Disappearances and extortion lower in El Salvador

Last Tuesday, El Salvador's National Civilian Police (PNC) contradicted two reports on violence in the country. First, PNC subdirector Mauricio Ramírez Landaverde stated that there has been a noticeable reduction in the number of disappearances the past six months. His statements comes after the Institute of Legal Medicine (ILM) reported that there had been no change concerning the number of Salvadorans going missing. Landaverde also made it known that not all disappeared are the victims of homicide - some have actually left the country and others have been found to be in prison. I'm not sure how he would break that down by percentages.

There have also been reports that while murders have declined since the March gang truce, extortion has increased. Landaverde says that is not the case. The PNC reports that there's been a 5% decrease in reported extortion compared to last year. Two things. First, that doesn't mean there's less extortion. It just means that there are fewer reported extortion attempts in 2012 than there were reported extortion attempts during the first ~4 months of 2011. Second, even if overall extortion levels are down, that doesn't mean that some individual departments won't be experiencing higher extortion numbers. That could explain why some people think that extortion has increased.

Finally, the PNC is also reporting that, on average, 5.2 people were killed each of April's first fifteen days. The sharp reduction in homicides brings the average for the year down to 10.5 per day.