A robbery in a house in the Peñas Altas neighborhood in Matanzas was featured on National Television to highlight the work of the Cuban police in the context of rising crime on the island.
According to this report, there were four individuals who forcibly entered the home in the early hours of the morning, although the specific day when the incident occurred was not specified. Inside the house were a couple, their small child, and an elderly person.
When interviewed by the government-run media, the husband reported that he was threatened with a knife, while his wife was hit in the nose and suffered other injuries, such as cuts on one hand. The alleged robbers were looking for money and the belongings of the house's occupants.
For her part, the affected woman said that she had a confrontation with one of the criminals when he opened the door to her room. “The person who is in the middle of the hallway, between my mom’s room and mine, opens the door abruptly and, well, my instinct made me go at him and hold him with my hand because he was coming towards me with a knife,” she commented, not elaborating on the blow to the partition but rather on the cuts she received on one hand.
However, they claim they did not have what the alleged thieves wanted: dollars, and they had to settle for stealing what they found in the house.
"They tried to take anything that had more value; anything would have served them. Once they felt in control of the situation, they began to take all our personal belongings: clothes, television, induction stove, blender, electric iron," said the affected man.
His wife added between laughter that turned to tears that "they walked around the house while they were robbing, drinking the soda as if it were normal, as if they were in their own home and we were the strangers."
The television report highlights the police's efforts to “capture the alleged thieves in a few hours.” “Forensic science, along with the contributions from the victims and the population, was vital in the process. The stolen goods were returned in a public act,” they add.
The official press, tasked with praising the work of the police and focused on a campaign to appease the fears of the Cuban population, which hears every day about the increase in thefts, both on the street and inside homes, as well as assaults and murders in a country where the poverty threshold and food insecurity are rising, omitted the sentences for these alleged thieves, although, according to a prosecutor, they could face up to 30 years of deprivation of liberty.
The official narrative fits within a wave of crimes in the country, most of which the police fail to solve. However, while it remains silent on the majority, the state-controlled press highlights those cases that it can capitalize on to restore the name of its National Revolutionary Police, which does not have a good reputation among Cubans.
The same was done a few days ago with the dismantling of an alleged criminal gang, made up of several young people from the Cienfuegos municipality of Cumanayagua.
The supposed gang operated at night and stole from uninhabited homes, from which they managed to take televisions, appliances, and money.
According to the pro-government Facebook profile called "Las Cosas de Fernanda," which reproduces events in the style of the television program Tras la Huella, "the wrongdoers were watching the residents, as well as the people who were guarding the houses, in order to later carry out their misdeeds."
Also, two cases of burglary in homes were reported in Holguín, where the thieves took everything they found, from furniture and appliances to cutlery.
Even the thieves have no respite; they have even attempted to rob the police themselves, as was the case in the Holguin municipality of Sagua de Tánamo, where a thief tried to steal a horse from a police officer almost right in front of the station, but he was unable to complete his task.
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