Why do the police harass young, male Cubans on the street?
A. The police are on the street to prevent crime, not to catch people after they have committed one. Young men, usually between the ages of 15 and 22 years (an age group statistically proven world-wide to be most likely to be involved in crime) are stopped at random and their “carnets”, photo ID’s, checked. Since all the police have CB radios, they can quickly check with the computer at the police station to see if anyone behaving suspiciously has a criminal record. Unfortunately, behaving suspiciously in Cuba is open to interpretation by individual policemen and often a youth is detained at a police station for a couple of hours for no good reason and then let go. Unfair as it may seem, the good of the majority, at present, is achieved through the harassment of a minority.
