Taking no prisoners in the kidnap capital of the world: On the streets of Caracas

NB - This is an instructive & tragic story. Violence & criminality are an unending spiral. Children exposed to brutal practices in the beginning of life then go on as damaged people, to act further upon what they have experienced. They become sociopaths, people incapable of human sympathy. The more damaged people there are in the world, the more violence there will be. And those who wish to make political gains by employing such people are contributing to making the world an even worse place than it already is.

Venezuela boasts many unhappy superlatives: with an annual total of around 20,000 homicides (the government refuses to release accurate statistics) the country competes yearly with half-a-dozen other unfortunate places for the world’s highest murder rate; there is reported to be one firearm in circulation for every two citizens, making Venezuela the most weaponised environment on earth; and every year there are, according to the police, at (the very least) 2,000 kidnaps for ransom nationwide.

Inspector Hector Ramirez flattens himself on top of my colleague, reporter Kiki King. Beretta 9mm pistol in hand, he’s peering over her ballistic helmet down into the gully below, growling at us in Spanish to stay low. As Ramirez crawls over her, lifting his head, another burst of automatic gunfire whips through the air above us, the stuttering reports deadened by a silencer this time, flattening us further into the grass.

We’re under fire at dawn in El Valle – a barrio slum on the outskirts of Caracas – capital of Venezuela and kidnap capital of the world. Each day more than five people are kidnapped for ransom in Venezuela – a per capita abduction rate higher than anywhere else on earth.

Hector Ramirez is head of the Venezuela police force’s elite anti-kidnap squad technical team. We’ve been embedded with him for three weeks with unprecedented access to his unit, and now we’re being shot at by the city’s most notorious kidnap gang.

Led by El Viejo (“the Old One”), a prison escapee and convicted serial killer who Ramirez has been hunting since January, the gang took its latest victim two days before and the race is on to release him before El Viejo kills him. With five new murders to his name in as many weeks, “neutralising” El Viejo – as the objective of the mission to apprehend him is described – has become the anti-kidnap squad’s overriding priority, and Ramirez’s personal obsession.

Inspector Ramirez’s men and the kidnappers have been exchanging fire sporadically for half an hour, the climbing sun gradually illuminating the makeshift houses and muddy tracks snaking around the flat patch of grass where we’re lying prone. Below, where the ground falls away into the ghetto beneath, another cascade of shots gives way to victorious whistles and excited shouting... read more:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/taking-no-prisoners-in-the-kidnap-capital-of-the-world-on-the-streets-of-caracas-with-an-elite-police-squad-8872390.html