On Thursday night, Marcela and I went to a Public Meeting, in a neighbouring Vereda, regarding the violence that is escalating in the Community, the Meeting was supposed to be chaired by the local Commandant of the Policía Nacional de Colombia, and the Town Hall\’s Secretaría de Gobierno de Copacabana, but neither attended, instead we were sent one of the Policing Subcomisarios, no disrespect to him but he was obviously out of his depth, the Community were to blame, the Town Hall was to blame, the Mayor was to blame, the Secretaria de Gobierno was to blame, but the Police weren\’t!
As it happened the Press were there doing a follow up story on a previous incident.
Marcela and I had our 10 seconds of fame, albeit you only see us in passing, we did have our say.
Marcela spoke to the Journalist, from H13N, once we had returned home, and she said that for something so important it was disgusting that the Town Hall had no one there to represent them.
The main topic of the meeting was that in the last week alone, nine people had been attacked and robbed, whilst walking down the mountain to go to work, between four and seven in the morning, also there has been an increase in robberies in fincas in the area.
One man reported that his house had now been broken into three times, whilst they were there. It was also reported that one man and his family caught the burglar in their house, detained him and called the police, they were asked what he had done, as if breaking into the house was not enough.
Another Finca about 250m away from ours was broken into overnight last week-end, and loads of property stolen, the owners were not present at the time. Access is being gained by cutting the wire mesh perimeter fencing, which most of us have, fortunately we have other options in place as a double protection, as well as alarms and CCTV, I don\’t think we can do any more, now we just have to trust to luck, especially as we have been told, that if we have an intruder and harm them, we will be the one\’s going to prison…Like hell!, it\’ll just be another body in the river.
As if that wasn\’t enough, this morning, I went out to walk the dogs, and the entrance to our property, and the road outside was covered in blood, from the quantity, it wasn\’t a minor incident.
I then power washed the area outside our property, as yet again, there was no sign of rain.
Copacabana is falling apart at the seams, and who is to blame, only one person the Alcalde / Mayor, Oscar Restrepo, and his Administration, they are allowing expansion into the Rural areas, but not funding any extra police, they are doing nothing to ensure the security of the local Residents, one has to ask where the money is, that has been put in the local coffers, we know, and if we could prove it, people would be put behind bars…one day!
An Englishman in Colombia 