Haiti police face scrutiny after gang attack kills 47, kidnaps 50+

On August 23, armed gangs descended on Kenscoff, a hillside community outside Port-au-Prince where violence had actually been receding. They killed 47 people and took more than 50 hostages—one of the largest mass kidnappings Haiti has seen in recent memory. Four days later, police spokesperson Garry Desrosiers stood before a small group of reporters and offered almost nothing. When asked about the police response, he said simply: "We cannot talk about any plans." When pressed on whether authorities had gathered intelligence before the attack, he offered sparse comments and repeated that he was not in a position to give detailed information. The message was clear. Haiti's national police, already under fire for corruption and suspected collaboration with criminal groups, had little to say about how it would recover the hostages or prevent the next attack.

The timing of the Kenscoff assault was particularly damning because the area had been improving. Between January and August, violence there had dropped 66 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project. Hundreds of residents fled the attack. Desrosiers said police were working to return them home, but offered no timeline or strategy. One gang leader threatened to execute every hostage if any gang members were killed during police operations. Another threatened an assault on Tabarre, a Port-au-Prince neighborhood where the United States embassy sits. The police acknowledged these threats but could not or would not explain what they planned to do about them.

The attack exposed the fragility of any gains Haiti's security forces have claimed. Across the country, the United Nations estimates that more than 3,050 people were killed between January and June alone. Gangs now control approximately 70 percent of Port-au-Prince. More than 1.5 million people have been displaced by gang violence nationwide. The UN's top representative in Haiti, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, issued a statement calling the death toll "an unacceptable toll from violence" that the population continues to bear. Yet even as the anti-gang campaign intensifies in the capital, the UN warned that gang-related violence is spreading geographically—moving into areas that had seemed safer.

The security crisis is rooted in political collapse. President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021, creating a power vacuum that armed groups have filled ever since. No national elections have been held in the years that followed. The last elected senators' terms expired in 2023. Haitian officials have repeatedly tried to schedule new elections, only to postpone them due to security concerns and other obstacles. A general election is currently scheduled for December, though whether it will happen remains uncertain. Armed groups have cited political and economic instability as justification for their violence—a claim that carries weight when the state cannot protect its own citizens or recover its own hostages.

Haiti's national police chief, Vladimir Paraison, did not attend Thursday's news conference but has defended the force from criticism since the Kenscoff attack. He indicated that an investigation is underway to determine whether the violence was enabled by "complicity or negligence" within the police ranks. That investigation itself signals how deep the distrust runs. The force has long struggled with allegations of corruption, incompetence, and in some cases direct collaboration with the armed groups it is supposed to fight.

International intervention has arrived but remains contested. In April, the first members of a UN-backed Gang Suppression Force landed in Haiti with the explicit mission of dismantling organized violence and restoring state authority. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited their base in June and expressed optimism, saying their deployment "offers a real opportunity to curb violence and restore the authority of the state." But critics argue that international efforts have produced little success so far. Such missions have also drawn uncomfortable comparisons to previous foreign interventions in Haiti, many of which faced accusations of rights abuses. The question now is whether this force can succeed where others have failed—or whether it will become another chapter in a long history of external involvement that leaves the underlying problems intact.