The Chilean Parliament has approved this Wednesday by a large majority a bill called Naín-Retamal, named after the last names of two policemen murdered in 2020 and 2022, which gives the police more tools against criminals in the midst of the crisis of security that marks the public agenda. The initiative increases the penalties for those who commit crimes against the police and establishes the privileged legitimate defense of security agents and the military – the presumption of justified use of their service weapon – when their physical integrity or that of a third party is seriously compromised. risk. The bill received the votes of the traditional left and the right, while a large part of the original coalition of President Gabriel Boric turned its back on the most controversial article: the one that establishes in the Penal Code the privileged legitimate defense for police and public order officials.
The two blocks that make up the Government of Gabriel Boric -Aproveo Dignidad (AD) and Socialismo Democrático (SD)- showed their fracture in the vote. The majority of congressmen from the Communist Party and the Broad Front, which form the original coalition of the Chilean president, rejected the bill. Meanwhile, the parties of the moderate left, the forces that once made up the Concertación (1990-2010), voted in favor, as the Executive wanted. In the third legislative process, voted on this Wednesday, the right supported the initiative and the representatives of the far-right Republican Party rejected it.
One of the points that generated the greatest friction was that of the personal defense of the agents of the Carabineros, the Investigative Police, PDI, and the Gendarmerie when they carry out functions of public order and internal public security. The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, who led the negotiation on behalf of the Executive, managed together with her team to eliminate the indication that endorsed privileged legitimate defense when a serious crime was to be prevented. They gave in to the opposition, however, in the proposal to frame the statute in the Penal Code and not in the Code of Military Justice, where the principle of legitimate defense for extreme cases already exists.
“We agreed to leave out some frankly aberrational ideas that were tried to be included in this project, such as, for example, that commanders should not be responsible for their subordinates unless they were explicitly ordered to commit crimes,” Minister Tohá said this afternoon. She also reiterated the need for support required by the security forces, which must be “accompanied by demands and limits.” “In today’s project we can take some steps, but they are totally insufficient,” she added. The Government is expected to present a project in the coming days to establish the Rules for the Use of Force (RUF) in police procedures.
President Boric had called on legislators the day before to vote “with a high sense of responsibility”, listening to experts and organizations that had called attention “to the harmful effects” that the bill could generate. The president was referring, among others, to representatives of the United Nations Organization, UN, who warned about possible spaces for human rights violations or impunity, in addition to obstacles in access to justice for victims of eventual abuses.
More than a hundred criminal law and criminology professionals also expressed their objections through a letter, in which they reported the risk of increasing confusion in the use of police force and affecting the rights of individuals and the responsibility in the exercise of public function. The Puebla Group, in turn, published that “the safety of people cannot be done at the cost of violating their human rights.”
After a marathon day of negotiations on Tuesday in the Senate, the opposition toned down the wording of the bill presented by the center-right National Renewal party. They eliminated the cause of legitimate defense against unarmed attacks by two or more people, in addition to the aforementioned to prevent a serious crime.
The discussion on the initiative was carried out against the clock and was not without tension. The Government put great urgency for its vote after the murder of a police officer at the end of March, the second official shot to death of the month. Her case generated commotion and indignation among citizens who urged the political class to control crime. The original bet of the Boric Administration was to approve the project in the Chamber of Deputies and then modify it in the Senate. But this Monday in the Senate’s Citizen Security Commission, Minister Tohá and Justice Minister Luis Cordero got up from the negotiating table after a right-wing slammed the door to discuss their indications. Finally, both sides gave in on some points.
Conflicts over the bill were not only seen between the ruling party and the opposition. It also meant an internal scuffle for the Boric government. First, the Executive asked the parliamentarians of its two coalitions to approve the initiative in the Chamber of Deputies, where it only had the votes of the center-left and the right. After its approval in that instance, the government spokesperson, Camila Vallejo, described the expansion of the margin for the legitimate defense of the police as promoting “the easy trigger.” Her criticism of the text annoyed the Socialists, who supported the initiative following the Executive’s own orders.
After an intense week of negotiations, the project is ready to become a law of the Republic once President Boric signs it.
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