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Most governors must have been tempted to alter crime rates and they have, perhaps, done it. Mexico has been besieged by increasing insecurity and violence rates for over a decade, therefore, fabricating numbers that didn't reflect the real situation implies a political benefit but at the same time, it means to acknowledge a government's inability to fight crime .
This week, the current Mexico City administration formally accused officials from the previous administration of altering crime rates. In February 2019, two months after taking office, Mexico City's Attorney General revealed the early signs; the Attorney General's Office revealed that the official numbers reported by the previous administration registered, on average, 84.7 crimes when in reality, there were at least 170 crimes reported in the city every day .
This type of charade requires a lot of work and has to be ordered by a high-ranking official. In total, 106 people are being investigated by the Statistics Commission from the Public Security System and Mexico City's Attorney General. Those being investigated include the former local Attorney General, Edmundo Garrido Osorio, and César Martínez Jaso , the former head of the Criminal Statistics Board .
In order to make this type of accusations, the current administration needs evidence and everything indicates that this is the case. The Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System carried out an audit , in collaboration with a representative from the United Nations , that implied the inspection of over 240,000 files . The most important finding is that a total of 24,000 high-impact crimes were labeled as minor crimes . In regards to homicides , dozens of files were cataloged as faulty facts , death due to natural causes , or fortuitous causes when in reality, these were manslaughter .
If these accusations are confirmed, this would mean the former administration betrayed the trust of Mexican society , even when they were responsible of providing security but it would also confirm the urgency to implement quality-controls to the statistics issued by local Attorney Generals .
Fabricating numbers also cancels the opportunity to improve the strategies to fight crime . These charades waste valuable time that could have been used to fully understand and solve an urgent problem that has worsened, but instead, they allegedly lied to society and feigned that there were positive developments. Nevertheless, reality is not unquestionable .
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