The murder of the young Nickol Valentina, a week ago, in Bucaramanga, is the most recent case of a person who lost his life for stealing his cell phone.
The young woman was attacked when she was leaving school and her assailant, who confessed to the crime, was captured a little more than 24 hours after robbing the young woman, who had just turned 15.
This murder caused great commotion in Bucaramanga and in the rest of the country, so much so that the judge who attended the judicial proceedings wept during the recounting of the events.
He even stopped the audience for a minute and turned off his camera while saying that “it was normal, that he was also human and this moved him.” The aggressor, he was sent to prison and could pay up to 40 years in prison.
In the midst of recounting the events in which Nickol Valentina was murdered for stealing her cell phone, the judge asks for a minute with his voice breaking as he says that he is moved by the case.
Video: @JulianMejiaPil pic.twitter.com/9weXv3YAHK– Alejandra Rodriguez (@MariasRodriguez) March 1, 2022
But this is just one case of mobile phone thefts that happen daily in Colombia and what seems to be a problem that does not stop. To this is added the issue of massive robberies, such as those that have been seen in several restaurants in the main cities of the country.
(Also read: If not stolen, you risk falling: another bridge with deadly gaps).
And although with respect to 2019 the number of reports of cell phone theft received by the Police decreased, in 2021 (2020 is not taken into account due to quarantines, due to the covid-19 pandemic), the perception of insecurity and the fear of being killed by the theft of a cell phone grows more every day among citizens.
The figures compiled by the Police indicate that last year there were 148,055 reports of theft of this equipment in the country, while in 2019 there were 164,933. This represents a 16.8 percent reduction.
The most affected in 2021 were Cundinamarca, with 63,458 (Bogotá has 56,563, according to figures from the Security Secretariat); Antioquia, with 18,925; Valle del Cauca, with 14,472; Santander, with 6,982 and Atlántico, with 5,924 complaints.
This reflects that 74 percent of the complaints, which are 109,761, are concentrated in five departments of the country.
In recent years, moreover, there has been a slight decrease, which has been sustained. In 2018 there were 171,288 complaints; 164,933 in 2019 and 132,917 in 2020.
(Keep reading: Robbery in a hairdressing salon in the southwest of Bogotá left an injured person).
The modalities The most common against this crime, explained in November of last year the director of the Police, General Jorge Luis Vargas, are: robbery with sharp or firearms, raponazo and tickling.
Citizens see it as unnecessary to file a complaint, because they consider that they will never recover your phone
But these figures, in any case, do not reflect the true reality of the problem. The reason? Citizens see it as unnecessary to file a complaint, since they consider that they will never recover your phone.
For this reason, from Asomóvil, the association that brings together the association of Claro, Tigo and Movistar, the three largest operators in the country, consider that they have the true record of thefts in Colombia.
Samuel Hoyos, president of this entity, assures that when a person’s cell phone is stolen, they have two paths: file a complaint with the authorities and report it to their operator in order to enable a new line. If the second procedure is not done, the usual number cannot be recovered.
In addition, the foregoing is reflected in the 2021 Citizen Security and Coexistence Survey, prepared by Dane, which revealed that the complaint rate in 2020 was 27.1 percent nationwide. This means that in any crime, more than 70 percent of people do not report it. And, in other words, 7 out of 10 victims do not go to the authorities.
According to Asomóvil figures, in 2021 there was a record of 1,200,000 cell phones stolen in the country, which means an average of 100,000 thefts per month and 3,287 per day. Now, this panorama suggests that the situation has worsened, since if the data for 2019 (which was 913,000 cases) is compared with that for 2021, the number of stolen cell phones increased by 23.91 percent. This means that, in 2021, 786 more cell phones were stolen in the country daily than in 2019.
The big problem is that the authorities have concentrated on technical measures, which have not been the solution to the problem and that police measures have not been effective.
“The big problem is that the authorities have concentrated on technical measures, which have not been the solution to the problem and that police measures have not been effective. For example, seizures at ports, at borders, in places where there is resale of used telephones, which, in general, are stolen”, asserted Hoyos.
In the words of Jairo Libreros, citizen security analyst, there are several aspects that must be taken into account regarding this problem. Although there is an issue of security and reaction capacity on the part of the Public Force, there is another aspect that is rarely talked about, such as demand.
In other words, many people buy equipment and repair cell phones in places where they do not have the necessary support to validate the legality of the origin of the devices and spare parts.
Theft continues because there is a demand on the black market. Thus, when cell phones are purchased or repaired in places where there are no guarantees of origin, the life of another person could have been compromised with that new mobile or with that repair.
(Continue reading: What is known about the massive robbery in Chapinero’s restaurant).
“That supply and demand not only compromise the Colombian domestic market, but also the international market. Until we manage to guarantee cell phone vendors guarantees so that phones are blocked as soon as they are stolen and the parts cannot be used or citizens are aware that items cannot be purchased on the black market, when these are related, when there is no clarity of their origin, this is going to be a game that is going to be maintained for many years”, said Libreros.
Another aspect to take into account, experts point out, is the need to unify the figures. Operators claim to have the true numbers of the number of cell phone thefts in the country. If only the figures of complaints are taken into account, they say, the problem cannot be measured.
For this reason they assure that it is important to unify the figures that the operators have to attack andThe problem with strategies designed for more than a million thefts a year and not with around 140,000 complaints.
NATION
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