Half of all homicides in Bogotá are contract killings

In Bogotá, killing has become a service. Five out of every 10 homicides in the city are contract killings. Between January and March of this year, 134 of the 265 homicides registered in the Colombian capital (50.5%) were carried out by hitmen, according to figures from the Metropolitan Police. The trend has been rising: before the pandemic, these killings represented roughly three out of every 10 cases, explains Andrés Nieto, director of the Security Observatory at Universidad Central. In 2018, for instance, only 161 of the 1,064 homicides registered nationwide — around 15% — were classified as contract killings, according to a study published in the National Police’s journal Criminalidad.

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