The insecurity in Santa Marta led the city’s mayor, Carlos Pinedo, to establish new guidelines that help confront crime and criminality in the capital of Magdalena. After a security council held on May 31, 2024, the local president announced the new actions agreed upon with the leaders of the public force.
“It is our duty, we are committed to doing it, but this is done with tools. In the next few days we are going to supply the National Police with 52 motorcycles, we are going to build four new CAIs in the city of Santa Marta“, explained the mayor in conversation with the local media News TV Costa.
Now you can follow us on our WhatsApp Channel and in Facebook.
In addition, he indicated that the uniformed officers will also have two new buses in which they can travel around the city. Likewise, as agreed with the Attorney General’s Office, different raids will be carried out. “We are not going to tell you where, but we are going with everything: the Army, the Prosecutor’s Office, the National Police and, obviously, the district Administration because the bandit has no place in Santa Marta,” he added.
However, these guidelines are not what caused the sting. According to a statement issued by the Mayor’s Office of Santa Marta, In the security council it was determined that $1,000 million will be allocated to a fund in order to incentivize those in uniform who manage to neutralize the city’s criminals..
This new measure was criticized by the governor of Magdalena, Rafael Martínez, who through his official X account (formerly Twitter), warned of dire consequences with its implementation. This, referring to the extrajudicial executions, wrongly called false positives, that occurred between 2002 and 2008, in the midst of the Colombian armed conflict. In those years, 6,402 people were murdered and presented as combat casualties, arguing that they were part of the Colombian guerrilla.
“Dangerous exercise by the @SantaMartaDTCH. With a day of leave as an incentive, the fatal door was opened to false positives from @AlvaroUribeVel “Why will the billion pesos of rewards offered by the illegal protected by the @cendemocratico be lent now?” the governor questioned on the social network.
He then asked if those resources, which would come from taxes paid by citizens, could end up financing “social cleansing.” He even mentioned that the money could help tip “the balance” towards one of the two sides that exercise control over micro-trafficking in the city. He also involved the criminal organizations Clan del Golfo and Los Pachencas, which dispute the removal of drugs from the city. “Business that has institutional bad apples with marked interest,” she said.
For his part, councilor Juan Carlos Palacio, cited by Time, assured that generating incentives for uniformed personnel is not a true solution to the problem of insecurity in the city. He indicated that the money that will be allocated to reward the police could serve to, rather, promote complaints among citizens.
The department of Magdalena has seen an escalation in violence so far in 2024. According to data revealed by the authorities, 84 homicides have been recorded in the first four months of the year. Cases have been documented in rural and urban areas of the city.
The mayor blamed previous administrations for the situation in Santa Marta. “We work to recover order and security lost after years of dismantling with the National Police, without a crime control center, a totally inoperative SIES room and 215 cameras that do not work. The reality here is that THEY NEVER INVESTED IN SECURITY. Today we live the consequences of “change””, indicated the local leader in X.
