A December 2013 photo shows Security Secretary Sergio Berni (L) arriving along with gendarmes in the province of Córdoba, struck by a major police strike and violent looting incidents.
Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich has confirmed a meeting with Buenos Aires province Governor Daniel Scioli for next week to discuss the deployment of gendarmes in Argentina’s most populated district and the incorporation of police officers into the provincial security forces.
The head of ministers explained that the reunion has been decided «per direct request» of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and will take place on Wednesday 5 at 8.30 am.
“The coordination of joint actions between the state and the province must serve as the base for the agreement following the training of agents and their gradual incorporation (into the provincial security forces) to replace the presence of the Gendarmerie in the greater Buenos Aires,” Capitanich told reporters during his daily conference at the government house this morning.
The cabinet chief pointed out that the agreement to deploy military police in the Scioli-run province was based in the “institutional strengthening” of local security forces “as long as the BA province incorporated new agents.”
BA province Security Minister Alejandro Granados and his national counterpart María Cecilia Rodríguez, and Security Secretary Sergio Berni will participate in Wednesday’s meeting, Capitanich explained. “I have not notified the parties but I make it publicly,” the cabinet chief said.
With fear of crime rising among society in Argentina over the past years, the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner decided to deploy gendarmes in some hot spots of the City of Buenos Aires. Furthermore, a police crisis broke out back in December when police in several provinces across the country, including Scioli’s district, refused to patrol streets in demand for better salaries, forcing the Kirchnerite administration to deploy military police as looters storm supermarkets and violence erupted in no-man’s-land-like areas.
In the meantime, Governor Scioli yesterday presented a bill that creates municipal police in the province’s most populated municipalities.
buenosairesherald.com