Reducing violence was one of López Obrador campaign promises, and the goal of his "hugs not bullets" strategy.
The federal government is planning to create a temporary commission to assist efforts to combat homicides, which numbered more than 15,000 in the first six months of the year.
The Security Ministry (SSPC) outlined the proposed function and composition of the Internal Commission for Attention to the Crime of Intentional Homicide in a document submitted to the National Commission for Regulatory Improvement.
The ministry said the commission will be responsible for coordinating the anti-homicide efforts of the federal government’s security and law enforcement agencies. “Through coordination mechanisms,” the commission will also collaborate with state and municipal security authorities within the framework of the federal anti-homicide strategy, the SSPC said.
The commission — whose overarching aim is to support “the effective prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of the crime of intentional homicide — will be “the base for the subsequent formalization of the National Anti-Homicide Coordination,” the ministry said.
The head of the SSPC’s General Unit of Legal Affairs and Transparency will lead the commission, with other Security Ministry officials and representatives of the National Guard completing its composition.
“The assigned personnel will carry out the tasks entrusted to it,” the SSPC document said. “… To achieve its purpose the commission will have working groups that will meet periodically according to the needs of the service or at least once a month.”
The commission will manage a criminal information system containing homicide data, formulate bimonthly reports detailing actions carried out to combat the crime and provide advice on security policy and strategy to federal, state and municipal authorities, among other responsibilities.
Its establishment will occur after the government publishes a document to that end in its official gazette. The commission will be absorbed into the National Anti-Homicide Coordination once that institution has been established.
President López Obrador campaigned on a promise to reduce violence in Mexico, but his first full year in office — 2019 — was the worst on record for homicides with over 34,000 victims, and over 30,000 people were murdered in each of 2020 and 2021.
All told, over 120,000 people have been murdered since the president was sworn in December 1, 2018. Homicides declined 9.1% in the first six months of 2022, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez reported in late July, but AMLO’s six-year term nevertheless remains on track to be the most violent in recent decades.
With reports from Animal Político and El Universal
