President Alvaro Uribe on Saturday declared his belief that there are approx 2,700 criminals working for the drug trafficking industry throughout Colombia.
The declaration was made by Uribe during a communal council over the weekend in which he said that gangs like the ‘Aguilas Negras‘, the ‘Paisas’, ‘Los Rastrojos‘ and ‘Cuchillo’ rally the majority of members, reported newspaper El Tiempo Monday.
“The country has never counted members of drug trafficking organizations [until now]. A calculation coming from the Armed Forces talks of some 2,700 members, and [the gangs] have about 1,500 people helping them,” Uribe informed the council.
To confront the proliferation of such illegal groups Uribe announced the strengthening of networks of informants. For this, the police, army and marine corps will create specialized groups with contacts in cooperating networks in each subregion of a department. Each group will have a chosen informant within the illegal organization.
The strategy will begin in the department of Cordoba, where this year there were over 500 homicides registered and 2,707kgs of cocaine seized, according to Cordoba’s Crime Centre.
Based on information from the community, Uribe said that in regions such as Cordoba it has been difficult to fight illegal organizations “because they are neither uniformed … nor regimented … they mingle with the community.”
The president called for greater collaboration among prosecutors and judges regarding legal proceedings, as in many cases approval is delayed.
“In order to defeat violence, there can be no truce,” concluded Uribe.