Venezuelan intelligence agencies detected that “specific alliances between criminal groups” have been strengthening. According to reports, several criminal organizations have created associations to distribute drug trafficking routes, collect vaccines from agricultural producers, and kidnap.
Small alliances also include cooperation to arm themselves with automatic weapons and cartridges.
In this regard, a police chief revealed that “the epicenter of them (gangs) is Tocorón”, alluding to the Aragua Penitentiary Center, located in the town of Tocorón, whose leader Héctor Guerrero Flores (Niño Guerrero) is one of the organizers of that structure that operates in several regions.
On some occasions, these alliances between criminal groups presumably have the support of police officers and operators of the justice system. Not in vain, every time there is a procedure with detainees, they seize police or military clothing that they have previously stolen from security agencies.
Last March all those collaborations that state agencies usually provide to certain criminal groups were activated. On that occasion, they arrested three members of the Tren del Llano organization, which set up a base of operations in the municipality of Pedro Zaraza, Guárico, to collect vaccine from producers in rural areas.
The Cicpc arrested three members of this criminal gang, but they were released in the Criminal Judicial Circuit of Guárico, Valle de la Pascua extension. They were recaptured when they went to the Cicpc-Zaraza to denounce that they had been mistreated in the first arrest. Then an operation was launched to capture the members of the Tren del Llano criminal organization, which works in partnership with the El Pepón gang.
In the midst of this police-military deployment, victims informed officials of the location where some members of the criminal group were. These police officers responded to the residents of San José de Unare (Guárico) who could not move to that place “due to lack of gasoline.”
And more recently, an agro-producer from Santa Bárbara de Ipire (Guárico), who is being extorted by the Pepón gang, whose members even threatened him with death, had obstacles in filing said complaint with the security agencies of Zaraza, Guárico. A police chief even told him that he could not serve him “because he was full,” according to testimony.
