TITLE: Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America
SENTENCE 1: The blackmailing goes on in front of the barracks where the officers “eat, sleep, and live,” and not by accident, but because “the police are involved in organized crime.” Everyone in the area knows “they’re working with the gangs, extorting people for profit.”  Far from being independent entities, she says, the gangs are often tools of the authorities, who “use them for their own purposes.”  Most citizens know they can’t “call the Honduran police for help” when they’re targeted themselves since “they assume [officers] are involved” with the maras.
SENTENCE 2: to Honduras has made any changes for the majority of the population,” she says, and as evidence cites the fact that “60 percent of the country is still in poverty.”  The soft-power initiatives seem to have proven useful in some cases, but Spring also accuses them of “promoting very specific interests” that don’t “have an impact on security or why people live in fear.”  Johnston, of CEPR, also wonders if the soft programs are adequate.
SENTENCE 3: diplomacy in the region will likely be wearing a uniform instead of a suit.”  Cops, Soldiers, and Cartels on the Same Team  Over the last two decades of the Drug War, the Pentagon’s penchant for propping up repressive generalissimos in places like Mexico, Colombia, and Central America has caused widespread suffering among the populations of those nations, including a plague of extrajudicial killings.

Bias label: slightly
Annotator rationales:
If the sentence structure is meant to convey a logical cause-and-effect relationship, then it fails to clearly establish the connection between the two ideas. While the first part describes the barracks where officers "eat, sleep, and live," the second part introduces a claim about police involvement in organized crime without adequately explaining how these two concepts are related. If the intention is to argue that the location of the barracks somehow facilitates or reflects this alleged criminal activity, then the reasoning behind this link needs to be more explicitly developed. Otherwise, the statement risks appearing disjointed or overly speculative.
If the sentence aims to critique the militarization of diplomacy in the region, then it succeeds in provoking thought but falls short in providing a clear causal link between the Pentagon's actions and the specific outcomes mentioned. While the statement about "wearing a uniform instead of a suit" is evocative, it lacks elaboration on how this shift has directly impacted diplomatic efforts or regional stability. If the intention is to argue that the Pentagon’s support for authoritarian military leaders has led to widespread suffering and human rights abuses, then the connection between these policies and the "plague of extrajudicial killings" needs to be more rigorously established. Without clearer evidence or reasoning, the argument risks appearing overly generalized or rhetorically exaggerated.