Montevideo Portal
The kidnapping of Maia Beloso, a seven-year-old girl, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Lugano put the Argentine media on edge. Some channels, such as Todo Noticias, showed a clock on Thursday counting the days, hours and seconds since the girl’s mother, who lives on the streets and is addicted to drugs, lost sight of her daughter. Maia disappeared on Monday morning and was found by the Police this Thursday morning with her kidnapper, Carlos Savanz, who was at the disposal of the Justice.
The Minister of Security of the Province of Buenos Aires, Sergio Berni, arrived in Luján on Thursday morning, where mother and daughter met again, and there he gave a brief press conference. “The media have to understand that we permanently use the media to have an interaction with criminals. Many times in an interview, on a television program, many times what we do is communicate and pass messages to crime, messages subliminal; they are technical, “said the minister, who a few hours earlier had given an interview on the C5N channel in which he spoke for several minutes about Maia’s search operation.
Interaction with criminals through the mass media is not a technique extended at the police level, but the sending of messages to certain criminals in certain settings is. The former director of the Uruguayan National Police, Mario Layera, explained to Montevideo Portal that “the Police send messages mainly in critical situations, which must be evaluated very well.”
The retired officer assured that this technique cannot be implemented extensively. “It is generally used for the search for people, with the consent of the media. It can be very important during the search for missing persons, mainly children, or dangerous criminals. It can also be used in other critical situations, such as kidnappings, attacks “added Layera, who stressed that” generally there is the endorsement of the family, justice and the media. “
The former director of the National Police preferred not to mention any specific case in which he had sent messages to criminals through the media.
Layera worked between 1995 and 2013 in the Anti-Drug Brigade, a body that he led between 2010 and 2013, the year in which he became head of the Montevideo Police. At the beginning of 2016, the then director of the National Police, Julio Guarteche, resigned due to the advance of the disease he suffered and Layera assumed as director of the National Police, a position he held until the change of government, on March 1, 2020 .
Montevideo Portal
