The national government signed an agreement this Friday at the Casa Rosada with the governor of Santa Fe, Omar Perotti, which enables the security forces of the province to use the Secure Identification System (SIS) and financing for the acquisition of 600 surveillance cameras with latest generation facial recognition for the city of Rosario, tools designed to support the district’s security policy.
The Chief of Staff, Agustín Rossi; and the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo De Pedro; They received the governor of Santa Fe at the Casa Rosada, with whom they discussed actions to promote in Rosario, one day after a supermarket belonging to the family of Antonela Roccuzzo, the wife of soccer star Lionel Messi, was attacked with bullets in that cityand that President Alberto Fernández considered that “something more” must be done to combat violence and organized crime in that city.
The first of the meetings was held around 10:30 a.m. in the offices of the coordinating minister, where Rossi and Perotti – who had spoken by telephone on four occasions on Thursday – worked on alternatives that will be presented by the plenary of the Justice and Criminal Legislation commissions of the Chamber of Deputies next Wednesday when discussing the project to strengthen criminal justice in Santa Fe, an initiative presented by Roberto Mirabella, a close associate of the governor.
Rossi and Perotti then went to the Hall of Shields of the Ministry of the Interior, where the holder of that portfolio led the signing of an agreement that enables the security forces of the province of Santa Fe to use the Secure Identification System (SIS ), and which will finance the acquisition of 600 surveillance cameras that use facial recognition for the city of Rosario, in order to support the security policy in the district.
The chief of staff said that these initiatives serve to “ratify to the governor and provincial officials the unyielding commitment of the national government to work together with the province” and “with each of the municipalities in the province to combat this scourge that worries everyone so much.”
For his part, De Pedro stated that “the tools of the national government are being made available to each of the governors so that they can strengthen and modernize the fight against organized crime.”
“There is no speculation about security,” warned the Minister of the Interior after the meeting, and said that “you have to work every day to combat organized crime and this fight requires state policies sustained over time and the effort of all sectors.”
As officially reported, through the use of this system developed by the National Registry of Persons (Renaper), the troops of the provincial government will be able to carry out the immediate and secure biometric identification of fugitives or people with criminal records.
Perotti, for his part, reiterated in dialogue with the accredited press that the “federal contribution” of the three powers of the National State and the province is needed to address the security problem in Rosario and criticized those who use the situation to make “election tourism”.
“If everyone wants to help and everyone understands the seriousness of what we are facing, here we have to be much more united and away from any political speculation. Rosario needs this signal from all Argentines”he explained.
In this sense, he said that when he speaks of “federal contribution to the province” he refers to the need to have various projects dealt with in the National Congress, an elliptical reference to the Mirabella initiative and to the documents of officials who are in the Senate.
“The structure of the Federal Justice in the province of Santa Fe is the same as it was 30 years ago, with prosecutors in charge of two or three prosecutor’s offices. It is an urgent need to have a new structure, in federal justice”he added.
On the other hand, the governor celebrated that the President has said that “something more must be done” regarding the situation in Rosario and affirmed that the solution “requires better equipped forces, presence and superior dynamics” than the one that exists today.
“We have been raising the need for more important federal support, a greater dynamic of the forces in the territories, which requires logistics, resources and also more personnel,” he estimated.
Regarding the situation in Rosario -and motivated by the declarations of opposition politicians who request the participation of the Armed Forces in the fight against drug trafficking- Defense Minister Jorge Taiana stressed that “by virtue of this, each force is trained and qualified for its specific function.”
“The Armed Forces are not trained to combat organized crime but to protect sovereignty and repel any external state military aggression”the minister pointed out in dialogue with Télam before meeting with his Brazilian Defense counterpart, José Mucio Monteiro Filho.
