Ecuador’s top police authority changed amid wave of violence

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Ecuador’s President, Guillermo Lasso, announced this Sunday the change of the maximum authority of the Police, in moments in which insecurity has increased in several sectors and violent acts in the coastal city of Guayaquil.

In declarations to the press in the city mentioned above, the ruler revealed that General Carlos Cabrera would replace Tannya Varela, who had become the first woman to lead the police institution.

“I have resolved to thank the services of Commander Tannya Varela, an exemplary public servant, and police officer. She was the first woman commander,” Lasso recalled.

Varela leaves office when several violent incidents have been reported, such as the one that occurred last Friday night when some twenty individuals shot at a group of citizens, killing five of them.

REINFORCING MEASURES

Given the increase in insecurity, which the President attributes in part to the fight against drug trafficking, he ordered that the Vice Minister of Government in charge of citizen security, Max Campos, will be based in the coastal city of Guayaquil, from where he will direct the country’s citizen security.

Among his first actions, Campos will coordinate the presence of 1,100 police officers, who will reinforce the gendarmes’ operations in Guayaquil.

Likewise, he will coordinate the Armed Forces’ operations in the streets of that city as of this Sunday.

Lasso also ordered the military to reinforce border control to “prevent the entry of drugs from the north or weapons from the south”.

He also informed that US$9 million would be allocated to equip the Police in Guayaquil.

LEGAL REFORMS

On the other hand, Lasso advanced that he will present to the National Assembly a bill to regulate the use of force and reform several legal bodies to strengthen citizen security and the fight against transnational crime next Tuesday.

Among the bill’s main objectives is to “authorize the progressive use of force supporting the police and military”, he said.

It will also propose reforming the Law of Public and State Security to improve cooperation between the Armed Forces and the National Police without waiting for states of exception.

The bill seeks to ensure that police and military servants have the legal sponsorship of the State when they are subject to investigations or trials for the performance of their duties.

“That what happened to Corporal Santiago Olmedo, who has to assume the cost of his defense, does not happen,” he said about a policeman sentenced last Wednesday to three years and four months in prison for killing two criminals in the middle of an armed robbery in the city of Riobamba, for a crime of exceeding the use of force.

On the other hand, the bill proposes the creation of “the crime of terrorism in detention centers, specifying that the judge doesn’t need to notify the suspect when the prosecutor requests his detention for investigation purposes, thus decreasing the danger of escape”, he said without going into details.

The governor also indicated that there would be legal provisions to combat overcrowding in prisons, seeking to strengthen the management of detention centers.

With information from EFE