Security minister asserts that crime is going down

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

The Arias administration is pointing to a decrease in the number of 2009 murders and in fewer home invasions and car thefts as an achievement.

The statistics came Monday from Janina del Vecchio, the minister of security, who gave the annual summary in the presence of President Óscar Arias Sánchez. She has been criticized for being a political choice with little background in law enforcement.

She said the numbers came from the Judicial Investigating Organization and were based on reports from January through November. Robberies in San José were down 4.9 percent and home invasions were down 8.8 percent, she said.

Ms. del Vecchio credited among other factors the success of the Tribunales de Flagrancia that have been instituted by the Poder Judicial. Criminals caught in the acts or nearly so sometimes are tried and sentenced within hours. The Poder Judicial is trying to put the concept into effect nationwide.

The Fuerza Pública and its dependency have confiscated 92,974 kilos of cocaine since the start of the Arias administration in May 2006, the agency said.

The security ministry conducted three sweeps of Limón province in 2009 which resulted in arrests and confiscation of weapons and drugs. The ministry credits these sweeps for reducing the murders there by 23 percent.

There are 40,000 more policemen on the force now. This was a campaign promise by Arias, and the budget of the ministry has gone from 62 billion colons to 124 billion proposed for 2010, about $219 million.

In addition, the administration has raised police base wages some 25 percent.

This is the last full year of the Arias administration. He leaves office in May. He is known to be troubled by the public perception of a rising crime rate.