Abstract

APARICIO-BARRERA, Juan; BELLO-MONTES, Catalina  and  MARIN-CUELLAR, Andrés. Organizational overlap in the territorial coordination of security and the police service in Colombia: a case study of the departments of Tolima and Meta and their respective capitals. LogosCyT [online]. 2019, vol.11, n.3, pp.120-135.  Epub Dec 28, 2019. ISSN 2145-594X.  https://doi.org/10.22335/rlct.v11i3.919.

The objective of this work is to analyze the phenomenon of organizational overlap between the decentralized services of the National Police and the decentralized political-administrative distribution of Colombia against the responsibilities in citizen security. The Police force is a national and centralized organization, with a territorial deployment that includes metropolitan, departments, districts and police stations which coordinate actions from their commanders with the political-administrative authorities (mayors and governors) for territorial security management and the deployment of the police service. This situation was analyzed based on a theoretical and conceptual framework of police systems: administrative deconcentration and overlap. A qualitative methodology was designed for the development of a case study in the departments of Tolima and Meta with their respective capitals (Ibagué and Villavicencio). The results include good relations between political-administrative authorities and the police, as station commanders point out, the pragmatism of local public servants who focus on the importance of service independent of the type of organizational structure of the police, and the good concept and encouragement of local governments for the creation of the metropolitan police. Finally, the department and metropolitan commanders point out duplicity of groups according to the specialties of the services and the inflexibility of the location by positions and competencies according to the hierarchical degrees.

Keywords : police; organization; decentralization; internal security; local government.

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