writes, that the failure to arm the new officers "points to the financial constraints facing the authorities in carrying out police reform." Yes, the new government doesn't have a lot of money.
However, the story seem to be part of a bigger problem with the Perez administration where it has some potentially useful ideas, but it has shown little expertise in being able to carry them out.
