The 'encerronas', the feared Chilean crime on the highways that is committed in less than a minute

The crime is classified as robbery with violence or intimidation of vehicles.

But in Chile it is widely known as

, and today it is the terror of motorists who circulate on urban highways and avenues in the Metropolitan Region of the capital, where this type of event is mainly recorded.

It consists of at least two cars driven mostly by hooded adolescents, cornering the drivers, pointing firearms at them, beating them down and then stealing their vehicle, mobile phone, computer and whatever they find of value .

Victims are left in a state of shock, abandoned on the streets or highways, sometimes in the dead of night.

Others have suffered a robbery with their children.

The Argentine newspaper Clarín called it a piranha band when, at the beginning of January, it described the group that ambushed a family from Mendoza who was vacationing in Chile and who escaped from a trap on Route 5, the main highway in the South American country.

His truck, a Volvo XC90, ended up with the windows destroyed with the blow of an iron.

The first cases were reported in 2017 and, according to Sub-Prefect Óscar Bakovic, head of the Investigative Brigade of Robberies and Criminal Intervention of the Investigative Police (PDI), entrapment is a genuinely Chilean crime.

"We have contact with Interpol and with different police forces in the region and we have not detected that it is a criminal phenomenon that has been in other countries," he says.

Security cameras that have captured the assaults in different parts of the country.

This type of robbery mutated from the so-called

, in which armed groups approach people when they open the electric gates of their houses and take their cars.

Lock-ins occur mainly at highway and road junctions.

"The subjects put a car in front and another in the back and make a kind of sandwich between the vehicle and the victim to attack her with firearms, knives or blunt elements," says Marcelo Vargas, chief prosecutor for Criminal Analysis and Investigative Focus of the Prosecutor's Office. Metropolitan East.

Prosecutors and police have established five motivations for the gangs, which went from stealing luxury cars to taking over any type of fairly new vehicle with preferred brands.

Hence, a trap today can happen to anyone.

Some luxury vehicles use them to party and abandon them after a few days.

Others use them to commit new crimes.

But much higher up the chain are criminal organizations that buy them to sell their parts in junkyards.

In addition, they clone their patents, launder them and sell them through front companies abusing a law, which was designed to encourage entrepreneurship, and which allows a company to be created in Chile in 24 hours.

There are also cars that are taken to the border, in the north of the country, to be exchanged for weapons and drugs.

“We also face the phenomenon on those who order these vehicles.

They are the people who do the twinning.

That is, the modification of the chassis and engine identification number, and the re-registration in the Chilean Civil Registry to give it a life like a new vehicle”, says prosecutor Vargas.

Precisely, these mafias are the ones that earn the most.

For teenage gangs, "the pay is tiny," says Bakovic.

“In the informal market, depending on the range, a vehicle paid to the people who steal it fluctuates between 1,200,000 and 1,400,000 Chilean pesos (about 1,600 dollars), while for a common car they can receive 300,000 pesos (about 370 Dollars).

This, versus who sells, who can get up to 5,000,000 pesos (more than six thousand dollars)”.

Among the buyers, meanwhile, are the unwary and the accomplices.

Children up to nine years old in the bands

A trap, Bakovic says, usually happens at night.

And it can last even less than a minute.

Proof of this is that in Chile it is common to see videos that have been recorded by other drivers, witnesses of both speed and violence.

There are recordings that the bands themselves upload to their social networks showing weapons and the car they have just stolen.

This was the case of the gang that called itself Los malditos de la encerrona, to which 40 crimes against motorists are attributed and which was arrested two weeks ago in an investigation led by Vargas and Bakovic in Operation Return, as reported calls him in Chile to return to the capital after a bridge.

Composed of 13 adolescents and seven adults (the older than 21 years), it is representative of the groups: among the leaders there were two minors, aged 13 and 14, whose role was driving.

“90% of the gangs that we have stopped are made up of minors.

We have even seen nine-year-old children actively participating and who are not criminally responsible.

In the more than 80 arrests made in Santiago, we have detected that the money from the sales of their robberies is spent on clothing and shoes from prestigious brands”, says the police officer.

Increase of 111%, according to the prosecution

Although there have been differences between the authorities regarding the rise in these crimes due to the way the figures are broken down, an alarm was set off by the latest quarterly report on traps from the Western Metropolitan Prosecutor's Office, whose jurisdiction covers an important part of the concessioned highways, including the one that drives to the Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport in Santiago.

It established that, as of November 2022, this type of robbery had an increase of 111.8% compared to 2021.

To get an idea of ​​its frequency, the family of Sergio Soto, head of the Criminal Prosecutor's Office and Investigative Focus of that prosecutor's office, who is in charge of preparing this quarterly report, has suffered three attempts to trap him in two years: once he;

two, his wife.

Although the largest number of victims are unknown, including application drivers, a judge, a soccer coach, television hosts and Miss Universe 1987 Cecilia Bolocco, who in December 2020 managed to escape unharmed, have also been affected.

“They are subjects ready for anything.

We have had chases at high speeds and, clearly, they are willing to take any risk both to commit the crime, to shoot a person as well as not to be arrested”, says Bakovic.

There are also fatalities.

In February 2021, Tamara, a five-year-old girl, was shot to death during a lockdown (her murderers were sentenced in 2022 to life imprisonment).

This, while in September of last year a 62-year-old driver was shot six times as he tried to flee in reverse in his jeep.

“More than the number of crimes, due to the experience and the narrative of the victims, the forms of commission have increased.

Before they were with a knife or a screwdriver and now, unfortunately, we have seen more firearms,” says prosecutor Vargas.

Bakovic adds: “A criminal phenomenon is not always associated with figures.

For us, a phenomenon is that crime that is established in an area and that causes a high sensation of public insecurity.

And, given the violence with which [encerronas] are committed, today it is one of the main crimes.”

The Government of President Gabriel Boric, through the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention, has implemented a series of measures, including a work table, an Anti-Lock Plan and coordination with concessionaire companies to illuminate highways and provide them with more cameras.

In addition, since 2020 the so-called Anti-Lock Law has been in force.

Chile is going through a security crisis that is reflected in the rise in homicides, which in 2022 grew by 32%.

According to the survey carried out by the Center for Public Studies (CEP) on January 4, when asked about the three problems that the government should devote the greatest effort to solving, the first place was for the item crime, assaults and robberies.

A response that was above health, pensions and education.

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS America newsletter and receive all the latest news in the region.