© Provided by Agencia EFE
Bogotá, Apr 5 (EFE) .- The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, warned this Tuesday that criminals and terrorists are targeting the city, especially during electoral times, while ratifying the security measures to face these threats. .
“With the Metropolitan Police we have evaluated the situation we are in. Terrorism and criminality have Bogotá as a target, as the authorities and the Ministry of Defense have confirmed,” López said at a security council in which evaluated the situation in the Colombian capital.
Bogotá has recently been the target of two terrorist attacks, the most recent on March 26 when FARC dissidents detonated an explosive once morest a Police Immediate Attention Command (CAI) in the Arborizadora Alta neighborhood, in the south of the city. , which killed two children, left another 35 people injured and more than 50 houses with material damage.
COUNTRY STABILITY
“The stability of Colombia depends on the stability of Bogotá, that is known by all the terrorists and criminals in the country and that is why attacking our city, attacking our families, even as we have already seen painfully, attacking our children, is the purpose of crime and terrorism at this time of election season,” said the mayor.
Colombia will hold presidential elections on May 29 and in case there is no winner there will be a second round on June 19.
López pointed out that given the public order problems that Bogotá is currently experiencing, his administration, in coordination with the Government, adopted ten measures last week to mitigate this type of event.
Among these measures is the prohibition, as of April 11, of the “parrillero” -second passenger- on motorcycles, a measure that will be applied on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
However, yesterday and today hundreds of motorcyclists took to the streets to protest once morest this measure, arguing that not all those who ride motorcycles are criminals, following the mayor said that the ban is to prevent acts of violence.
“The assassins do not kill people on skateboards or bicycles, they kill people on motorcycles,” the mayor said.
In this sense, the commander of the Bogotá Police, General Jorge Eliécer Camacho, stressed that from last year to date there has been “a 7% increase in the use of motorcycles to commit different crimes.”
MEASURES
Among the measures to combat terrorism and other crimes, the Government offers rewards of up to 5,000 million pesos (just over 1.3 million dollars) to find the whereregardings of guerrillas from the 33rd front of the FARC dissidents, from Those that the mayor said “are today the greatest threat to Colombia’s security” because they have carried out attacks in several cities in the country, including Bogotá.
“These are not potential risks, they are risks that are already being executed,” added the president, who also said that the security of Bogotá was reinforced with 1,000 more police officers, 120 of whom will go to the town of Ciudad Bolívar.
In addition, a state-of-the-art drone, controlled from a mobile unit, will carry out aerial patrols, and more than 100 surveillance cameras will be used to monitor and follow up at strategic points. EFE
ocm / game / rrt
(c) EFE Agency
