To deal with what governor Felipe Solá describes as 'a state of security emergency' in the province of Buenos Aires, the central government has agreed to deploy 2,000 agents of two federal agencies, the Gendarmería (paramilitary border police) and Prefectura Naval (riverine police and coastguard) to assist in an anti-crime drive which will first target auto theft.
This is not meant as a sop to the middle-class victims of this crime: car theft, a US$100m-a-year enterprise, is at the core of other headline crimes. It accounts for 40% of all homicides -and 80% of all killings of policemen.
On average, 11,000 cars are stolen every day in the province of Buenos Aires. Over the past year the provincial police recovered more than 25,000 vehicles and arrested more than 3,000 people involved in either stealing them or breaking them down for spare parts.
The latter is by far the biggest part of the business. Breakers' yards pay car robbers Arg$300-500 (US$107-179) per vehicle; they then sell the individual parts for the equivalent of Arg$10,000-15,000 (US$3,570-5,357) per vehicle.
One major yard in the city of Trenque Lauquen was found to have about Arg$30m (US$11m) worth of car parts in its store rooms, ready for shipment to various parts of the country.
In the first weekend of the offensive against the car-theft business, the Buenos Aires provincial police recovered 40 stolen vehicles and made 40 arrests.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 257 words.
Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article
Not a Subscriber?
Choose from one of the following options
