Citizens are already tired of insecurity and in some cases, they have taken the law into their own hands, despite the fact that the authorities indicate that they could be investigated for the crime of personal injury. In a case registered in the Gualanday neighborhood, two subjects accused of having committed a robbery were beaten, one of them had a head injury.
Newspaper of Huila, Neiva
By: Anderson Hernandez
The National Police has reported that more than 108,000 thefts have been registered so far this year in the country, the most common being those involving the use of different types of weapons, especially on public transport.
The robberies in the city of Neiva, the majority are committed on public roads and in broad daylight. Fridays and weekends are the most used days for criminals, who stalk their victims accompanied or alone, managing to take away even what they are wearing or steal their motorcycles.
Iván Javier Mujica, researcher and teacher.
They beat them savagely
Last Saturday night a woman was injured, apparently in an act of theft, the public reacts and points to two young people for having committed the act, for this reason several people attacked her, punched and kicked them.
Even a witness to the event, who did not mention his name so as not to have problems, pointed out: “they hit the boys hard, they also damaged the clothes they were wearing, they left them half naked. One had a head injury.
Subsequently, uniforms from the Metropolitan Police arrived at the scene, who removed the two people from the site, so that they would not continue affecting their personal integrity.
Later, the subjects were transferred to the Hospital facilities, where they received medical attention and the affected person had his wound sutured.
there was no complaint
According to unofficial sources, the victim of the act of insecurity did not approach to file the respective complaint against the subjects investigated, so they had to be released.
However, people who are involved in physical attacks on alleged thieves can be investigated for the crime of personal injury, which is: “they are a crime that threatens the legal right of life and personal integrity, whose typicity is characterized by be broad, because it is determined through the type of injury and the result that causes the aggression of the author. In this sense, for the existence of personal injuries to be predicated, a serious affectation to the legal right of personal integrity is required, that is, a modification in the body of a person that implies an impairment of their health.
“It is important to remember that it is not good to take the law into your own hands since these people can be prosecuted for personal injuries,” said Colonel Camilo Torres Quijano, Police Garrison officer.
The motorcycle the subjects were riding was burned.
Other cases
Recently in the city of Medellín, two individuals were stripped naked by the community, who claimed that they were stealing the personal belongings of minors.
The community yells at them and some beat them with belts or kick them as the men try to dodge and escape the scene. A man who records while the subjects leave a house, assures that they are “rats” and that they were in the area robbing minors.
Likewise, in the city of Cali (Valle del Cauca), there were two cases of justice into their own hands, due to the lynching of two alleged thieves in the San Fernando neighborhood and in the Andrés Sanín sector, in the vicinity of the Terminal del Massive Integrated Western (MIO).
In commune 7, a man was even beaten with a stick. In a recording that went viral on social networks, you can see a large number of people attacking the subject, while two auxiliaries from the Cali Metropolitan Police tried to control the situation.
social analysis
Regarding justice by one’s own hand, Iván Javier Mojica, who is a professor and researcher at the Universidad de los Andes, points out: “the cases of justice by one’s own hands in Colombia have been in the news in recent years and have the potential to become a significant social problem. Why can a normal person come to consider that the solution to a crime is to commit another?
The accused were handed over to the Police.
When speaking of justice by one’s own hand, one does not speak only of the fact of lynching a person, although this is the most common case. Justice into one’s own hands can also contain a component of public humiliation or ridicule. In the case of lynching, it is quite evident, since it is a mob beating an individual or a handful of individuals, but said humiliation can also be present without the need for physical violence, or at least not to the point of being able to considered as a lynching.
Trust in Institutions
“When a society does not trust its institutions or those in charge of maintaining security, it can go to the extreme of taking justice on its own,” adds the researcher.
This distrust, as Arriagada and Godoy mention, can have several components: ineffectiveness of the justice system, corruption at various levels (judges, police, politicians in general), excessive procedures to seek justice through the appropriate means, etc.; but regardless of the presence of one or more of these components, one thing seems clear: institutional failure leads to the emergence of justice into its own hands.
The issue of impunity, this resource measures two factors that are relevant: criminal justice and civil justice. In the case of criminal justice, they evaluate aspects such as the effectiveness of the investigations, the time they take, the impartiality of the system and that there is no corruption or influences involved. In the case of civil justice, the access of people to this system is evaluated, that it be impartial, free of corruption and influences and free of delays, among others.
The third resource is a series of statistics collected by the Ministry of Justice and Colombian Law in which the citizen perception regarding the trust they have in the judicial apparatus and impunity in the country is evaluated.
Theft from people in a report from the Ministry of Defense.