Daniel Pardo’s reporting on the “Zonas de Paz” in Barlovento for the Beeb is really amazing – even if you think you know this story, you’ll learn as you read. A taste, “En Venezuela el que está en la cárcel es porque es idiota”. Cuando arrestaron a uno de ellos hace unos meses, cuentan, sobornaron al juez…
The Cota 905 area in western Caracas is a “peace zone” no more. Authorities launched a large-scale operation earlier today, including lots of National Police agents, National Guard soldiers and armored vehicles and SWAT teams from both the Criminal Investigations Police (CICPC) and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN). The raid is part of the larger “People’s…
Last Saturday, eight fishermen left their homes in San Francisco (South of Maracaibo) in the early hours to go to work. They didn’t return to their homes. Their families and friends became worried and the local police started a search. Three days later, authorities found them dehydrated on an oil rig in Lake Maracaibo, near the city of…
On Friday night, the motorcade of Sports Minister Pedro Infante was apparently attacked by criminals in the Cota 905. The minister’s eight bodyguards handled the situation, taking cover in a nearby police station until SEBIN reinforcements came to his help. And that was only the start of a bloody and brutal weekend. After a huge gunfight on…
Venezuelan cops don’t have it easy these days: they are either killed in horryfing circunstances, attacked by irregular armed groups or find themselves facing the wrath of the people they’re supposed to protect. So, what advice can be offered to those in charge of keeping us safe, specially when criminal bands have more deadly firepower at…
Now that Leopoldo López has called people out into the streets, some are saying that Venezuelans are “too afraid” to march. They are afraid “colectivos” might begin shooting and killing at will. Let’s think about this for a moment. Suppose that in the entire country 500,000 people take to the streets this Saturday. Suppose that, God…
This is one of those stories that just hits you right there. Dr. Jesús Reyes was a revered pediatric oncologist at J.M. de los Rios Children’s Hospital, moving heaven and earth to treat his little patients in the face of mounting shortages of chemotherapy drugs. Dr. Reyes was the kind of Doctor who would take his young cancer patients on…
The current battle in Aragua State between the authorities and criminal gangs took a sudden shift for the worse after a massive police and military operation was held yesterday in Barrio San Vicente (located in the capital, Maracay – Venezuela’s fifth-largest city). In the early hours of Wednesday, almost 2,000 (yes, two *thoursand*) members of…
The last few days have been quite tense in Aragua State, as an undeclared conflict between criminal gangs and the authorities heats up. It all began last Thursday when six members of the criminal gang known as “El Kilverth” (named for the leader’s alias) were killed in a shootout following their attack on a local police station near San Mateo,…
Another weekend, another massacre in Venezuela: ten people were killed and three wounded during a late birthday party in Lomas de Guadalupe, a recently opened housing complex located near the town of Ocumare del Tuy (Miranda State). Sadly, the details of the incident sound all too familiar. An armed group came into the building and shot…
Over the last few years, Father Alejandro Moreno has established himself as an authority on the topic of Venezuela’s crime epidemic. For years, he has toiled in Venezuela’s toughest neighborhoods. This has given him an insider’s look at what makes these criminals tick. This interview of the father by the Venezuelan news outlet Contrapunto is astonishing.…
How bad does the security situation have to be in a country for the cops themselves to go out to protest… because they don’t feel safe on the job? Bad. Really bad. In Miranda State and Caracas alone, 45 police officers have been killed in 2015 so far. Nationwide, according to NGO Due Process Foundation (FUNDEPRO), at least 105…
Don’t miss Efecto Cocuyo’s take on illegal mining in Venezuela’s South. Thanks to intrepid reporters working for Discovery Max, we can witness the devastation that illegal mining is causing in the region. And when we say “illegal,” we don’t mean “undocumented immigrants” or “garimpeiros.” We mean hard-core, armed criminal gangs working in cahoots with the Venezuelan military in…
A few days ago, Bloomberg’s Anatoly Kurmanaev published a story on the black market for bullets. After reading it, one comes away with the clear impression that the military’s negligence is a big part of the story behind Venezuela’s soaring crime rates. But the saddest part is that these revelations barely caused a blip in our…
Two interesting stories, from the indispensable foreign press. First, Bloomberg’s Anatoly Kurmanaev explores the lack of progress in reining in guns and munition, and how it shows the powerful sway of the military. He reminds us that, in theory, the military should have begun coding individual bullets as a way of tightening control over munition.…
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