By Cassandra Garrison and Ana Isabel Martinez
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s new government on Tuesday presented its plan to combat violence and crime, vowing to strengthen the National Guard police force and boost intelligence gathering in a bid to reduce murders, kidnappings and extortion.
Speaking at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s morning press conference, Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch outlined a four pronged approach that will also focus on treating the economic and social causes of crime and improving coordination between crime-fighting institutions.
The National Guard is currently made up of 133,000 members, Garcia Harfuch said, and can serve areas that do not have access to reliable local policing.
In recent weeks, the mayor of the state capital of Guerrero was violently murdered, and an intra-cartel war in Sinaloa has killed more than 150 people.
Sheinbaum, who pledged her government would not wage a new war on Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, said the strategy would continue the work of her predecessor and mentor former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
“The first thing that is very important is that (former President Felipe) Calderon’s war against the cartels is not going to return. We are not looking for extrajudicial executions, which was what was happening,” Sheinbaum said, referring to the bloody crackdown launched in 2006.
Instead, the plan aims to support the public in areas hit especially hard by violent crime, as well as young people suffering drug addictions, she said.
Lopez Obrador faced criticism for his “hugs not bullets” strategy, which prioritized the social roots of crime rather than direct conflict with armed cartels. Opponents said it was too soft and allowed criminal groups to expand and strengthen.
Garcia Harfuch, who formerly served as Sheinbaum’s police chief when she was mayor of the capital Mexico City, said the new strategy will focus heavily on crime prevention.
“From the Security Cabinet of the government of Mexico we are going to work with all the federal entities because we are convinced that to achieve lasting peace in the country we must assume that security is a shared responsibility,” he said.
(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez and Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and David Gregorio)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.