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Argentine president vows to improve public security

Xinhua, June 12, 2016 Adjust font size:

President Mauricio Macri said Saturday that the government will work "side-by-side" with public security forces to improve public security throughout Argentina, given persistent rampancy of crimes of kidnapping and drug trafficking in the country.

"We have come from over 10 years of drastic deterioration in Argentina's security ... we are in time to correct it and we are going to correct it because we have focus on this and we are going to give it priority," the president said.

Macri on Saturday visited a medical center in Buenos Airies and met Santos Gustavo Diaz, head of the Federal Police's Extortive Kidnappings Research Department, who sustained serious injuries in a confrontation with criminals on Thursday in the capital's northeast.

The president said the survival of Diaz, who was shot in the face and almost lost an eye, was a miracle, and promised to improve the security situation.

"It will not happen overnight, like all the things that we have inherited and don't work. However it is important that we have already started to work on this issue with a changed attitude and with a different commitment," Macri told local media.

Macri said that there has been a paradigm shift in the fight against crime since his "government wants to take charge of the issue -- no longer ignore it but face it." They will target not only kidnappings but also drug trafficking that "generates the most violence in the streets."

Media reports say drug trade and police inefficiency are factors behind the rampant kidnappings and other violent crimes that have become a major source of public complaints in Argentina.

In May, four people were wounded as two motorcycle gangs exchanged some 150 shots in a shootout west of Buenos Aires. In December last year, three convicted drug gangsters and killers reportedly escaped from prison in a case that raised much suspicion over corruption in the country's police system. Endi