Urban crime rates in Colombia are soaring, but the government’s reaction so far is short on real solutions. Defense Minister Silva’s apparent denial of the crime wave and President Uribe’s proposed student informant program suggest a serious lack of vision on the part of the country’s leadership.
It is no secret that urban violence is on the rise in Colombia. With few exceptions, cities throughout the country experienced increases in violent crime rates last year. Medellin, which until recently was considered a success story in crime reduction, has been ravaged by a war between rival drug gangs. According to a Mexican study, the city now ranks as the world’s 9th most violent. Cali ranked 6th, making Colombia one of only two countries with two cities on the list.
Equally worrying is the fact that the national leadership has yet to offer a viable strategy to deal with the urban security crisis other than deploying temporary reinforcements to danger zones. Worse yet, Defense Minister Gabriel Silva, who is in charge of both the military and the National Police, continues to downplay the gravity of this crime wave. Last Friday, Silva called concerns about crime “exaggerated” and claimed that the murder rates in Medellin and Cali were at their lowest point in thirty years.
But residents of both cities know otherwise. In fact, judging from recent military and police deployments, Mr. Silva himself is privately aware of the gravity of the problem. The army recently sent a group of 120 soldiers to patrol violent neighborhoods in the northeastern slums of Medellin. Just this Thursday, the director of the national police, General Oscar Naranjo, placed the institution on high alert as he sent 9,600 reinforcements to major cities. Actions speak louder than words.
So how did Mr. Silva back up his perplexing argument? The minister claimed that Medellin now has only 22 murders per week, but he was probably citing one unusually peaceful week’s worth of official police murder counts, which generally tend to be lower than those of the ombudsman’s and coroner’s offices due to differences in their methodologies. In fact, Medellin ombudsman’s office counted 86 murders in the first ten days of 2010 alone.
Clearly, Defense Minister Silva publicly downplaying the scale of the homicide problem because last year’s murder numbers call into question the lasting effectiveness of President Alvaro Uribe’s hard-line Democratic Security policy. Democratic Security has always been criticized from a human rights standpoint – 2.4 million Colombians have been displaced by violence during Uribe’s eight-year presidency according to domestic NGO Codhes – but the policy was undeniably successful in reducing the national murder rate.
That is, until this year. The national police claim that the number of homicides in Colombia fell from 16,140 in 2008 to 15,817 in 2009, a total reduction of 323. However, in Medellin alone the local coroner’s office recorded 662 more homicides than the police. That is, if one accepts the coroner’s numbers just in the city of Medellin, homicides in Colombia did not go down last year, but actually went UP by a total of 329. If one were to apply the same methodology to other major cities, the total number of homicides in 2009 would easily exceed 17,000. Democratic Security has begun to fail Colombia’s cities.
But it is not just Democratic Security that is under threat. Mr. Silva himself, of course, is also under pressure not just from citizens, but from local officials as well. His recent comments came after the mayor of Barranquilla complained that members of National Police, who answer to the Defense Ministry, were not doing enough to catch criminals. When he responded to that criticism on Friday, Mr. Silva was in fact speaking in defense of Democratic Security and of the work he is doing as defense minister.
But his job is to protect Colombia’s citizens, not his own reputation. One way to do that is to improve the judicial system. The Colombian government invests a greater fraction of its budget in defense than nearly every other country in the region, and the number of soldiers and police on city streets has been steadily rising for years. But manpower alone cannot eradicate crime in the long run if the judicial system remains corrupt and inefficient.
Take, for example, the case of Medellin. The city has a sizeable and growing police and military presence. In some slum areas, there are police and soldiers on nearly every block. Medellin also has an impressive crime prevention campaign. The mayor’s office has implemented world-renowned social programs in poor neighborhoods aimed, in part, at addressing the social and economic roots of violence. But local authorities have long complained that the corruption and inefficiency that plague the judicial system stand in the way of any long-term reduction in crime. The majority of murderers in Medellin, as in most of Colombia, get away with their crimes while the vast criminal networks behind the mafia war remain beyond the reach of the authorities.
Unfortunately, the government seems more inclined to intensify its ineffective offensive against criminal groups than to fix longstanding problems in the judicial system. This week, President Uribe sparked an ongoing debate when he vaguely hinted that the government would start paying around 1,000 Medellin students to serve as informants. Students, local officials, teachers, and human rights groups quickly responded that this measure would place students, already under threat from criminal groups, directly in the crossfire of a bloody mafia war. Moreover, there is no reason to believe the policy would be effective. In fact, some worry that criminal and paramilitary groups would easily infiltrate and manipulate the informal student informant network, as they did with the infamous CONVIVIR community watch groups of the 1990s, which Uribe eagerly promoted during his tenure as governor of Antioquia.
Sending reinforcements to cities and buying more informants will do little to stem the homicide epidemic in the long run. Broad reforms are needed to reduce impunity and restore the rule of law in Colombian cities. But the first step, of course, would be for all top officials to recognize the scale and gravity of the problem. Given Minister Silva’s comments last Friday, even that seems a distant goal.
tomtom33
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... Silva's comments were indeed troubling. But rejecting the paid-informant initiative out of hand is just as troubling. We are at war here. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Something good may come of this initiative. And the idea of training(bribing) our youth to help law enforcement is, in my opinion, worthwhile. |
Adriaan
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... @ TomTom33, I'm not at war with anyone and am kinda happy not to be living in one of the neighborhoods and risk being accused of being a sapo. I seriously don't think getting your head blown off by the local punks is worth 50 bucks. I wish the police would just actually do policing in these neighborhoods instead of massively standing at the main entrance road randomly searching motorists and flirting with the local girls. But what do you expect when you're sending a bunch of kids in uniforms to a barrio. |
tomtom33
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... You may not be at war, but I am. I have had my life threatened by the gangs while living in an estrato 4/5 barrio in Medellín. And I have had nothing to do with any drugs or any illegality. I don't even drink alcohol. I was just trying to live quietly and help my wife raise her 6 kids. And those mother bastards decided they could extort me. Any and every extranjero living in Medellín is a potential target. And I know Colombianos who have been targeted as well. I repeat, we are at war! |
Adriaan
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... @ Tomtom33, But why call it war? We have a problem, a big one. There's no need to declare war, the problem just needs solving. Taking a hostile position (despite your serious experiences) to me seems not very constructive. Again, if the police would just do their work and the judicial system wouldn't be failing the way it is things would be fine. |
tomtom33
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... My wife made the comment to me many months ago that we are at war in Medellín. She was referring mostly to the body counts in the poorer barrios. It seemed appropriate to me then and now. People who were raised in the US are used to declaring war against social ills like poverty and drugs. It may not be the most constructive, but I tend to get pissed off when my life and the lives of my children are threatened. I see the problem as much more than just the police and judicial system. Colombians in general have no respect for any law. I will grant that it is hard to have any respect for a dysfunctional legal system. But the people have to change as well. One change would be to actually see and report problems to the authorities. |
gringomedellim
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... Democratic Security purpose was to take control back from illegal armed groups that controled most of the country when Uribe took office, today one can claim it was succesful in this mission, as the Government controls most of the country. The issue today is one of drug gangs fight for control of terrority, this happens when you have the Government doing it's job arresting leaders and breaking up gangs, sadly the effect is a vacuum is created in which others rush to take over. sneding more police or offering informants money is not going to solve this. To solve this is going to take a complex solution. one in which not just Colombia but Europe and the USA stop trying to fight a useless war on Drugs, we continue to throw billions at a age old issue ,drug use. It is a battle that the USA has not been able to win ever since before I was born, nor will it ever win. It can try , maybe make a dent in it, but will never win it. A new solution is needed until that happens be it Uribe or Petro or someone else , voilence will continue between gangs for control of the drug trade. |
gringomedellim
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... @Tomtom sorry you have become a target or you let yourself become a target, I have walked the streets of medellin estrato 1 barrios for a number of years now, I have seen some youth packing, not once have I been bothered , never had someone demand money from me, I have spent the nights up there.. I know of friends robbed in different parts of Medellin. They war you speak about is between gangs not the people of Medellin. Yes some get caught in the cross fire of these fights, but I refuse to let anyone stop me from visiting friends anywhere in Medellin or to live my life in fear. i would suggest that those that threaten you, turn in to the Police. Also most barrios have private protectors of the barrio find out who they are and ask for help, they will run off the trouble makers in most cases. |
gringomedellim
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... @ Adriaan I read i think one another site a comment form an ex USA cop how great the work of Colombia Police are doing, great community policing. yes they have improved I am told by freinds who have returned home. But they don't do Community Policing. Targeting youth for searchs based on how they look and dress , and grunting at people is not community policing. They need to learn to build a dialoge with the people living in the poor barrios, spend time walking around talking to the bussiness owners , talk with the older folk to open up a dialoge, organize and promote activities for the youth , this is communtiy organizing that needs to be done. The Police are there to uphold the law, but they don;t need to act or bee seen as the enemy , it takes a change of mind set, one is not asking to reinvent the wheel and change doesn't happen over night but start to change the mindset of todays Police in Colombia canhave a postive effect. |
marcos
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... what really happened in 2009 when in july medellin surpassed the 2,000 murder count, and finished the year at 2,200. NOT! the police must patrol, go undercover and bring back security to this city. the children are the future, and a majority of them have seen bodies and death. not good. keep trying medellin, it can happen |
