Thursday 10 January 2013

Murder rate in Bogotá reported lowest in decades

Bogotá's police revealed on 5 January that there had been 1,281 registered homicides in the Colombian capital in 2012 compared to 1,654 in 2011, and the city now had the lowest homicide rate in decades, RCN La Radio reported. The 23-per-cent reduction corroborated other figures recently given out by authorities. Bogotá's police chief Luis Eduardo Martínez Guzmán said the homicide rate for the city of some seven million residents was now 16.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. This was one of the lowest in Latin America. By comparison Greater Caracas was recently found to have a homicide rate of 122/100,000 inhabitants. Bogotá's security affairs chief Guillermo Asprilla said the "figures show the most successful year" in security terms since 1985, and attributed this to police action and the mayor's policies to curb possession of arms. A measure of the significance of this figure was perhaps in its comparison with Bogotá's homicide rate in 1993 - at a time when communist guerrillas and drug cartels were most active and potent - which was 80.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. Separately President Juan Manuel Santos was to discuss the state of crime in Bogotá with cabinet ministers and members of the Bogotá municipality, at a security council to be held in the north-eastern district of Usaquén. The residential area, described in reports as usually quiet, was recently the setting of gun fights between members of a local drug gang. The security council would examine the homicide figures given by police, and issues including drug trafficking, extortion, and bullying and drug abuse in schools, RCN La Radio reported on 10 January. It was not immediately clear when the council would meet.

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