March 6, 2017

Keymer Ávila | @Keymer_Avila

Case 1: An apparent mix-up with deadly results

On November 23 of last year, between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, in Maracaibo, a CICPC official and another from the GNB died in an event that appeared to be a confrontation , but not with criminal gangs, they confronted each other. . The CICPC official was on his way to shop at the mall, he was alone, he was approached by a member of the GNB, dressed as a civilian, and pointed his weapon at him, the CICPC reacts instinctively thinking it was an assault, the GNB was along with 9 other comrades, then the CICPC received 12 bullets, the GNB received 3, all shot by their GNB comrades. Later they tried to involve the deceased CICPC in an extortion case and make what happened appear as a “confrontation” to justify such actions. But being aCICPC this did not turn out to be so easy; They could have done it without problem with any civilian of humble origin, but in this case there are corporate interests that prevail. Some 30 bullet casings were collected, this happened in the middle of the afternoon in a shopping center, the civilian victims could have been many ( as happened the next day in Sucre State with a 45-year-old deaf-mute man ,  whose perpetrators are also GNB officials ).

Case 2: For the love of a woman

The following week of that same month of November, in Anzoátegui state, two young GNB officials emulated the exploits of Justo Brito and Juan Tabares . The different reviews of the case agree that both officials killed themselves inside the facilities of this military organization, using their regulation weapons, motivated by the attention of a lady. In this case, all the symbolic ingredients of the cultural approaches used to explain violence stand out: masculinity and firearms, studied in our context by Verónica Zubillaga .

In both cases the use of the regulation weapon is present and the perpetrators are officials of the State security forces themselves. On this point we have already advanced some ideas in a previous article . Now we are interested in highlighting two aspects: 1) the use of the regulation weapon when the service is not being provided; 2) the hypothesis of the “confrontation” with delinquents as the cause of death of the officials of the State security forces. The data that will be presented below is the result of our investigation into the victimization by homicide of officials of the State security forces in the AMC that can be consulted at this link: https://revistas.urosario.edu.co/index .php/challenges/article/view/5051/3446

1. Regarding the use of the regulation weapon : 58.5% of the civil servants who were victims of homicides who were not in the exercise of their functions were armed; however, this did not serve them as protection; on the contrary, this situation may have promoted his death, as it seems to have occurred in our Case 1. 25% of these officials previously provoked their perpetrator with some real threat against his life. This constitutes 60% of the cases in which there was this type of provocation. Only in 5.4% of the total cases did the victim official manage to kill his perpetrator and both died on the same day. These data seem to indicate that carrying weapons outside of duty hours does not protect officials, but rather exposes them. On the other hand, it should be considered that among the items stolen from deceased officials, firearms represent the first place (54.3%), which constitutes 33.9% of the total cases. Additionally, it was observed that 10% of the weapons with which officials are killed come from the security forces themselves.. For all these reasons, it would be necessary to evaluate to what extent carrying the firearm out of service ends up being an element that not only increases the vulnerability of the official, but also becomes a source of arms supply for crime, increasing the insecurity of the citizenry in general.
2. The confrontation hypothesis : 73% of the deceased officers were not in the exercise of their functions. In the cases in which it was possible to detect a previous conflict between the victim and the perpetrator, in 72.8% of these the conflict that generated the act was not linked to the provision of the police service. Our Case 2 is an example. 6% of the cases analyzed in our investigation occurred in military installations , although they do not represent a significant percentage, due to their seriousness they are of special attention. This type of case becomes very important with the recent acceptance of responsibility of the Venezuelan State before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for the case of the death of cadet Ortiz Hernández, where you can see the institutional negligence at different levels of the Venezuelan Justice System , in which one of the hypotheses is the motive of passion.

Only in 7% of cases the death of officials was effectively caused by confrontations with criminals, that is, these cases are the exception and not the rule.

Finally, it is important to highlight that in only 7% of the cases the death of officials was effectively caused by confrontations with criminals, that is, these cases are the exception and not the rule. This is consistent with what was stated by PROVEA in its last annual report when they affirm that more than 86% of the cases of deaths at the hands of the security forces are executions .. This evidence makes us mistrust the official, police and journalistic account that presents most of the deaths in the hands of the security forces as confrontations, thus justifying them. On the other hand, it also makes us distrust the presentation of the deaths of police officers as the result of the exercise of duty, leaving open a series of different hypotheses for the investigation of these phenomena.

Publicado originalmente en Provea.