Gov't blasts Macri over lack of Met Police presence outside City's public buildings

Labour Minister Carlos Tomada and Senator Daniel Filmus harshly criticized the Macri administration for “failing to replace all posts previously assigned to Federal Police officers with members of the Metropolitan Police.” Both government officials blasted the City Mayor and urged him to deploy Metropolitan Police officers in the city’s hospitals.

Tomada considered that Security Minister Nilda Garre’s decision to remove all Federal Police officers from the city’s public buildings in order to patrol the streets “is the right move in order to improve security” in the area.

“This fact seems to have gone unnoticed, but the truth is that what has happened here is that while the City Mayor insisted that the Metropolitan Police was ready to be in control, it now seems it was not that way,” he said.

At the same time, Filmus repeated that the Met Police needs to look after the city’s hospitals.

“They have to be good for something. It’s not possible that every time they are faced with an issue, Macri says they are not ready and only uses them for their personal security. Otherwise the jurisdictions of the Met Police and the Federal Police are overlapping in several of the city’s neighbourhoods,” he remarked.

The former Education Minister said that he thought it was “good” for the Met Police that they have a specific function, and that’s why “we believe we have to make it stronger.”

Tomada then stated that if he were the City Mayor, he “would have deployed Met Police officers outside all public hospitals and schools around the city three days ago.”

While addressing a crowd of professionals in the medicine business, Filmus said that, in case of being elected as mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, he will look to “go back to helping those that need it the most” through “solidarity and the social sensitivity that the Macri administration doesn’t have.”