The Undersecretary for Crime Prevention, Eduardo Vergarareferred this Wednesday to the death of a young worker in Florida, who hid in a house to avoid an assault and was attacked by neighbors who would have thought he was a criminal.
“We have to focus on preventing what happens. It has to do with the operational nature, because what is happening in our neighborhoods, speaks mainly of a contraction of the Statewhich is what we are seeing today (…) It has to do with the State’s inability to be present where it is most needed. And that is something that we have observed not only with data evidence, but also with a series of testimonies from people who live in places where they feel that the State first began to arrive late and then simply did not arrive,” he assured.
The undersecretary also stated that “the events that occurred in Florida are and are part of a scenario of insecurity that is marked by inequalitywhere the neighbors, in this case, we see that their alert mechanism works in a certain way, the WhatsApp are connected, they are working because they feel that they have to be part of this. He opts for an action that is totally reprehensible and unacceptable”. I think there are no words to describe what happened there. However, this is a reality that has been lived for a long time and that it has to do with the desperation of citizens to take justice into their own hands. And that is very complex, because we have been tremendously emphatic that when this also intersects, for example, with the possession of weapons, this resulted in the loss of life of a person, of a young man who, from what we can see of public information , apparently he was also a victim of a crime and was starting. In other words, it is conjugated in a multifactorial, multi-complex scenario”.
“This resulted in the loss of life of one person, of a young man that from what we can see of public information, apparently he was also the victim of a crime and was startingVergara added.
The Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Marcela Ríos, also referred to what happened in Florida, stating that “as a society we cannot remain with our arms crossed. We have to take charge from the State in generating a feeling of greater security for the communities. We ask communities and society for an adequate reaction and to use the appropriate channels in the face of crime.”.