Rise in crime unnerves Peru
LIMA, Feb 26, (RTRS): The brazen killing of a journalist in broad daylight and a deadly robbery in Peru’s financial district prompted President Ollanta Humala to put 1,000 more police on the streets of the capital on Monday, to tackle a rising sense of public insecurity.
Interior Minister Wilfredo Pedraza rushed to reassign officers from desk jobs and put them in patrol cars as outraged citizens demanded swift action after Luis Choy, a prominent photojournalist for El Comercio, Peru’s main newspaper, was gunned down in front of his house in a middleclass district of Lima on Saturday afternoon.
Investigators have said Choy, 34, was murdered by a hitman but have not yet identified a motive. Police officials did not say how many officers in total would now be on patrol.
“I lament that another Peruvian has fallen victim to crime. Even more so because we got to know Luis Choy during the campaign,” Humala said in reference to his 2011 election bid.
His killing came days after a businessman was robbed and shot in the head at a notary’s office that sits half a block away from a major police station in Lima’s financial district.
The murders have further undermined faith in the national police force. Though Humala has moved to improve wages and training, corruption is widespread. Peruvians often share stories of bribing their way out of traffic tickets for just a few dollars.
Also: LIMA: Authorities in Peru have launched a search for a California couple reported missing while on a cycling trip through the Andean country in an area where US citizens have been warned of kidnapping risks, US Embassy officials in Lima said on Monday.
Families of the couple, Garrett Hand and Jamie Neal, said they last heard from the pair on Jan 25, a day before they were expected to arrive in Lima after a journey of several hundred miles from Cusco, in the country’s mountainous interior southeast of the capital, the embassy said in a statement.
“Embassy officers are ... in close contact with Peruvian authorities who are working diligently to find Mr Hand and Ms. Neal,” said the statement, furnished to Reuters by information officer Leslie Nunez Goodman.
The couple, both 25, were longtime friends who began dating last spring or summer and lived together in Oakland, California, east of San Francisco, said Neal’s boss, Jeff Jerge, who owns a Bayarea bicycle shop, the Pedaler, where she works.
Hand had worked summers as a fisherman in Alaska, he said.
“My worries are pretty great,” Jerge told Reuters. “They had been corresponding (from their trip) fairly regularly, and it ceased that day (Jan 25),” he said, adding that no money has been withdrawn from either of their bank accounts since then. He said he worried they had been abducted.
Their disappearance coincides with a travel advisory issued by the US Embassy on Feb 13 warning of foreign tourists near Cusco and the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu of a potential kidnapping threat.
Security
`Poor security could become a political sore spot for the otherwise popular Humala administration, as safety regularly ranks as a top priority for voters in Peru, especially in Lima where about a third of Peruvians live. His approval rating is 54 percent, according to polling firm Ipsos.
Crime in metropolitan Lima doubled between 2000 and 2011, with kidnappings and homicides about tripling, according to government data. One theory is that crime has spiked because the country’s long economic boom has created more wealthy targets.
But despite the rising incidence of crime, Peru’s murder rate remains relatively low by regional standards. Peru’s homicide rate is about 10 per 100,000 people, according to UN data. That is twice the rate of the United States but half the rate for South America as a whole.