“The human resources emergency that we have in the force is so great that the governor made the decision to incorporate 20,000 more troops. For that we involved the mayors, we told some of them that we were going to transfer 1,500 troops to them, they only had to worry about recruiting them. Some did not collect even one,” said the security minister of the province of Buenos Aires, Sergio Berni.
The official was outraged after the episode he experienced last Monday in La Matanza, when he was attacked by gangs by bus drivers who were demonstrating in repudiation of the murder of a co-worker by criminals.
In this way, Berni accused the community leaders for not recruiting the cadets that the administration of Axel Kicillof enabled them to perform functions in communes of Greater Buenos Aires. The municipalities of the suburbs recruited just 2,486 officers of the 16,501 assigned by the Government. “I don’t want to create a political problem, but I insist: there are mayors who could not recruit a single cadet despite the multiple salary and education efforts we made,” added the official.
Although the troops should be assigned to the 33 municipalities of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), there are almost a dozen mayors and many of them claim to the media for more police officers for their districts, but they did not recruit a single cadet. Of the 16,501 assigned places, only 2,170 policemen were incorporated, in addition to the 316 summoned by the Ministry of Security of the Province. Only 15% of the total.
According to data published infobaeFor example In La Plata, the Government established a quota of 519 graduated officers, but the municipality in charge of Julio Garro has not recruited any. This is something that is replicated among other districts governed by Juntos por el cambio, despite the fact that they demand more troops: Tres de Febrero, Vicente López and San Isidro.
Although there are also cases in communes administered by the Frente de Todos in which the mayors did not recruit any applicant for the security forces: this is the case in Berazategui, Esteban Echeverría, Hurlingham and Tigre, for example. And to them is added La Matanza, where in the last hours the driver of line 620 was killed. There, in the most populous party, the Province assigned a quota of 2,005 cadets, but the municipality in charge of fernando espinoza not a single one was listed. Of the 24 remaining districts included in the AMBA, in Lomas de Zamora 1,232 places were assigned and 248 cadets were registered; in Quilmes, out of 1,237, 226 were added; and in Avellaneda of 599 available only 78 were called.
