MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Giuliani lays out security plan with President Vázquez in Uruguay

“Nothing affects tourism more than crime,” said Giuliani, who met with Tabaré in Montevideo.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani met Tuesday with Uruguay's President Tabaré Vázquez in Montevideo and agreed to work on a new security proposal adjusted to the local situation.

Giuliani has been hired by the Partido de la Gente (People's Party) to act as a security advisor and apply his “broken windows theory,” which is based on the principle that if a broken window appears in a building and is not fixed soon, the rest of the windows end up vandalized.

Rudolph Giuliani lays out security plan with President Vázquez in Uruguay: This is the point where you can stop it, if you let it go for one, two or three more years, it's going to be very difficult to reverse https://t.co/m2OIyTZ4Rz pic.twitter.com/PXzcm8Ofaz

— MercoPress (@MercoPressNews) November 15, 2018

In a press conference after the meeting, Giuliani recalled that he previously worked in twenty countries in which he detected situations “worse” than those in Uruguay. In that sense, he pointed out that he found “hopeful signs” in the Uruguayan reality.

Giuliani said he spoke with Uruguayan leaders about “the use of statistics, technologies, police training and work in the areas of impact”, the concept on which the High Dedication Operative Patrol (PADO) is based.

Although he highlighted the coincidences between his proposal and what Uruguay has been doing, he maintained that “offenders who commit crimes once or twice in their lives should be differentiated from people who have crime as a profession.” In that sense, he raised the need for professional criminals to “be imprisoned longer and should not go out so easily”.

Giuliani, who met separately with other Uruguayan officials, told local media that “the situation did not get out of control but it is quite bad.”

“This is the point where you can stop it, if you let it go for one, two or three more years, it's going to be very difficult to reverse,” he added.

“The first thing is to get organized; in Medellín we lowered crime rates by 40% by reorganizing,” he explained.

His proposals include creating a map of the “hot” points of crime in the country and thus working with specialized police officers according to the area and the type of crime that occurs. He also aimed to improve police training and add more troops.

“I have the feeling that your country is in a very important position to make a decision now,” he said, warning that it is essential not to end up as other countries in Latin America in terms of security. “It is not justified to let homicides increase or that drug traffickers use your country as a point of transit, it must stop, nothing affects tourism more than crime,” he stressed.