The Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, spoke earlier this week before the Special Commission for Citizen Security and Coexistence of the Chamber of Deputies, to which he was summoned by legislators to account for the increase in insecurity, criminal acts in recent months and the prison situation.
The hierarch said that currently “it is difficult” for the police to foresee the homicides that are arising from “clashes between (criminal) gangs and revenge by one and the other.”
According to the stenographic version of Monday’s appearance, published in the press, Heber assured that “it may be a reason for analysis in the commissions that advise us, to see if there is any possibility of being able to prevent this, breaking the vicious circle of the revenges that, between families and gangs, have been taking place in some neighborhoods of Montevideo and Canelones, where homicide is very common in general terms ”.
“It is not impossible, according to many say, but we have no way today in the Police to foresee this type of homicide. There are some technologies and social works that say they can help to anticipate; I have not seen it yet “, Heber added and admitted that from his portfolio he has seen” weekends that have been hard “in terms of numbers of homicides and remarked that the Ministry has it difficult to foresee” the level of confrontation and violence in the street ”.
“Horrible and gruesome crimes”
In his appearance in front of the deputies, Heber alluded to how “brutal” the crime in Las Acacias was, alluding to the murder of a 51-year-old woman and another 21-year-old in a shooting that has overtones of revenge for clashes between gangs narco.
Regarding the murder of a young car driver in Ciudad Vieja, who was shot in a crossfire between members of criminal gangs, the minister described it as “horrible” and “frightening”, adding that “every death matters, but when it falls to an innocent person of being involved in criminal organizations is even more outrageous ”.
Once again, he insisted that “prevention is very difficult” and assured that “crime has been going down”: “the tendency is to go down, because many of them (in reference to members of criminal gangs) are in prison” . According to data from the Ministry itself, crimes have fallen by 16.7% in the first nine months of the year, but the Frente Amplio rather denounced that there is an increase of 3.8% in the quarter from July to September compared to the same period of 2020.
“We still have the October, November and December quarter, which would close the year, but as of September we are a little above 2020 and well below 2019. In 2018, in the same period as I am talking about, in the July quarter- September, there were almost 100 homicides. In 2019, homicides were above 100. In 2020 they were below 80. And in 2021 they were slightly above 80; very little: 81, 82 ”, concluded Heber.
