Chile pushes controversial “trigger easy” law amid rising crimes

The murder of a police sergeant during an operation against crime in a town in Chile was the latest example of the increase in violent crimes suffered by what was considered one of the security havens in Latin America.

Armed crime, hit men, extortion and human trafficking are the main concern of Chileans, according to surveys, and they have pressured the Government and Congress to deal with a battery of laws against crime, including one considered by international organizations “trigger easy” for police officers.

From the ranks of the right-wing opposition they defend the strong hand.

“We have had an importation of crimes that in Chile we were not used to. This accompanied by a government in which security was never its priority”, declared the opposition deputy Andrés Longton, of the Security Commission of the Chamber of Deputies.

Sergeant Rita Olivares, a 43-year-old mother of two children, was shot to death as soon as she got out of the police car to attend to a robbery complaint in Quilpué, a town 120 km west of Santiago.

His death ended up filling the patience of Chileans who in recent years have experienced a deterioration in security and an increase in all crimes, especially the most violent ones.

Rising red chronicle

In 2022, homicides grew 33.4% compared to the previous year, according to data from the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention.

This figure means the second largest variation in Latin America, just behind Ecuador, where they increased by more than 80%.

Robberies with violence and intimidation rose 63.1% in 2022 and car robberies 39.8%.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric, accused by his detractors of having encouraged a leftist discourse against the Police during the vast social protests of 2019, has turned to support actions against crime.

He even assured that he would attend police proceedings himself.

“It’s the criminals who have to feel afraid, not the institutions and even less the honest and hard-working citizens, which is the vast majority,” said the president, after promising to apply the full force of the law to Olivares’ murderers.

Fighting crime was not a priority in Boric’s program, which focused on increasing social rights. But with crimes as the main concern of Chileans, “there is a very strong need for the government to appear politically concerned about public order,” María Cossette Godoy, director of the School of Political Science at the Diego Portales University, told AFP.

“Trigger Easy”

The deputies approved in record time and with large majorities the first six anti-crime laws – most of them bear the names of victims. Through them, they seek to guarantee the legitimate defense of the police as well as criminalize crimes not contemplated in the country, such as extortion or assassination.

Now, the Senate must analyze these regulations and the government’s observations to the controversial “Naín-Retamal” law, which establishes “privileged legitimate defense” of the police officers to leave them “exempt from criminal responsibility” when they act in self-defense or third-party defense. or to prevent a crime.

“The proposal reduces accountability, hindering access to justice for victims of eventual abuses and favoring impunity”, criticized the UN chief for human rights in South America, Jan Jarab.

For Rodrigo Bustos, director of Amnesty International (AI) in Chile, this law “would imply a huge setback in terms of human rights.”

The Chilean Police faced strong questions in its management during the social protests that broke out on October 18, 2019 due to a wide series of claims, which resulted in some thirty deaths and thousands of injuries.

“This pretense of giving immunity against the use of force is highly dangerous, and can lead to trigger-happy situations, of the use of force when it is not justified.”, warns AFP the Chilean lawyer and security expert Francisco Cox, who investigated the case of the 43 students who disappeared in Ayotzinapa (Mexico) by designation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

But changing the legislation is urgent, since new crimes and organized crime gangs have flourished in Chile under poor regulations.

“There are several factors that explain the current increase in crime: There is a general disconnection of the criminal justice system with the current criminal reality and problems both in the prosecution of crime, with a sustained weakening of authority, as well as in the prosecution and imposition of suitable and real penalties”, explained to AFP Tatiana Vargas, a criminal law professor at the University of Los Andes.

Source: AFP