Police, motorcycles, and rewards: the strategy to fight crime in Peru’s capital

Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, announced that 3,500 new police officers would patrol Lima to combat crime in the country experiencing a historic crime wave.

“We will fight insecurity with more police in the streets, with greater resources and, of course, with the legal instruments we need to confront criminality, ” said the president, adding, “We will not leave our police and our ‘serenos’ unprotected”.

The Government seeks to carry out articulated work with local authorities to fight crime, so it signed an agreement with the Municipality of Metropolitan Lima.

The agreement will provide 2,000 motorcycles to the National Police of the municipality to reinforce street patrolling.

The measure comes when Peru’s National Police (PNP) is warning of an exponential increase in crime in the country.

From January to March 2023 alone, 336,065 crime reports were registered, which constitutes more than 4,000 reports per day.

Of the total number of criminal acts, 70% occur in the streets and mostly affect “ordinary citizens”, as explained by the PNP Commander General, Jorge Angulo Tejada, to La Republica.

In his words, this crime wave is characterized by the perpetrators being “quite violent”.

In this context, the Mayor’s Office also seeks the participation of Peruvians.

Lopez Aliaga assured that a reward of S/.10,000 (US$2,679) will be offered to those who report criminal acts in Metropolitan Lima to help the ‘serenazgo’ – a citizen security service provided by local governments – and the PNP to arrest criminals.

The information must be accurate for the benefit to be granted.

The Mayor of Lima had already warned in mid-April that insecurity in the city had become a structural problem and that violence was out of control in several areas.

With information from Sputnik

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