The Municipal Urban Guard
Rosario pioneered the creation of a special force, the Municipal Urban Guard (Guardia Urbana Municipal, GUM) to patrol the city. The GUM agents are not police officers (the police force is under control of the provincial government), so they do not carry weapons and they cannot detain or arrest people, but they can report and record traffic violations, shut down commercial establishments that violate the law, perform first aid procedures, set up roadside blood alcohol content controls, etc. The GUM patrols public areas such as squares, monuments, and the pedestrian streets in the center; its operations overlap and coordinate those of other municipal and provincial agencies, and are intended to have an extra dissuasive effect. The GUM was started on 29 June 2004 with 250 agents, and soon taken up by other cities: in Villa Constitución a project was presented by a private citizen in September; nearby Roldán adopted it in October, Buenos Aires in March 2005 (see Guardia Urbana de Buenos Aires), and Rafaela is currently discussing it. The Police Cadet School of Rosario provided technical courses for aspiring agents residing in many towns and cities of Santa Fe.
Read more about this topic: Government Of Rosario
Famous quotes containing the words municipal, urban and/or guard:
“No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace, is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.”
—Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944)
“A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and and not by a but.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)