On Friday, July 26, at around 00:30 hours, a gang of 10 armed criminals, aged between 16 and 21, broke into a home in the Pudahuel municipality, in the northwestern sector of the city of Santiago de Chile. After threatening the family who was sleeping in the building, they took weapons, cash and televisions. Later, the same group of thieves, four of them minors, moved to the Quinta Normal commune, and at 02:26 in the morning they held an 88-year-old woman at gunpoint to steal various goods, mainly technological equipment. Just 15 minutes later, they carried out a third assault on a home in the Maipú municipality.
In Chile, these robberies with violence or intimidation, perpetrated by a large number of people acting in a pack, are popularly known as turbazos. Sub-prefect Agustín Urbina, head of the Metropolitan West Robbery Brigade of the PDI, told EL PAÍS that this phenomenon began to come to light in 2016: “That year, through the media, we learned that large groups of people were entering pharmacies or supermarkets and stealing large quantities of products.” Urbina said that this type of crime has mutated and that since this year, in the midst of a security crisis, “there has been a change of direction.” “The focus is to go directly to committing this type of crime in private homes,” he said. Neither the sub-prefect nor the Carabineros had the requested figures of how many turbazos have been held this year in Chile.
Most of the members of the gangs that are involved in them, says Sub-Prefect Urbina, are not older than 20 years old. Like those who participated in the three violent crimes that night at the end of July that dominated the national news. That series of turbazos They pushed the Western Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office to create a task force with the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) to deal exclusively with stopping the wave of this type of crime.
A few weeks after its launch, the team led by the Maipú-Cerrillos prosecutor, Gabriela Cruces, is investigating seven cases and, after a month of investigation, the team carried out an operation on Tuesday in which they raided 16 homes in the Cerro Navia and Renca communes, in the peripheral area of the capital. The deployment ended with the arrest of seven of the gang members. Prosecutor Curces said at a press conference where her team revealed the details of the operation, that they managed to link a man who was in preventive detention with the turbazos carried out on July 26. “In our opinion, he is the leader of this organized gang,” he said.
The Metropolitan Western Regional Prosecutor, Marcos Pastén, explained this Wednesday that what differentiates the turbazos Unlike other types of robberies with intimidation, the criminals “enter homes in groups.” They do this “causing great fear inside the home and making it impossible for these people to defend themselves or take shelter,” he said at the office of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the PDI, located in the commune of Independencia. As for the selection of homes, they are usually located in relatively quiet areas. “We get the impression that the gang surely had information about the people who lived in these houses, who in many cases were elderly people,” warned Pastén.
The seven detainees were brought before the Ninth Guarantee Court of Santiago, where they were charged with the crimes of robbery with intimidation, theft and violation of the law on arms control. The court determined on Wednesday afternoon that the four adults detained will remain in preventive detention and the three minors in provisional confinement.
After the turbazos In less than five days, between August 15 and 20, a pharmacy branch in the commune of La Cisterna, south of Santiago, was the victim of two such crimes. Following a complaint filed by the Federation of Pharmacy Workers, the Labor Directorate (DT) ordered the suspension of the store’s operations on August 22 to ensure the protection of workers. The measure was extended for three days and was lifted after the pharmacy adopted new security measures.
The suspension of commercial activity provoked criticism from the private sector. The Santiago Chamber of Commerce (CCS) stated that “when violence escalates and goes beyond the powers of private security, it is a sign that the State has not been sufficiently effective in fulfilling its primary duty.” The National Multigremial, an association of small and medium-sized businesses, described the decision to close the pharmacy as “arbitrary” and “with little common sense.” Ironically, they said in a statement: “We are calling for them to tell us in which places we cannot undertake business. Under these conditions we will have to make a regulatory plan for SMEs according to the crime zone.”
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