sábado, 13 de junio de 2015

Bogotá police to confiscate sharp items on streets, to curb attacks

Authorities in Bogota will confiscate knives and sharp items found in public, and admonish and possibly fine people found with potentially harmful items, in response to a reported rise in armed attacks in Bogotá. The city issued a decree on 11 June instructing police to detain anyone found with such items for six hours and explain to them how these could be dangerous even if carried in self-defence, El Tiempo reported on 12 June. Detained persons would have to sign a pledge of good conduct up to two times, then face a fine if found a third time with such items, Radio Santa Fe reported. The Metropolitan Police chief Humberto Guatibonza was cited as saying that police were seeing more attacks with blunt instruments in the capital, attributed to the unrestricted sale of potentially dangerous artefacts and a clampdown on carrying firearms since 2012. That had effectively forced criminals to use blunt weapons in violent thefts, he said. Police declared they had confisctated 180,000 blunt weapons of various types so far this year, and would proceed to look for such items in parks and public transportation, El Tiempo reported. The city government separately reported on 12 June that it was carrying out security checks on the city's Transmilenio bus network, and had so far detained 10 people for thefts and 18 for jumping onto buses without paying.