Last week, Darío told us about a robbery in El Banco, which is a part of Potrerillos Arriba but outside of the pueblo proper. He said that an American couple had been robbed–their dogs had been poisoned and some horses killed.
I never like to say anything unlessI have it confirmed from several sources. So we decided to talk with the Potrerillos Arriba police chief, a woman. We did that this morning.
She was very nice, but unfortunately assumed that because I spoke passable Spanish, I was fluent. Also, she was clearly uncomfortable–distressed is probably a better description–with the situation. So, she talked at quite a rapid rate, even for a Panamanian, and I got most but not all of it. It didn’t help that she did jump around from thesituation in El Banco to talk about what was going on in Potrerillos Abajo and then back again. Therefore, the partial and I should say confused report.
In El Banco, evidently a German woman was robbed in her home. Her dogs were poisoned, and and it may be that she was raped. Money and other valuable were taken. There have been other robberies in Potrerillos Abajo; two women were raped during two breakins there. I think but won’t swear to it that it was a separate robbery in Potrerillos Arriba involving horses. I really am not sure how horses fit into this particular picture. When I asked specifically about them, she waved her hand in a dismissive gesture and went on talking about something else.
What I do know is the general identity of those responsible–a gang of teenagers located in El Banco involved with drugs. According to the police chief, the problem is enormous, the worse she’s ever seen. Also, she’s limited because they don’t have enough personnel in Potrerillos and there are restrictions on how they can handle minors.
I also received the impression that the two robberies/rapes in Potrerillos Abajo that she mentioned were also the work of teenagers, but again, am not certain.
Her advice is to keep the windows closed because recently there have been a spate of robberies, in La Acequia, in which the robbers used chloroform or some similar gas to knock out the inhabitants and rob the houses. We had a similar incident up in the pueblo about 2 years ago; it’s not an uncommon thing. She also recommended an alarm, and to activate it if there’s trouble. We’ve been told many times that an alarm is the best robbery prevention you can have; the robbers will run if an alarm goes off. We have one, and it can be activated relatively easily from inside the house. We’re going to go through the drill this afternoon, alerting our neighbors that we’re testing.
Since we arrived here, we have been told about problems with teenagers in Potrerillos Abajo, and that El Banco was a rough place, although no mention was made of teenagers in particular; we’ve known about drugs moving in there for several years.
I’m sorry to be vague or confused about some details, but figured that it was worth putting out this post to talk about the teenager problem. What I heard before assumed that the robbery in El Banco was somehow connected with what happened in Citrico and in two other locations, one of which was in Boquete. Those seem to have been carried out by a gang of 4 adults, with a gun. These teenagers did not have a gun; they had “armas blancas”, which translates as any sharp instrument used as a weapon, such as knives or machetes, obviously.
The police chief, whose name is Lourdes Santamaria, was not optimistic about the ability of the police to do much. She did give us the phone numbers of the Potrerillos Arriba substation and that of the representante, whom we’ve met and with whom I’ve talked on several occasions. Think I’m going to give him a call.
Again, I don’t like putting up a post with so much indefinite information, but I do know that some of the rumors going around here are either conflating two robberies or exaggerating what happened in the one. Doesn’t matter–the El Banco robbery was serious enough.
Filed under: crime
