Today is the third attempt to convene a plenary session of the National Court of Justice (CNJ) to approve a resolution allowing the National Police to use more than 35,700 weapons and 332,000 pieces of ammunition seized in anti-crime operations, according to article 69 number three, second paragraph, The Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code (COIP), which deals with property rights.

More than 35% of these weapons are revolvers, the rest are rifles, submachine guns, shotguns and others.

They seized three tons of ammunition and weapons that were supposed to enter Ecuador from Peru

The weapons depot was located in Píntag, southeast of Quito

The content of this “legitimate resolution” began to take shape in the first quarter of this year, after a meeting of the highest authorities of the CNJ and the police, aware of the need for the public force to urgently rely on weapons that help in the fight against delinquency and organized crime.

Already in April, the Directorate for Technical-Scientific Research of the Police requested the inclusion of the aforementioned article, specifying the call for confiscated items: “the judge may declare the means or effects of a criminal offense to be of social benefit or of public interest (weapons and ammunition) and approve their use”.

More than four million rounds of ammunition arrived in the country for police retraining

This document prepared by the Criminal Panel of the Court has been ready since May 1 and a plenary session was convened twice, but not all judges were present to approve, reject or reformulate this decision.

Although these weapons, after the appropriate expert examinations (to make sure that they are not related to court proceedings), will help to some extent in equipping police officers, the public urgently requests that the recruitment processes for the acquisition of weapons be accelerated and that they be at the level of those currently used by criminal groups .

Long bureaucratic processes continue to delay not only the procurement of weapons and police equipment, but also hinder the implementation of the security equipment procurement plan. (OR)