The latest polemic between the police and the attorney general leaves us Ecuadorians deeply uneasy, because it shows that these institutions, instead of working for the benefit of citizens, get involved in unnecessary conflicts, in the struggle for power, in the interests of individuals. which are not of interest to the state, instead of devoting themselves to their specific functions, especially since neither the prosecutor’s office nor the police are fully fulfilling their functions with the crime that has surpassed them, and for which there is no solution in sight.

It is inconceivable that the prosecuting minister needs a precautionary measure so that the National Police listens to her or does not change the team that worked on the investigations. If the minister cannot even order that the investigators are not changed, and the police do not respect their high constitutional duties, we are in complete chaos.

The conflict between the institutions for the rotation of police officers in the prosecutor’s office brings the independence of functions back into discussion

It has never happened that the police who are “obedient and unscrupulous” do not act on the order of the Prosecutor’s Office or judges. Don’t the police know that they are not agents of the government, and the prosecutor is the high authority of the judicial system to whom they must respectfully obey or acquiesce, not plead in absentia or disparage.

What also happens is that although by law it is the prosecutors who direct the investigation, but in reality they do not conduct the pre-trial proceedings, they simply send a letter for the police to investigate and do not intervene in this action. Then the police tell them what they think, without the prosecutors actually knowing what methods they used to reach their conclusions, not to mention that many of these investigators, who are mostly junior police officers, do not have enough knowledge, are susceptible to influence, and are in their hands our freedom and our rights.

Prosecutor Diana Salazar confirms that the report on drug trafficking links submitted to the legislative committee differs from the original file

The current complaint is the clearest sign that the prosecutors are not directing the investigations, because if they were, they would have nothing against the change of investigators, because they would instruct the new ones how to continue the processes.

The Constitution in Article 195 and the COIP in Article 448 state that the State Attorney’s Office will have a specialized comprehensive investigative system, which has not been fulfilled. It is important that this institution has its own investigation with the support of the police, but not that it depends only on it. In addition, this COIP, where the change from the inquisitorial system to the oral accusative system was reinforced, should not have been declared until all the human and technical elements were established, complete laboratories, even university specialties such as forensic pathology, among others, because the prosecutor and the judge need technical and scientific elements in the investigation, but they still rely on false, imperfect versions of testimony or statements, on insufficient technical reports to judge the citizen. On the other hand, the huge pile of applications in the Prosecutor’s Office, which is impossible to investigate, also as a result of the imperfect code, makes it difficult to achieve justice. (OR)