Pedro Brache considers police must immediately attend to crime wave

The National Police must immediately and effectively address the crime wave that has been unleashed in recent days in the Dominican Republic, as Pedro Brache, president of the National Council of Private Enterprise (Conep), said on Tuesday.

“There is a much higher incidence of (criminal) cases, we believe that the Police have to put much more emphasis than what they have been doing, because in the short term we have seen how some cases have increased,” said the businessman.

The businessman also added that the population must do their part and be more cautious and recalled that they are working in the commissions to transform the institution of order.

“Very intense work is being done in the police commission. But it is a job that is not short-term, but in the short term you have to be current,” Brache explained.

On Monday, the director-general of the National Police, Major General Edward Sánchez González, reported that the monthly average of ratería crimes has fallen by 24% throughout the country, from 7,853 during 2019, the last year before the pandemic, to 5,993 in the first eight months of 202.

The crimes classified as robberies are robberies, outbursts, thefts, and breaks to penetrate houses and buildings and thefts things of little value with skill and caution. Of these, in 2019 94 thousand 239 were registered, most of them in the National District (more than 20 thousand) and the province of Santo Domingo (more than 43 thousand).

According to a note sent to the press, in the other crimes classified as “ratería,” in the cases of robberies, the monthly average fell from 2,728, in 2019, to 1,946 in the months January-August 2021; in outbursts, the average went from 910 a month to 803; thefts from 2,728 monthly to 2,160, and breakages fell from one thousand 487, on a monthly average, in 2019, to 1,083 so far this year.