MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Panama adopts Bukele-style approach to gang violence

“For many years, crime took advantage of the lack of leadership, but that is over,” Mulino announced

The Panamian Government of President Raul Mulino announced this week that it would adopt an approach against gang crime similar to that of Nayib Bukele's El Salvador.

Operation Panama 3.0 “aims to rid Panama of gangs. Starting today we will go house by house, farm by farm, or wherever the gang members are hiding to put them where they belong: in jail,” Mulino said on social media. These missions will go on “until the streets once again belong to decent and hard-working people,” the president also posted on X. “There will be no hiding place for criminals,” Mulino also pointed out.

The new strategy will also involve 1,032 additional National Police officers, 50 motorcycles, and 100 vehicles of a different type to strengthen law enforcement presence in the streets “with the order to protect and defend honest Panamians,” the head of state went on.

The new deployments would also consist of community outreach patrol vehicles, mobile checkpoints, and police checkups in high crime areas, such as Colon, Panama Oeste, San Miguelito, the Canal area, Arraiján, Alcalde Díaz, Don Bosco, Pacora, and San Francisco, it was also explained.

“For many years, crime took advantage of the lack of leadership, but that is over. In my government, he who does it pays it! My commitment is to honest Panamanians, and I will not rest until I see Panama as the safest country in the region,” Mulino insisted. “Now we will recover the neighborhoods and get the gangs out of them,” he also pledged.

Mulino also admitted the authorities were evaluating the possibility of decreeing a curfew in the populous municipality of San Miguelito as well as in the Caribbean province of Colon.