Úrsula and the unusual choice of Berni to educate the new policemen

02/11/2021 20:09

• Clarín.com

• Opinion

Updated 02/11/2021 20:09

The boy Santiago Cafiero was just 10 years old when his grandfather Antonio, governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, faced his first major political crisis.

It was because of

the Buenos Aires Police

: the residents of Tres Arroyos turned around and set fire to several patrol cars, furious with the agents who refused to take the complaint of the disappearance of a girl because it was the last day of 1989 and they did not want to work.

The girl's name was Nair Mostafá and she was 9 years old.

She was found raped and murdered the next day.

The police concentrated more on fixing the broken patrol cars than on investigating well: there were

12 suspects in 12 days

and the baby's mesh, with traces of semen,

disappeared

.

Although the word did not yet exist in everyday or legal language,

femicide

prescribed

without guilty parties

.

When Nair was raped and killed, a Miramar girl named Natalia was 3 years old.

In 2001, Natalia Melmann - now a 15-year-old teenager - was raped and murdered in Miramar.

For the

femicide

- there was no word either -

three Buenos Aires police officers

were convicted

.

Another police officer is still awaiting trial.

And yet another has not been identified.

When Natalia was raped and killed, a Hurlingham girl named Candela was 1 year old.

In 2011 Candela Sol Rodríguez - now an 11 year old girl - was kidnapped, raped and murdered in Hurlingham.

In the second trial in the case, which will hopefully be held this year,

another Buenos Aires police

will be among the accused

.

When Candela was raped and killed, a Rojas girl named Úrsula was 8 years old.

Now, at 18, Úrsula Bahillo has just been murdered by a Buenos Aires policeman who should have been in prison for the rape of another victim and gender violence and instead was free and

felt free to kill at will

.

That is the first

side horror

of the Úrsula case: that 32 years after Nair Mostafá, Buenos Aires police continue to appear involved - by action, omission, or cover-up - in the most emblematic femicides in the Province.

The second horror is that now the word

femicide

exists

and inclusive language is used in many official documents of the Province, but

the urgency of the language is not transferred to the facts

.

Alert systems are there but many times they do not prevent.

They are mute buttons.

Ringtones that do not call anyone.

The complaint is liquefied in a system that continues to function as 30 years ago, when cell phones did not exist but complicity and negligence did,

just as now

.

The judges who had to execute the arrest warrant for Úrsula's murderer did not do so because one was on vacation and the other considered that it was not his responsibility.

The police did not take one of Úrsula's complaints because it was the

weekend

.

The girl was 18 years old and had made

18 complaints of gender violence

.

It was the state that did not do its part.

The first two side horrors are diagnostic.

The third is treatment.

What remedies does the system apply so that these chronic tragedies do not recur?

What are the

signs

for the future?

The first look at that part shows an unusual scenario: the Buenos Aires Ministry of Security, led by Sergio Berni, appointed advisor and offered to direct the Police University -responsible for the training of future policemen- to the lawyer Miguel Ángel Pierri, defender of the priest Grassi and goalkeeper Jorge Mangeri,

Angeles Rawson's killer

in the most shocking femicide of the decade

.

Pierri has not yet assumed his post due to the pauses caused by the pandemic.

He is a lawyer with teaching experience who has the right to defend whoever he wants.

The problem is

the message

your appointment conveys.