The Devil's Excrement

Extermination in Falcon by Teodoro
Petkoff in Tal Cual

Once again the country is shaken up by the brutal news of the murder
of young people, apparently in the hands of the police. In Falcon state the sinister figure of
“extermination” groups has reappeared. Five boys were massacred by bullies
encrusted in the police corps. Once again an investigation is announced “to the
utmost consequences” and “no matter who falls”. We have heard this song so many
times! The ineffable “utmost consequences” are always the impunity of those
accused. Whatever happened to the investigation about the crimes committed by
the Guarico police? Lots of noise and few nuts (sic). Whatever happened to the
trial of the cops of the first “Extermination” group detected in Portuguesa
state? It also ended in the freedom of those accused.

Whatever happened to the investigation opened in Anzoategui State?
Nothing ever came out of it. How many cops are in prison in Aragua state, the
state with perhaps the worst registry in police assassinations? None. The assassins
act with their faces uncovered, there are witnesses of the crimes and
nevertheless, there is never a sentence condemning the accused. Absolute
impunity protects these state criminals.

State Criminals? Yes. The actions by these “extermination “ groups, which
is not recent but that during the last years has acquired the character of an
epidemic, is associated with an unwritten conception and only commented in low
voices among the police headquarters, that the fight against criminals passes
by the execution of supposed and true criminals. The State and the Government
play dumb in the face of these actions and only when the scandal overflows all
borders, as in the Kennedy barrio case, do they pay attention. The rest of the
time, they let it be. Because the assassins have carte blanche and are at the same time judges and executioners and
decide on their own and by their will who should face the weapons, the result
has been an orgy of blood in which presumed criminals and other people have
fallen, young in general, which have nothing to do with crime. More than five
thousand assassinations of this type have occurred in the last five years.
Official tolerance in the face of these “extermination” groups drives
inexorably to the decomposition of police corps, to the putrefaction of the ethical
and moral values that one would think they should be imbued as public servants
and transforms them into criminal groups which are much worse and pernicious
than the common criminal gangs.

A police unit that acts on the side of the law, violating codes and
ordinances, is a danger to society. And it turns even more dangerous when the
Government’s failure in decreasing the social crisis derived from unemployment
and informal subemployemnt, with the consequent expansion in personal insecurity,
leads a portion of the people to assume with indifference, if not with
approval, the episodes of extermination. The conclusion is unavoidable: there
is no true policy for public safety. This Government does not know what to do
to guarantee the safety of Venezuelans. The police, the courts and the prisons
are a disaster. How can we be surprised that our criminality indices are among
the highest in the world.

This entry was posted on November 2, 2005 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Venezuela.