Although the Ministry of the Interior emphasizes the decrease in theft and robbery to highlight what they understand is the success of a security policy and management of the Police, the increase in homicides became a bitter pill that compromises management. This data shows that between January and October 2022 there were more homicides than in the same period of the last year of the Frente Amplio administration (2019), as reported by the ministry itself on Tuesday in a comparison that it called “Without a pandemic.”
While between January and October 2019 there were 314 homicides, until the same month of 2022 there were 326, 3.8% more. In addition, the dissemination of homicide figures for technicians is especially relevant because it is one of the few crimes where underreporting is minimal. It is virtually impossible for a homicide to go unreported. In terms of theft or robbery, however, the evolution of the indicators depends on the complaints of the victims.
Furthermore, according to the data he processed The Observer Based on information from the Ministry of the Interior, one of the reasons why 2022 exceeds the numbers of 2019 is because October equaled the monthly record for homicides. In the tenth month of the year, 43 homicides were registered, the same as in May, and it is the monthly record of this government.
In the third quarter –between July and September–, the figures for 2022 are below those of 2019. In that period, in the last year of the Broad Front, 102 homicides were registered and this year, 95 (-6.8%).
The government presented the data for the quarter on Tuesday, with some delay, but in the information it released after the conference, the Ministry of the Interior included data up to October.
The Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, indicated that the increase in homicides is due to the commitment “to the battle against drug trafficking” and the wars for territory between the gangs. On his Twitter account, the director of Security and Coexistence, Santiago González, went further and said that the increase is the result of the fact that they are “fighting criminal gangs like never before.”
The misleading government data
To illustrate the fight against organized crime, they disclosed a variable that had not been highlighted in other deliveries of crime figures and mentioned, for the first time, by President Luis Lacalle Pou this Friday. “75% of homicides are linked to confrontations. Am I saying that you have to justify? No death is justified. We must work more in the fight against drug trafficking and in those people who are willing to kill for an illegal business that, among many other things, greatly damages health,” the president had expressed.
However, 75% of homicides are not necessarily related to drug trafficking. In the first semester of 2022, as reported by the Ministry’s Violence and Crime Observatory, it was 50%.
When asked by a journalist, Heber disaggregated the data for the third quarter on Tuesday and reported that of the 95 completed homicides, 55 were linked to drug trafficking, 14 to situations of intrafamily violence, 21 were due to fights, arguments and confrontations, and two to robbery or theft. That account totals 92 and the reason for the remaining three is unknown. Therefore, homicides linked to drug trafficking in this quarter was 57.8%.
At a press conference, the minister indicated that 75% of the victims of the homicides in the quarter had “links to the crime”, in line with what the president had mentioned. That link, Heber said, could be a criminal record or simply a police note. Police notes as investigated are held by anyone who has ever been suspected of committing a crime, but that does not imply that they have been charged or prosecuted for the crime (in which case it would no longer be a note).
Heber described them as people who were not found to have enough evidence to win a prosecution or conviction. With the mere denunciation or pointing out of a witness about another person, the investigation is already in his file.
Asked if, behind the disclosure of this data, there was a change in methodology, the minister replied that there was no. “It’s another way of seeing, deeper,” he explained.
The reports of the Violence and Crime Observatory have historically discriminated the criminal records of the victims from the reasons for which they were murdered. In 2018 (the year with the most homicides since there are records, with 414) 41% of the victims had a criminal record and 47% had been murdered for their links to drug trafficking.
In 2019 these percentages increased. 44% of the victims had a criminal record and 50% of the completed homicides were motivated by drug fighting. In 2020, 48% of the victims had a criminal record and homicides due to drug confrontations had dropped to 44%.
The last data for a closed year is from 2021. On that occasion, 48% of the victims had a criminal record and the motive for the crime, in 42% of the cases, was linked to drug trafficking. In July 2022, when they reported the figures for the first half of the year, those percentages were 46% and 50%.
In other words, homicide victims with criminal records never exceeded 50%. As a result of this new data that Interior divulges in which it also adds the annotations, at the quarterly level it climbed to 75%.
Decrease in thefts and robberies
In the period January-October 2022, complaints of theft and robbery showed a decrease compared to the same period in 2019 of 18.4% and 22.8% respectively. Complaints for domestic violence, meanwhile, registered an increase of 3.1% and rustling a drop of 38.3%, according to data released by the Ministry of the Interior.
