The government of Santa Fe, through the Ministry of Justice and Security, carried out this Thursday morning the collapse of a drug sales stand in the Stella Maris neighborhood of Rosario. It was within the framework of the Targeted Neighborhood Intervention (IBF) program, which since its implementation has allowed this type of actions to be carried out in different parts of the city.
The activity took place at an address located at Querandíes 1251 bis, and was headed by the Minister of Justice and Security of Santa Fe, Pablo Cococcioni, accompanied by the Regional Prosecutor Matías Merlo and the Prosecutor Franco Carbone, both belonging to the Public Prosecutor’s Office ( MPA), and the secretary of Municipal Control of Rosario, Diego Herrera.
“Intervene immediately”
The minister explained that “this place functioned as a point of sale, sometimes with migrant residents who came, like last night and a little while ago, to settle there to prevent the legal action. It was not a permanent family home; it was a point of sale for narcotics around which there have been three homicides linked to this place in recent times.”
“There were 50 calls to 911 reporting drug sales,” the minister said. “In addition, in the raids carried out by order of the Santa Fe Provincial Prosecutor’s Office, drug dealing items, scales, some other items, traces of drugs were found, which clearly determined that we are dealing with a property whose only use was to be set up for the sale of drugs to retailers.”
Cococcioni also pointed out that “there have been multiple raids, multiple measures in the past and the place is re-established. Therefore, we are now requesting a court order for the physical deactivation measure. In this case, it is simply the demolition of the place, because there is no other more suitable measure to stop this place from being directly taken over by drug traffickers. It will be deactivated, it will no longer be able to function physically as a point of sale. In any case, we will monitor it for any possible resumption of illegal activity, and we will intervene immediately.”
The minister also stressed that this way of responding from the Government arises “within the framework of the IBF that we carried out a few months ago in this neighborhood of the city of Rosario. Therefore, we are really faced with a place, this bunker, that is not only a criminogenic factor of public unrest, but it is a place whose dynamics obviously made life in society impossible for the surroundings. That is, people go out, want to walk along a sidewalk and it turns out that there are three or four people on motorcycles shooting each other because they did not agree on an issue of the drugs they came to buy.”
IBF and Microtrafficking Law
It is necessary to point out that the recent action in Rosario occurs within the framework of the IBF program carried out by the Government of Santa Fe, the Municipality and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, based on the Microtraffic Law, with which the Province advances with the demolition and disabling of drug sales points with the aim of reducing the circulation of harmful violence in conflict sectors of the provincial territory.
This Law, approved in the last days of 2023 by the provincial Legislature, establishes that MPA prosecutors must investigate the crimes of “micro-trafficking” or “drug dealing”, which until before the regulation were the responsibility of the Federal Justice.
In this way, the coercive deactivation of retail drug sales points in the provincial territory is allowed: when there is a bunker or a precarious construction set up specifically for drug trafficking, the law allows forced demolition or demolition. Also, the aim is to elucidate the upper links in the drug marketing and supply chain, and the deactivation of the point of sale specifically.
The Federal Court pursues the marketing chain, investigates the upper links of drug trafficking, and provincial intervention is the direct deactivation of the point of sale.
