Colombia will strengthen police cooperation ties with the United States with the first liaison post of the New York Police Department in South America, which will soon be established in Bogotá.
The representation of the largest North American local police force joins that existing in 13 cities in the world, such as Toronto, Tel Aviv or Madrid.
The authorities of Colombia and New York are defining details of the memorandum of understanding that will clear the way for the arrival of a high-ranking intelligence officer to make a permanent presence in the Colombian capital.
While waiting for the details of the agreement to be known, the deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism of New York, Rebecca Weiner, anticipated the reasons for the decision.
“This arises from the recognition that we have many vexing problems on our southern border: the scourge of fentanyl, transnational criminal organizations that could have a footprint in the United States and increasingly in our city, and the immigration crisis,” Weiner said during the New York City Police Foundation's annual breakfast, according to statements published by the
New York Daily News
.
The measure implies having an officer in Bogotá who communicates to New York the movements or activities of organized crime structures.
Weiner emphasized that the goal is to obtain accurate information as quickly as possible if an event occurs that could affect the most populous city in the United States and mentioned as an example the reports of the detective assigned to Tel Aviv on the Hamas attack in Israel last July 7 October.
The Commissioner of the New York Police, Edward Cabán, has assured that the liaison post in Bogotá along with another in Tucson (Arizona) will maximize the regional presence and “will provide crucial intelligence that will be vital for the protection of the city of New York. York.”
With the support of the @nycpolicefdtn, our two new liaison posts in Tucson, AZ, and Bogota, Colombia, will help the NYPD address the myriad issues that are coming across our southern border.
These posts will maximize our regional presence and provide crucial intelligence that… pic.twitter.com/DyJaiIhYo9
— Edward A. Caban (@NYPDPC) January 31, 2024
The destination city of the link - whose identity, as well as the specific place from where it will be dispatched, is unknown - was presented by the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, during his visit to Colombia in October 2023 as part of a tour of Latin America to learn about the main routes of migrants to the United States, according to the director of the National Police, William Salamanca.
“We held meetings with his team, in support and company of Ambassador [Luis Gilberto] Murillo and Ambassador [Francisco] Palmieri, and he raised the possibility of having a liaison officer here,” said the general.
Salamanca maintains close diplomatic relations with the United States, where he was consul of Miami before assuming his current position by order of the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro.
During his visit last year, Mayor Adams witnessed the complexity of the migratory phenomenon in Necoclí, a municipality of about 45,000 inhabitants located in the Urabá of Antioquia where the journey to the Darién Gap begins.
He also flew over the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama, where thousands of people risk their lives trying to reach Central America to make their way north in search of better opportunities than those they find in their places of origin.
Many of these migrants end up arriving in New York City.
The Colombian embassy in the United States recognizes that the visit of the delegations of both countries to Necoclí was a key step to understand the situation at the border crossing and work on joint solutions.
“This bilateral collaboration focuses on the exchange of knowledge, operational advances and improvements in the technical capacity of the Colombian Police to face regional and global challenges, including human mobility,” the embassy confirmed to EL PAÍS.
Migrants on a dock before boarding a boat in Necoclí, in August 2021. Santiago Mesa
According to figures from the Ombudsman's Office, around 520,000 migrants crossed the Darién last year, more than double the number in 2022. The majority were of Venezuelan nationality (328,650), in addition to Ecuadorians, Haitians, Chinese and Colombians.
Of the total, 113,180 were girls, boys and adolescents.
On the Colombian side, the area remains under the domain of the Clan del Golfo, considered the largest drug trafficking gang in the country.
The National Army estimates that this armed group obtains an average of 125 dollars for each person who tries to cross between rivers and mountains.
Juan Pappier, deputy director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, points out that the Darién Gap has become a migratory crossroads, one of the facts that most explains the designation of the New York link.
“There, the main weaknesses of Latin America come together to respond to migration: the lack of legal and safe routes to migrate north, the limitations of integration and regularization policies in South America and the lack of territorial control to protect the population. in vast areas of the region,” says Pappier.
The continuous arrival of migrants to New York has been one of the recent headaches for the authorities of the city that never sleeps.
Mayor Adams warned late last year that they had reached “the limit of their capacity,” after receiving more than 122,000 asylum applications in less than two years.
The Colombian Police has a long history of international cooperation and interaction with intelligence agencies around the world in the fight against transnational organized crime, mainly with the United States.
The former minister of defense and former ambassador, Gabriel Silva Luján, highlights that the alliance with the New York Police Department, the largest and one of the oldest in that country with some 36,000 agents, involves the shared need to counteract migration irregular.
"Without a doubt what has happened with illegal migration is that Colombia has become the most important transit country in the region, where people come from all over, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, to try to reach the United States.
If one wants to understand the phenomenon and collect relevant intelligence information to prevent situations in New York and its area of influence, it makes sense that the Police want to have that presence,” says Silva.
Migrants gather around sites where food and warm clothing are distributed, on January 20 in New York. Andres Kudacki (AP)
Once the memorandum of understanding is formalized, the scope of cooperation will be defined.
For Colombia, it can mean access to information that helps dismantle criminal organizations.
“The New York area is one of the most relevant destination areas for many of the illegal migrants trafficked by Colombian mafias, among them the Clan del Golfo.
Any information that helps discover how these gangs operate will be very welcome.
Additionally, the New York Police have capabilities that Colombia does not have,” adds the former minister.
For his part, Mathew Charles, sociologist and researcher at the Externado University of Colombia on organized crime issues, believes that having an alliance at the city level will ensure more direct access to information from both sides of the border.
“This is important because those who investigate are often the local police.
If they talk to each other, that can improve their investigations and capabilities to confront transnational crime,” he emphasizes.
The New York City Police Foundation, an independent non-profit organization founded to help improve public safety, will cover the expenses that will allow the arrival of the liaisons located in Bogotá and Tucson, while the salaries will be covered directly the police institution to which they belong.
“Our philosophy has always been, it is the basis of our liaison program: we are not going to wait for problems to come to us,” said Weiner, the deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.
Subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and
here to the WhatsApp channel
, and receive all the key information on current events in the country.