Isabel Cocker/The Santiago Times Staff
SANTIAGO – The National Victim’s Survey 2017 was released on Wednesday, showing that public confidence in both of the Chilean police forces has dropped over the last year to its lowest level in 10 years.
According to the survey, which was performed by the Fundación Paz Ciudadana (Citizen’s Peace Foundation) in collaboration with Adimark, citizens rated the efficiency of the Carabineros in combating delinquency as 4.4, down from 4.8 last year. Similarly, the rating of the Investigative Police (PDI) dropped from 4.6 to 4.4.
“The rate of victimization remains high and is distributed evenly across the entire country,” the Executive Director of Paz Ciudadana, Daniel Johnson, remarked. “The results show that current actions are not being effective.”
Perhaps the most alarming statistic of the survey was that public confidence in the Carabineros has reached 18%, a significant decrease from the 27% registered in the last survey.
This is mirrored by a lack of satisfaction with the actions of the prosecution services – of those affected by robbery, only 55% reported the crime, and 65% of those felt unsatisfied with the response they obtained.
However, according to reports by emol.com, Héctor Espinoza, the General Director of the PDI refused to consider the survey by Paz Ciudadana.
He commented: “Paz Ciudadana does surveys? I don’t want to comment on this, as I don’t have the previous surveys and, secondly, I only refer to serious surveys, which we highly value.”
Espinosa also pointed out that the latest survey carried out by Cadem gave the police force a 71% public approval rating, underlining that “their methods are really rigorous”.
