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Some pro-government mayors joined the siren song of the militarization of the fight against crime and favored gimmicky formulas in a climate of re-election. They think that this way they create the image of “an authority that acts.” As if assuming the militaristic and authoritarian discourse, that of the “iron fist” for which only dictatorships and brute force can maintain order, were not inept and practically useless.
There is no discussion about what is done with the 400 thousand young people who do not study or work, according to the INE, nor is there any reflection on how the presence of the military in the heart of the cities, who are trained to attack, can improve the citizen security situation. or annihilate enemy targets, not to pursue criminals. To dissuade them? What crime is going to stop because military personnel or patrols are stationed at subway stations, train stations, bus terminals, hospitals, family health centers, malls, as “collaborators of the regular police forces,” according to Mayor Carter , using, according to Governor Orrego, who does not go around with minor recommendations, “armored vehicles, helicopters, drones and intelligence”? That of the Aragua Train, organized and internationalized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, extortion and kidnappings? For the rest, what military force will be able to function with a minimum of effectiveness under the operational command of police? If the military forces become patrolling bodies and fixed points of public order in the cities, not in states of emergency or elections, but by mere presidential decree, the impression of overflow will be consecrated and fear will increase. And above all, an uncontrolled coercive force will be placed in the hands of eventual rulers without judgment or who are rightly authoritarian, also covered by the new repressive laws that protect it in case of abuses of authority. Can anyone guarantee that incidents will not occur that the same people who call for military intervention will later regret and propose to punish?
Manipulating the population’s fear leads nowhere except increasing that fear. Why is the understanding that the countries with the least crime are not the richest nor the ones with the most prisons and highest sentences, like the United States – in contrast to Canada, for example – or the peripheral countries? classist, racist and exclusionary groups dominated by unscrupulous oligarchs, but those that grow with more shared prosperity and social cohesion, like many Europeans, Asians and Oceanians? This is shown by global homicide data. On the subject of El Salvador, the new paradigm of supporters of the violent State, it is enough to point out that its homicide rate in 2022 continued to be higher than that of Chile, but at a very high cost in state arbitrariness and violence of all kinds.
Despite the penetration of harsher and more internationalized crime in Chile (53% of homicides are by firearm and 17% against foreigners), the Chilean homicide rate is one of the lowest in Latin America. What sense can there be not to underline that, after increases in the last decade and in 2022, homicides decreased in 2023 in Chile, according to data from the Carabineros and those from the Prosecutor’s Office until the first semester? Or not emphasize that in a few days the notorious kidnapping and murder of a former Venezuelan military refugee was clarified thanks to agile and non-politically biased investigative intelligence, which made it clear that it was the responsibility of a criminal group? It seems that it has become common sense that weighing the facts and putting them in perspective is an attitude of “weakness in the face of external powers that intervene in Chile and are out of control.” Nothing is out of control, it must be said clearly.
What there is is an oppositional political attitude, for which every act of crime, as if there were societies in which it does not exist, is synonymous with overflow and lack of control, to obtain dubious political returns and, above all, seek legitimacy for authoritarian options.
The government has decided to play in the field of legislative hardening and does not seem to have a strategy that confronts the fallacious idea of the “security crisis” and guides police work based on the responsibility that falls to the institutions. Maintain for two years a General Director of the Carabineros who will be charged with human rights violations during the social crisis of 2019 and a General Director of the PDI linked to the UDI lawyers and who is finally discovered to have violated the law to protect to a previous director accused of corruption, does not seem to have been the best option.
Then, why not have promoted the previously committed police reform? Wasn’t it necessary to strengthen the territorial presence and collaboration with communities, especially those that are at social risk, and cooperation with municipalities and social bodies of the State? And restructure intelligence work against organized crime and money laundering to make it much stronger and more coordinated? Why not strengthen in Carabineros more special units for patrolling and dissuasive care of critical points, to the detriment of repression units in the streets that showed they were not up to the task of deterrence and de-escalation of violence? Should we not reinforce what has been done in terms of police intelligence, supported by technical capabilities, as in the case of the Venezuelan military?
Mixing police work and national defense and civilian and military intelligence is not the right answer. It does not exist in any serious State, simply because they are different functions. When we refer to the military presence in the streets against fundamentalist terrorism in other parts of the world, we are talking about a phenomenon that does not exist in Chile and that requires responses other than the police. Another thing is to think in the medium term about a new institution like the United States National Guard, which collaborates in disasters and reinforces the police in crisis situations, leaving the armed forces with professional tasks that they should not neglect. But that is a different story.
In democracy we should not play with the fight to maintain the full security of citizens nor make each criminal act a partisan argument against the government, regardless of its nature. Doing so is irresponsible. Democracy is listening to the voice of the people, but that should not be confused with giving in to emotions without rationality in order to appear strong. On the contrary, by asking citizens to second thoughts and contain impulses and fears, that is when you are truly strong, for the benefit of what bears fruit: professional, serious and methodical police work, integrated into communities and in a context of inclusive socio-economic improvements.
By Gonzalo Martner