“Cases return to practically zero when a new prosecutor enters,” complains the head of the Dinased. Violent deaths have increased this year.
The delay in the judicial processes of the captured suspects and the instability of the prosecutors in their jobs does not allow the investigations of a growing wave of murders in the province of Los Ríos to be expedited, complain the high command of the Police in this jurisdiction, which attribute selective crimes to micro-trafficking.
“Cases return to practically zero when a new prosecutor enters, this year alone we have had four constitutional guarantees prosecutors and thus the investigations are delayed,” says Mario Tobar, head of the National Directorate of Crimes against Life, Violent Deaths, Disappearances, Extortion and Kidnapping (Dinased) of the Police Subzone in Los Ríos.
“People should ask the Prosecutor’s Office what is being done about the sanctions of the suspects caught in flagrante delicto, since some have regained their freedom and the violent acts do not stop,” completes the head of Subzone 12, William Martínez.
Not only do they not stop, they increase. The 145 murders registered so far represent 65 more than the 80 that were committed in 2020 in this province, according to Police figures.
Of the total murders this year in Los Ríos, only 45 have been concluded at the judicial level; that is to say, there are still a hundred unsolved violent deaths in the fourth most populated province in the country, where Quevedo is the canton most affected by this crime, with 61 crimes.
The latest violent events in this city of Rio de Janeiro occurred in the early morning of Saturday, November 6, in the Playa Grande sector of the Nicolás Infante Díaz parish.
There were five fatalities left by an armed attack perpetrated by twelve men, who broke into the wake of a man who two days earlier had been shot dead while working on an underpass being built in the El Atascoso sector, in Quevedo .
The Police attribute the crime against the worker and his relatives who died in his wake two days later to a gang war for the micro-trafficking of drugs that is waged in the streets, but also in the country’s prisons.
When Criminalistics was reviewing the body of Javier Goya Mesías, murdered on his first day of work, they found a firearm with its respective cartridges stored in one of his boots.
Javier was only a few days out of jail. The men who broke into his wake used long-range rifles and hand grenades.
The shots and explosions, which began around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, damaged homes located between Las Acacias and Novena streets. Several property owners indicated that it seemed like a real war was going on in their neighborhood.
“The noise of explosives and bullets woke us up, when we heard that casings and bullets pierced the walls and ceilings of the houses, what we did was get the children out of the beds and hide under it, until everything Calm down, ”said a resident of the sector. The shooting lasted about 15 minutes, but the anxiety persists until now. There are no detainees.
For Martha Hualpa, a psychiatrist by profession, the wave of violence currently being experienced in the country alters people’s mental health, generating from depression to stress disorders.
“The paranoid attitude of people is common in these times, everything revolves around the rates of violence, people express that they no longer feel safe even in their own homes, the impact is negative,” says the professional.
Paranoia is fueled by the violent events in a row. On November 2, when the people of Rio de Janeiro were celebrating the Day of the Dead, a shooting occurred inside a private cemetery. A man came there chasing another, who escaped wounded. And the next day, in less than 24 hours, six people were murdered in Quevedo.
The commander of the Los Ríos Special Zone, Renato Cevallos, maintains that while the violent events generated in Los Ríos, especially in Quevedo, are related to micro-trafficking, in Babahoyo, the provincial capital, the Police have another front to attend to: extortion.
According to investigations, from calls originating in prisons, merchants are intimidated. Although only six cases have been reported in the Babahoyo Prosecutor’s Office, the threats are many more, but they are kept silent out of fear.
The sociologist Jorge Aranda says that when civil society begins to realize that the suspects of a crime do not receive the corresponding judicial sanction, it stops believing in the public force or sometimes wants to take justice into their own hands, which is a error.
“Responding to violence with more violence is the worst thing that can happen to society. It is not the responsibility of citizens to protect themselves from crimes, it is the pertinent authorities that must guarantee the integrity of the population, ”says Aranda.
This sociologist regrets that Ecuador, according to his observation, does not have a comprehensive public security policy that establishes the participation of all levels of Government, within the scope of their powers, from the central State to the sectional ones.
“The responsibility of security is not only of the National Assembly, with reforms to the Penal Code or the Mobility Law, it is a matter of clear competences to the public forces,” says Aranda.
But the Police clarify that their work goes until the capture of the suspects. It does not depend on them that they go free or go unpunished.
“The police use all the technological and human capacity to provide the necessary evidence to the Prosecutor’s Office to carry out the pertinent investigations,” says Commander Cevallos, who also observes an alleged slow action of the public prosecutor’s office. (I)
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