A popular jury has unanimously declared not guilty this Wednesday the two National Police officers who led the operation that broke into an apartment on Lagasca Street, in Madrid, without judicial authorization, on March 21, 2021, to put an end to to a party that contravened the rules of the state of alarm then in force due to the pandemic. The other four agents who sat in the dock were already exonerated last week when the accusation against them was withdrawn. The two police officers now acquitted faced a sentence of two years and six months in prison and six months of disqualification that the private prosecution requested for them as they were considered perpetrators of a crime of breaking and entering. The Prosecutor’s Office and the other parties appearing had proposed the acquittal of the six agents from the beginning of the hearing, considering that their actions that day did not constitute any crime. The judge must now hand down the sentence based on this verdict. The prosecution has already announced that it will appeal to the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid.
In the verdict, the nine members of the jury conclude that the police officers were authorized to break down the door with a battering ram and enter the house – and, therefore, they did not commit any criminal offense – as it was demonstrated during the trial that there was a serious flagrant disobedience on the part of the occupants of the home by repeatedly and insistently refusing to leave the property to identify themselves as the agents asked them to do on at least 28 occasions. This was the argument that the Prosecutor’s Office had put forward in its final conclusions at the end of the hearing.
That police intervention generated enormous controversy after images recorded by one of the occupants of the home were spread on social media days after the event. In the video, a young woman was seen refusing to open the door if the agents did not have a court order. After an exchange of words that lasted 45 minutes, the police broke down the door. Nine of the 14 people who participated in the party were arrested on charges of serious disobedience to authority, although they were released hours later. In their report, the police emphasized that their actions had been protected, among other legal provisions, by the Citizen Security Law, known as gag law and which was endorsed by the Constitutional Court in January 2020.
The agents added in the report that they did not request the court entry order due to “the urgent need” to put an end to the party to avoid the risk of coronavirus infection among the participants at a time when gatherings in homes were prohibited. non-cohabiting people. The Ministry of the Interior then defended that the police had acted within the law by entering the home without judicial authorization because it “would not constitute a residence” as it was supposedly a tourist property. This argument was publicly rejected by numerous jurists, who noted excesses in police action.
The case then entered a winding judicial journey in which a judge agreed in April 2021 to open proceedings against the nine detainees for the crimes of resistance or disobedience to authority and coercion in view of the content of the police report. The decision was supported by the Prosecutor’s Office. In parallel, one of the detainees presented, through his lawyer, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, a complaint against the six agents who intervened to put an end to the illegal party. In it, the agents were accused of the crime of breaking and entering, considering that that day they were not legally authorized to break down the door and enter.
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The case against the occupants of the home was finally archived by the Provincial Court of Madrid in an order in which it concluded that the occupants’ refusal to identify themselves was not criminal in nature and ordered the agents to be investigated, considering that their actions were “a excess in the exercise of authority.” The magistrates considered that, to identify the people who were in the apartment violating the social distancing and curfew measures ordered by the Government to minimize the risk of spread of the coronavirus “it was not necessary to enter the home by force, breaking the right to the inviolability of the home.”
The six police officers were then charged and, after taking statements from them, the complainant and the witnesses, the investigating judge sent them to trial, in June of last year, accused of breaking and entering, a crime that carries penalties for each one. up to three years in prison. All of them sat in the dock on November 13 in a hearing that last week had a final twist in the script when the private accusation, which represents the tenant of the home and which was the only party that asked to convict the agents, was withdrawn. , the accusation against four of them considering that they were only obeying orders from a superior who acted with an “erroneous perception of reality.” Yes, he maintained it against the head of the operation and against his second for a crime of breaking and entering.
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