Barranquilla
The Citizen Security Observatory of the Universidad del Norte issued a new report in which they warn about the serious crisis of insecurity in the Atlantic.
In the document, they warned that in the department There is the presence of at least a hundred minor local gangs at the service of an organized armed group and 3 organized criminal groupswhich fuel crimes such as homicides, drug trafficking and extortion.
On the other hand, Barranquilla and the neighboring municipalities of Soledad and Malambo are located as critical areas with open criminal disputes, accumulating 13 massacres in the last 2 years.
In this sense, the aforementioned territories show a detriment in homicide and extortion indicators in the last year, as well as the greater participation of these crimes in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla.
In the case of the Atlantic capital, homicides had an uptick, closing 2023 with 375 cases, that is, an increase of 12.3% compared to the previous year’s cases.
“In this sense, the city went from a rate of 25.4 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (2022) to one of 28.3 (2023). The detriment of homicide indicators has also occurred in the other port cities of the Colombian Caribbean. In the case of Cartagena, its homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants went from 33.5 (2022) to 34.5 (2023). A similar situation is evident in Santa Marta, as its homicide rate was 34.6 (2022) and 35.1 (2023),” the report reads.
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Regarding the scourge of extortion, while in 2022, there was a rate per 100 thousand inhabitants of 31.7%, in 2023 it was 62.9%, showing a variation of 100.7%.
“Extortion is a criminal phenomenon as lucrative as drug trafficking and/or theft. Unlike drug trafficking, it does not require cultivation, inputs, processing, logistics, transportation or distribution. A call (SimCard) and calculated use of violence may be enough to obtain income. Compared to theft, the use of digital transfer channels does not imply the same physical exposure (risk) for the criminal,” they state.
On the other hand, the Observatory drew attention to gender violence, highlighting that in the first 100 days of the year 2024, There were 20 cases of homicides that had women victims in the department of Atlántico.
“Compared to that same period of the previous year, an increase of 67% in cases was observed. Of these events, 4 were classified by the authorities as femicides, which in turn represents a 33% increase in this crime,” they explained.
