An agent of the Municipal Police of Madrid was guarding last Saturday at seven in the afternoon the door of the Municipal Board of García Noblejas, in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood (San Blas-Canillejas district, in the east of the capital), when several groups of kids armed with sticks, knives, machetes, iron bars and even a crutch passed right under his nose. She immediately called for backup and six patrols arrived, detaining two groups of six and five teenagers. Both the witnesses of the massive fight and the young people themselves corroborate what seemed clearly, that they had stayed there, specifically in the nearby Anguita Couso park, to “machete” each other.
The meeting took place through social networks. Those involved in the brawl are between 13 and 16 years old, of whom 10 were arrested and one, the youngest, handed over to his mother for being unimpeachable. Five are members of the Dominican Don’t Play (DDP) youth gang and the other six are Trinitarios. These are the two most active youth gangs in the region, according to the National Police. A green heart identifies the Trinitarians and the black, the DDP.
Along with those arrested, there was a group of five girls, all minors and who call themselves the pencas (women) of the DDP, who have not been arrested because they did not directly participate in the fight, but who were cheering the kids and recording the fight with their cell phones.
El Samur had to treat five of them for blows and cuts, of which one, who had a deeper wound, was taken to a hospital. Those arrested were placed at the disposal of the Juvenile Group of the provincial judicial police brigade (Grume). The Municipal Police agents seized a knife, two wooden sticks, a metal bar, hats -distinctive of these groups- and belts.
These arrests occur at the height of the upswing in violence among youth gangs. Although the police rule out that the number of members or aggressions has increased, the use of machetes is of particular concern due to the injuries it causes, which the Interior wants to prohibit. It also worries the police that they are getting younger and younger. “If two years ago among those identified there were 10% or 20% minors, now that percentage has risen to 40%,” police sources told this newspaper in early February. In the case of Saturday, there is a third unsettling ingredient: the use of social networks to provoke each other, quote each other and brag about their crimes. The police calculate that in Madrid between 350 and 450 active members are part of the different gangs, for the most part, Spanish kids of Latin or North African origin.
February saw a bloody weekend in Madrid, with six clashes between members of rival gangs leaving two dead and at least seven injured. Two weeks later, the police arrested 19 members of these violent groups allegedly involved in three of the attacks, none of them fatal. One of the deceased was named Jaime. He was 15 years old and died of a machete blow in Atocha. The other, Diego, 25, who lost his life in Usera at the hands of five DDPs, who have already been arrested.
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