COLUMN | The State of Municipal Security

The time has come for the municipal security law 2.0 to advance in Congress, which would help address part of the problem, a problem that cannot be fully resolved without increasing the number of Carabineros or allowing municipalities to have their own police forces.

I want to dedicate this column to the important issue of communal security, a matter that affects us all, where both the needs of the people and the insufficient offerings of the State converge, something that municipalities, despite not having all the legal powers, seek to address to varying degrees depending on their resources and the initiatives of each municipality.

Recently, the mayor of Cerro Navia brought the issue of municipal security back into the press due to problems that municipal inspectors recently had with criminals and subsequently with Carabineros, who detained one group or the other, a situation that unfortunately occurs not only in that municipality but also in others in the Metropolitan Region, where it is common for there to be friction between municipal officials and local Carabineros due to the actions of the former.

The mayor of Lo Barnechea also participated in the discussion in the same media outlet, supporting Mayor Tamayo, despite the evident differences between their municipalities, confirming that the issue of municipal security is a relevant topic, increasingly important due to the State’s withdrawal from municipal matters and its concentration on national issues, and in response to this, citizens demand security from those closest to them, the mayor and their security director.

The ingredients of the problem are:

1. Increase in the quantity and complexity of criminal and delinquent activity.
2. People are frightened and change their habits due to crime, whether real or perceived.
3. Insufficient personnel and capabilities in Carabineros, PDI, the Public Ministry, and others involved in public security processes.
4. Roles and functions performed by security departments and their inspectors – municipal patrol officers.
5. Lack of specific intelligence about what occurs in each municipality and of prospective studies.
6. Excessive reliance on security provided by camera systems and license plate readers.
7. Poor coordination with other municipalities and regional authorities.

The first issue needs no explanation, and despite the central government’s efforts to present more favorable numbers, the reality indicates that the level of criminal and delinquent activity does not decrease throughout Chile, regardless of the location of the municipalities, which translates into consistently high levels of fear and insecurity, especially among women and the elderly.

This is reinforced by the State’s abandonment of municipal matters and its concentration on national criminal issues, resulting in reduced personnel primarily in Carabineros, the PDI, and the Public Ministry. In this regard, all mayors, regardless of their municipality, complain about the few Carabineros assigned to them, shifting that absence onto the services of their respective municipal security departments.

The absence of police is increasingly being filled by municipal security departments, which have personnel who directly perform pseudo-police roles beyond what is understood as the function of a municipal inspector or patrol officer. In some cases, they are staff from the municipalities or from corporations specifically developed for that purpose, such as the Union of Neighborhood Councils, which manages almost half of the patrol officers and vehicles operating under 1402 in Las Condes, creating a mixed model that is not always easy to manage.

Security departments also have, depending on available resources, surveillance cameras, monitoring and control centers, and license plate readers, which, combined with installations distributed throughout the municipality and programs developed in conjunction with residents, create a network of alert and control, which helps to both raise the level of security and mobilize their own and police resources in emergency situations.

The work of human and technological resources has its limits, as there are aspects that municipalities cannot legally address, since the teams in security departments are not police and therefore cannot theoretically perform police duties, which does not always happen as security circumstances demand, along with the limited availability of Carabineros, which is perhaps the main problem that many do not want to acknowledge.

Citizens require police services that are supposedly provided primarily by Carabineros de Chile, an institution that has the constitutional role of ensuring order and security in the national territory, something that, due to a lack of necessary resources, they are unable to fulfill.

If there are no Carabineros, someone has to do the job, and as I mentioned earlier, that is being done by the security departments of the municipalities, with varying degrees of success depending on the resources available to them, and evidently, the respective communal criminal situation, from which one can immediately deduce which municipalities are better or worse off.

That said, the time has come for the municipal security law 2.0 to advance in Congress, which would help address part of the problem, a problem that cannot be fully resolved without increasing the number of Carabineros or allowing municipalities to have their own police forces. There are no other intermediate solutions such as assigning electroshock devices to municipal inspectors or patrol officers, or actions of that type.

Carabineros will argue that they were created almost 100 years ago to replace municipal police, but that was, as I just mentioned, 100 years ago and in a different context. It is obvious that we would all like to be assigned the Carabineros we need, but that is a utopia, as we would be talking about increases that could mean doubling or tripling the number of Carabineros, which we know will not happen, making it easier to convert and allow municipal inspectors and patrol officers to become police officers, who could carry weapons, act immediately in situations requiring police intervention rather than inspectors without powers, who would be supported by the technological and command and control capabilities of the security departments, and in the process, be able to adequately defend themselves against criminals.

For this to be effective, it requires the creation of intelligence units or intelligence fusion centers to understand what is happening in the municipality, carry out preventive actions, and make good use of existing resources. This, combined with effective coordination and integration with the municipalities they connect with, significantly raises the level of security.

Even municipalities like Las Condes, of which I am a councilor, need to review their security strategy and organization. They may be safer than others, but this could well be because the very bad actors have not yet arrived in significant numbers or are taking advantage of other municipalities with fewer capabilities to defend themselves. The worst thing that can happen is to become complacent and think that we are fine with what we have. In this regard, placing retired general officers from the Armed Forces, Carabineros de Chile, or the PDI in charge of security departments is a wise decision to prepare for managing more complex future criminal scenarios, and, on the other hand, due to their prior experience, to lead the respective municipal police forces.

I hope there are no fatalities so that we can properly address the issue of municipal security, that of municipal police, and the real or perceived insecurity of the residents.