Bogota was awarded for its innovative approach to security information management, with the first unified information system to combat crime in the International Competition on Promising Initiatives and Best Practices in Security Information Management, organized by the Citizen Peace Foundation (Fundación Paz Ciudadana).
Thanks to this tool, between August 2021 and December 2022, it helped authorities dismantle 586 organized crime groups, resulting in 2,369 arrests. Some of the most notable groups that were taken down include "Chacón", "Los Camilo" and "el Tren de Aragua".
The Secretariat for Security, Coexistence and Justice together with the Bogotá Metropolitan Police, the Sectional Directorate of Prosecutors and the Thirteenth Brigade of the National Army, designed and implemented this tool called Unified Criminal Inventory, the first of its kind in the history of Bogota and the result of intelligence work to identify and dismantle criminal structures operating in illegal markets in the city.
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In this tweet, the mayor, Claudia López, highlights the results of the joint work of the authorities in the fight against crime and for which Bogotá was awarded:
This technical tool was also key in capturing members of criminal organizations that seek to co-opt members of the Bogotá Metropolitan Police. In 2022, 2,208 investigations were opened into uniformed members of the institution, in which 158 were sanctioned, of which 59 were dismissed, 59 suspended, 35 fined and 5 reprimanded.
Additionally, the Criminal Inventory was recognized as one of the 10 successful experiences that will be included in the digital publication with widespread regional distribution and entered into the Good Practices Database of the Foundation due to the great impact caused in a city of millions of inhabitants like Bogotá.
According to the Secretary for Security of Bogotá, Aníbal Fernández de Soto, this unified information system has strengthened the fight against criminal structures that have been committing crimes in the city, and explained that this has been the result of intelligence work, "In this Criminal Inventory, the security agencies in Bogotá have come together and share information on how crime operates and how criminal markets move, which helps make the best decisions on how to combat and intervene in criminal groups. A tool that has undoubtedly given great results."
Furthermore, with the development of this instrument led jointly with SIPOL and SIJIN MEBOG, priority points that energize criminal markets throughout the city have been identified: cellphones, auto parts and bicycles and points where human trafficking and sexual exploitation are facilitated, among others, which have been systematically intervened by the City in conjunction with the security agencies that operate in Bogotá.
The International Competition on Promising Initiatives and Good Practices in Information Management in Security aims to recognize at the Ibero-American level those initiatives that in recent years have managed to put into practice innovations based on information management to improve the effectiveness of services linked to the prevention of violence and crime and/or criminal prosecution in neighborhoods and cities and to the solution of problems related to the phenomenon of violence and crime.
Based on the information provided by this Inventory, from August 2021 to December 2022, among other actions, 1,203 operations have been carried out against establishments receiving cellphones and 970 against the reception of auto parts, where $2.6 billion was recovered on the one hand and $23.188 billion in processes of extinction of domain thanks to the work of the Sectional Directorate of Prosecutors of Bogotá, being the most important blows in the history of the city against the mafias that energize these crimes.
Among other recognized initiatives are: "The victimization surveys in Gran Mendoza: Experiences and challenges in the production of information for security management" from Argentina and "The parameterization of accounts of criminal events and police reports using regular expressions and keywords to perform criminal analysis" from Chile; among others.
All the winning initiatives will be published in the Fundación Paz Ciudadana's Best Practices Bank at: https://bancobuenaspracticas.pazciudadana.cl/
In this video of the Secretariat for Security more details of the fight against crime in Bogota:
