There are not many bosses who have to motivate staff in work so dangerous that one of them is killed every 48 hours. But that is a basic fact of life for General Oscar Naranjo, the head of Colombia’s 160,000-strong national police force – the biggest in Latin America and one of the largest in the world.
Nor is he able to pay salaries that compare with the private sector, much less with the bribes on offer from the organised crime groups that have been part of Colombia’s turbulent backdrop.
“The police cannot be good or bad cops depending on the pay, because crime will always find a way to offer better pay,” he says. “The difference has to be in generating a system of values.”