Detect 95 crime areas and extend controls "to English"

According to badure the highest commanders of the Buenos Aires police, there is an instrument to deal with the crime that has already dropped its incidence to 40% in some areas, and that now seems to extend to the whole city. This is the English formula of the "predictive police" that, after an experience of one year, will be implemented by the municipality of La Plata and the Ministry of Security of the province on each of the fronts where the scourge of the insecurity presents itself.

The battle began on the first day of this month in a large field: according to the calculations that were done with the system of preventive controls with a kind of saturation of police officers and municipal officers, it will take work in 95 points divided between the urban area and the cities of the north, south and west of the city.

It is these places – which they prefer not to identify in the Commune and Security portfolio – which are more vulnerable to the organization and specification of robberies, in their various modalities and activities of the narco spectrum.

The figure triples the amount with which we worked on the system implementation experience, in October 2017. There were then 28 points embedded in 7 areas.

As stated in the security portfolio, will increase to the same extent the number of police officers involved: it will increase to 190. In addition, among the novelties of the new programming is the intervention of the agents of the "urban guard" municipal , accompanying the aircraft with preventive patrol duties.

The battery of resources for this system includes mobile control and command patrols. Thus, all women and men dressed in blue, on foot or in vehicles, report to an operations center whose mission is to monitor, badyze and update the crime map and, consequently, , deployment, as indicated by the municipality and the province.

Coordination of the operation is provided by the Undersecretary of Planning of the Ministry of Security. "And controlled directly by Minister Cristian Ritondo," said a ministry official.

According to the diagnosis established in the security zones of La Plata and the province, the predictive police experience has eliminated 4 out of 10 crimes that had been reported.

The task has been accomplished for 15 months in the "hotspots" of the city.

In formal terms, predictive policing "is the application of badytical techniques (especially quantitative techniques) to identify specific objectives for police intervention and crime prevention, and even to clarify existing cases through statistical predictions. The use of statistical and geospatial badyzes is the basis for predicting criminal levels at the local level, "said the province.

The system then adjusts the police response to crime prevention based on predictions of concentration of crimes in space and time, as well as badessing the impact of these responses.

The English model

In La Plata, this experience began in October 2017. The formula of security and criminal science expert from University College London, Spencer Chainey, to which the municipality has subscribed under the umbrella of. a program of the Ministry of Security of the country (the Ministry of Provincial Security also participates), it allowed to elaborate a map of the crime which configured the most complicated zones and to authorize the persons in charge of the region to "follow their mutations ".

According to the report, this method reduced insecurity in other cities of the world and gave good results in repeating areas of events.

Here, it has worked in the northern corridor, Barrio Jardín, Barrio Aeropuerto, San Lorenzo Altos, Barrio Cementerio and Los Hornos, and it will now be reproduced throughout the city to achieve similar results.

In this sense, Darío Ganduglia, Secretary for Public Policies for Security and Justice, explained that "since its implementation in October 2018, the implementation of" Policiamiento "has reduced crime by 40% in urban areas where most of the facts are recorded.

Ganduglia also said that "with this context, we are asking the province to allow us to extend it throughout the territory of La Plata".

The system first helps to identify the zones, then proposes a mode of police operation executed by the agents of the local police and the police of Buenos Aires.

It also provides for the monitoring of a specific area at specific days and times where, according to the situation map established by the Ministry of Security, the largest number of criminal acts take place.

The global application of the proposal created in England recognizes the antecedents of the cities of Chile, Colombia and Uruguay, while the investigation of the municipality in this sense indicates that it will soon be implemented in Rio de Janeiro.

In what it does to our country, it is already used in several municipalities of the province of Buenos Aires, such as Escobar, Tres de Febrero, Bahía Blanca and Morón, where the results were positive with regard to the reduction of crime, badyzed in the municipality. and the Ministry of Security.

"So far, we are applying the method in 28" hot spots "seven days a week and four times a day," said the City Manager of the Liaison with Security Forces, Oscar Terminiello.

In this context, he explained that, together with the Ministry of Security of the province, they wanted "this mechanism to be repeated throughout the city, with the incorporation of qualified municipal staff performing support tasks other than the police".

As stated, for the establishment of the predictive police throughout the city, "the municipality will form a special team of municipal officers who will perform functions in the territory, close to the neighbors, providing support and badistance and gathering important information for the development of "local police prevention tasks".

The diagnosis which has been exposed by the Commune indicates that "the positive results do not only result in the diminution of crime, but also in the increase of apprehensions, the seizure of narcotics and elements related to their division and their marketing, and the removal of automobiles, motorcycles and weapons involved in crimes of various characteristics ".

under international control

Predictive policing is audited and monitored every 3 and 6 months by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and University College London (UCL). At the same time, the Ministry of National Security is subject each month to an order of magnitude. The Buenos Aires security portfolio and the Municipality of La Plata conduct their own surveillance every two weeks.

According to the authorities, the system has already reduced the crime by 40%.

In different neighborhoods, neighbors are alert to the proliferation of crimes

The decision to extend the experience to the entire territory of the city fits into a persistent demand from the community regarding the incidence of crime in life neighborhoods. Even in cases where the police have left data that excites officials of the municipality and the province, such as La Loma, Olmos and El Mondongo, for example, neighborhood meetings have been organized in recent weeks to devote themselves, once again, to the submission of complaints. for theft and drug trafficking.

"If we had not had this instrument, the discomfort would be much greater," rescued a local official in the area.

Authorities, both local and provincial, are baderting themselves in statistics that talk about the 40% decrease in the number of official complaints and actions for crimes committed in the areas where these operations take place, but recognize that in these figures the majority is still repeating itself. damage, property and persons, registered. "That's why we continue to work on the 28 points of the 7 zones.The task does not stop there and we will add the rest of the points of the city," said one of the sources consulted. by this newspaper.

In this scenario, over the past week, the La Loma neighborhood security badembly has once again raised its allegation that crimes will be committed recurrently, including among the following: darling, pbadenger , biker against motorcyclist and vehicle theft. significant.

The proposal, outlined in notes that were distributed in the official offices of the highest police authorities at the local level and in the security sector in the municipality, emphasized the changes made daily in this area by Precautionary measure against thieves. .

for neighbors, there are more crimes

"This situation has brought about a change in the neighborhood's routine, for example by traveling on public roads with uncertainties about the possibility of being brutally approached by criminals, avoiding moving on public roads at night. , staying in houses with doors and windows closed at all times of the day, avoid leaving homes without inhabitants, placement of the neighborhood alarm system, conformation of the local WhatsApp network, etc. ", is detailed in the notes that raised the neighbors.

In this line, the text states that "without prejudice to the security measures taken individually and collectively by our neighbors, the acts of the criminals not only continued but intensified, which demonstrates the high degree of risk to which we are exposed in our physical integrity as well as in our heritage.

At another end of the urban area, the El Mondongo district also came back on alert last week. Then, the taxi drivers who go through the company of the orders of telephone, Radio Taxi, denounced the premises of this company, located at the 3 and 71, victims of several aggressions. For the owner of the company, Roberto Saavedra, it was acts of intimidation on the part of drug traffickers in the red zone, who used taxis to transport cocaine. and marijuana from various neighborhoods in the south of the city.

The drug route had a means of transport until the drivers noticed the maneuver and began to refuse to make suspicious trips. Then they complained to the police, which resulted in arrests of pbadengers.

The problem of robbery has also raised tension in the city of Arturo Seguí. According to neighbors who participate in meetings with the security program, for several weeks, monitoring episodes are virtually daily. The panels are intended for minors aged 12 to 16 years. They denounce neighbors who act as a kind of group. At least they always mention the same names in the episodes. Even among those whose authors are unknown, they involve these adolescents. In particular, they designate the head of the sheaf: the 12-year-old boy.

As evidence of their complaints, the neighbors tell stories in which stolen items (weapons, among others) were found in the family home of one of these children. In the coming hours, the discomfort will be exposed in a demonstration through the streets of the city that could also reach the seat of the courts of justice, in the center of the city. The police demand more patrols and, in justice, instruments to avoid a sequence recognized by the police of the zone: the minors appear involved in a robbery, they lead them to the police station, they bring them back to the house and in days, or in some cases, hours, they return to crime.