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De La Espriella launches new anti-crime offensive in Barranquilla
🇨🇴 Colombia /Crime & Justice

De La Espriella launches new anti-crime offensive in Barranquilla

From El Tiempo · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources New plan
  • President Abelardo De La Espriella announced a new anti-crime strategy to be tested in Barranquilla and its metropolitan area.
  • The strategy includes reactivating rewards, raids, informant networks, increasing police presence, and forming elite groups.
  • The plan specifically targets organized crime, including extortion, drug trafficking, and microtrafficking, with a focus on dismantling leadership structures.

Barranquilla and its surrounding metropolitan area will serve as a testing ground for President Abelardo De La Espriella's new policy against organized crime.

The strategy involves several key measures: reviving reward payments for information, conducting raids, strengthening informant networks, increasing the number of police patrols, and establishing elite units. These actions aim to disrupt criminal structures involved in homicides, extortion, drug trafficking, and microtrafficking.

We can make Barranquilla the laboratory for what security and citizen coexistence should be. We can do it in the metropolitan area.

— Abelardo De La EspriellaPresident of Colombia, announcing the new anti-crime strategy in Barranquilla.

Announced during a high-level security council meeting in Barranquilla, attended by local mayors, national ministers, and military and police leadership, the initiative seeks to make the region a model for security and citizen coexistence. "We can make Barranquilla the laboratory for what security and citizen coexistence should be. We can do it in the metropolitan area," De La Espriella stated.

More quadrants, more police force, because this is not just a matter of technology.

— Abelardo De La EspriellaHighlighting the need for increased police presence as part of the security strategy.

The president also emphasized the need for a greater police presence, noting that "it is not just a matter of technology." A significant focus will be placed on combating microtrafficking, which he described as "poisoning our children and our youth."

Extortion will be addressed through the proposed creation of a National Search Bloc, targeting not only those making calls from prisons but also the financiers and leaders operating outside correctional facilities. The plan includes a judicial component, with plans for elite prosecutor and specialized, potentially itinerant, judge teams to handle threats against judicial officials.

We have to wage a no-holds-barred battle against microtrafficking, which is poisoning our children, our youth.

— Abelardo De La EspriellaEmphasizing the urgency of combating microtrafficking.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by El Tiempo in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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