CICPC claims that rate of violent crime during the festive season dropped by 20%

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Commissioner Wilmer Flores Trossel of the scientific and investigative police, Cicpc, claimed that the rate of violent crime during the festive season had dropped by 20% across the country compared with a year before and by 15% in the capital. However, as has been the curious custom for some years, Flores Trossel didn't actually come up with any figures to prove his point. That should not, however, be taken to mean that Cicpc doesn't actually have any.

Figures at Cicpc show there were 13,156 murders in the country during the whole of 2007. The comparable figure for the first 11 months of 2008 was not far short of that at 13,129 -- and December, yet to be included in last year's count, is usually one of the worst months of the year for murders. This suggests that if Flores Trossel was counting, he was counting crimes of violence as a whole, including, for instance, stealing cars by force or robbing banks at gunpoint. These do not necessarily end in somebody's death.

Either way, the claim to have cut crime in Caracas is under question from the body count at the city morgue since New Year. The, 93 dead bodies are said to have turned up as a result of violence during the first five days of 2009. If the commissioner was correct about December, he may have been overtaken by events since then.

On New Year's Eve alone, 31 bodies were delivered to the morgue, and the toll has continued since then. On Sunday, Lewis Hernandez died in the Domingo Luciani hospital in El Hatillo, south-east Caracas. He'd been shot 20 times on December 27 when seven gunmen went to steal equipment from a discotheque in La Laguna de Turumu in Petare, east Caracas. Ten people were slain in Petare during the three days ending last Sunday. In most cases, as is usual, most of the killings involved the use of firearms.