U.S. Pays Costa Rica to Hire More Female Cops as Police at Home Get Defunded

While police departments across the United States are being defunded to appease leftists, the federal government is dedicating hundreds of thousands of dollars to advance “gender equality” in the “police forces” of a Latin American nation. It is a difficult foreign grant to swallow as local law enforcement agencies nationwide suffer through major budget cuts at the request of the increasingly powerful Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The money will flow through the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), a broad effort funded by American taxpayers to fight crime, counter production and trafficking of illicit drugs and build sound criminal justice systems in foreign countries.

In this case, Costa Rica will receive $200,000 from Uncle Sam to develop an empowerment strategy on gender equality for the Costa Rican National Police. This includes creating a system of theoretical and practical modules that facilitate strategies to train police officers on current gender issues, according to the lengthy grant announcement. The money will also fund manuals of good practices that will be applied in police and administrative activities and guides that will verify the application of gender equality in daily police and administrative work. Costa Rican officials will also use the money to hold the first “institutional meeting of women leaders in gender matters” that will help create a national agenda for the “empowerment of the police forces in the promotion of gender equity and prevention of gender violence in all its forms.” In the end a guide will be developed with the history of gender equality in the Costa Rican Ministry of Security and the National Police Academy.

The U.S. is investing in this project because women make up half of the world’s population and it is essential to educate, empower and recognize their talent. Evidently Costa Rican officials have committed to achieving gender equality by 2030 and that requires help from American taxpayers, according to the grant document. “As part of this gender-balance project, Costa Rica would be able to resolve one fundamental question: why are there so few women at a senior level in law enforcement compared to other professions?” The document goes on to claim that studies show significantly better quality of decision-making within more gender-balanced leadership teams, with gender-balanced workplaces performing better. “The work of the police and administrative staff are jobs that are tailored for both men and women,” the State Department writes. “In short, it is smart to have gender-balanced groups.”

The new grant will also help create important reference material for Costa Rica’s National Police Academy on a variety of “gender-related subjects,” including definitions of terms related to the subject. Examples include sexual harassment and abuse, domestic violence, patriarchy, control and power from the patriarchy, abuse of power, gender violence, inequality in the enforcement of rights and gender roles in the family. For instance, the U.S.-funded material will “promote a greater participation of men in domestic care work and encourage the exercise of active maternity and paternity.” A toolkit will be created to guide police in the Central American nation on matters concerning training and gender equality in police training and activities as well as policies to increase recruitment of female officers. The toolkit will also offer tips on ensuring female officers are included among decision makers and how to establish special gender police commissions to address sexual violence and gender-based violence within the agency.

In the meantime, back at home police is suffering from massive budget cuts not to mention fiery attacks from the left. More than a dozen cities have slashed police funding or decreased the number of officers, according to a probe conducted by a national news agency. They include the nation’s two largest cities—Los Angeles and New York—which recently eliminated $150 million and $1 billion respectively from their police budget. Other cities that have drastically lowered police funding include Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore, Portland and Salt Lake City and Philadelphia. Washington D.C. cut its police budget by $15 million. One capital area news report says D.C police was scheduled to get a 3% budget increase but officials caved into the demands of BLM demonstrators, who repeatedly called for police defunding.

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