Haiti police confront public frustration after deadly gang attack kills 47

The attack in Kenscoff, a hillside community where crime had been declining, has raised questions about Haiti’s ongoing security struggles.

Haiti’s national police has faced growing scrutiny over its failure to stem violent attacks by armed criminal groups, which killed 47 people and kidnapped more than 50 last weekend.

Police spokesperson Garry Desrosiers held a news conference on Thursday, taking questions from a handful of reporters.

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He offered few details about how the police plan to respond to the August 23 mass kidnapping, considered one of the largest such incidents in the country’s recent history.

“We cannot talk about any plans,” Desrosiers said.

The attack on the community of Kenscoff, located in the hills outside of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, has underscored the continued influence of powerful gangs in the country.

Hundreds of people fled the attack. Desrosiers said that police are working to return them home.

One gang leader has threatened to execute all the hostages if any gang members are killed as police work to gain control over Kenscoff.

Asked whether police had gathered any intelligence before the attack, Desrosiers offered sparse comments, saying authorities have been working to find information.

He added that the police believe one gang leader has threatened an assault on Tabarre, a neighbourhood in the capital that is home to the United States embassy.

“I’m not in a position to give you detailed information,” Desrosiers said.

The attack on Kenscoff comes as authorities in Haiti seek to reclaim control of the capital city. The United Nations estimates that the community has suffered about a dozen gang attacks since last year.

But violence had been dropping in the area. Between January and August, the nonprofit conflict monitor Armed Conflict Location and Event Data found that the crackdown had lowered violence in Kenscoff by 66 percent compared with a year ago.

Still, the UN has warned that gang-related violence is “spreading geographically even as the authorities’ anti-gang campaign intensifies in Port-au-Prince”.

The international body has estimated that more than 3,050 people have been killed across the country between January and June alone.

“These figures show that the population continues to bear an unacceptable toll from violence,” the UN’s top representative in Haiti, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Armed groups have acquired growing influence in Haiti since the assassination of former President Jovenel Moise in 2021, which left a power vacuum in the country’s government.

No national elections have been held in the years since, and the last elected senators saw their terms expire in 2023.

Haitian officials have repeatedly attempted to schedule a new vote, only to postpone the elections due to security concerns and other factors. Currently, a general election is scheduled for December.

Armed groups in the country have pointed to the political and economic instability as justification for the violence.

Currently, an estimated 70 percent of Port-au-Prince is under gang control. Clashes have displaced more than 1.5 million people across the country.

In April, the first members of a UN-backed Gang Suppression Force arrived in Haiti with the aim of dismantling organised violence in the country.

It was also designed to relieve a smaller multinational security mission led by Kenya that struggled with a lack of funding and support.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed optimism about the arrival of the force’s members.

“Their deployment offers a real opportunity to curb violence and restore the authority of the state,” he said after visiting their base in June.

But critics have argued that international efforts have had little success so far. Such missions have also drawn uncomfortable comparisons to previous foreign interventions in Haiti, many of which have faced accusations of rights abuses.

Haitian police have also struggled with allegations of corruption, incompetence and, in some cases, collaboration with armed groups.

Vladimir Paraison, head of Haiti’s national police, did not attend Thursday’s news conference but has defended the police from criticism since the Kenscoff attack.

He has indicated that an investigation is underway to probe whether the violence was enabled by “complicity or negligence”.