Colombian police arrested 59 criminals within the last 24 hours in a crackdown on crime in Colombia’s third biggest city Cali.
Local police installed checkpoints across the city’s most violent areas, where they caught 48 criminals for various crimes and arrested 11 others by court order, according to local media.
“During the controls in the city we seized 12 illegally possessed guns and 154 knives,” said General Fabio Castañeda, commander of the Metropolitan Police.
Cali police forces have launched several operations over the last few months in an effort to combat crime that has spiralled out of control in the capital of the Valle de Cauca department. The violence is due mainly to fighting between small and medium drug trafficking organizations.
In spring 2012, Cali was named Colombia’s most violent city with a murder rate of 75.7 homicides per 100,000 residents.