“When a Cuban Police Official Says ‘Enough’ the Regime Will Fall”
Miami Police Chief Manuel A. Morales acknowledges that “doing the right thing isn’t easy, as its easier to go with the flow.”
HAVANA TIMES – Veteran Cuban-American police officer Manuel A. Morales, head of the Miami brigade, believes his colleagues on the island “can be the catalyst for change” if they understand “their true role,” which is “to serve the people.” In an interview with CubaNet, the officer reflects that although “doing the right thing isn’t easy,” since “it’s easier to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing,” he asserts, “change begins with just one person.”
That change, continues Chief Morales, as he is known among his colleagues, “can spread from one officer to another until the moment comes when they say: ’Enough. We are not here to repress the people, we are here to protect them.’” When that happens, he asserts, “the regime will fall.”
The officer, with 31 years of service and known for having led the investigation into the death of the singer José Manuel Carbajal Zaldívar, ’El Taiger’, insists that many Cuban police officers “have only seen a model of repression, but if they begin to understand that their true role is to protect the people, change will be inevitable.”
In this regard, he recalled Philip Zimbardo’s study, The Lucifer Effect, from the 1970s, which demonstrates “how an authoritarian environment can corrupt even psychologically healthy people.” He concludes: “It all starts with one person saying ’this isn’t right,’ and, like dominoes, others begin to follow.”
In the same way, he says, change must begin with the police and “then the army,” because “an oppressive system cannot be sustained without all members of society collaborating in the repression.”
Morales recalls that the Miami police provided support in other countries to achieve stability, for example in Haiti, where they sent Haitian-American officers to train their colleagues. “They were there for at least eight days and worked alongside the United Nations police. Something similar happened in Panama after Noriega’s fall: the Panamanian National Police was trained by us.” The same, he suggests, could happen in Cuba, where his officers, and even he himself, would be willing to retrain the police in the event of a democratic change.
Born in Puerto Rico to Cuban parents, with a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership from the University of Saint Thomas and a master’s degree in Security Studies from the Center for National Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School, he joined the Miami Police Department in 1994 as an officer and has had a distinguished career. He was promoted to commander in 2009 and has overseen daily operations and the deployment of the Gang Unit and the Crime Suppression Unit.
Regarding professional ethics, the veteran believes that “freedom must always come before security.” “If we sacrifice freedom for security, we lose both. The key is to guarantee freedom, and as a result, security develops naturally. Here, the legal process ensures that no one is arbitrarily convicted.”
Translated by Translating Cuba.