Costa Rica abolished its army in the aftermath of the 1948 revolution. In the 1970's the police were known for carrying nothing more lethal than a screwdriver: They would remove the license plates of inappropriately parked cars, to make sure that drivers would come in to the traffic office to pay their fines.

Since then, the U.S. has put a lot of pressure on little Costa Rica to become militarily involved, most notably in the Sandinista revolution in neighboring Nicaragua.

These guys, patrollling the pedestrian zone in downtown San Jose, seem to indicate that the police continue a tradition of being pretty approachable, unlike the police forces of much of the rest of Latin America.