The Argentine government has relaxed restrictions on the use of weapons of the fire by its security forces by restoring a protocol abolished by the previous government, as published this Friday in the Official Gazette.
The protocol will be applied immediately by the Naval Prefecture. police Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told the press that she was assigned to the Coast Guard, which is assigned to internal security and is authorized to use long-range firearms.
“We have been working on this protocol so that the prefecture can protect its population, borders and citizenship and be in better or equal conditions than the criminals,” Bullrich explained.
The rest of the force will apply the same rule with updates in the coming days.
In 2017, an 18-year-old man who robbed an American tourist in Buenos Aires was shot in the back by an agent as he fled.
A year later, Bullrich – then President Mauricio Macri’s security minister (2015-2019) – introduced the protocol, which was repealed by the next government in 2019.
The police officer involved in the episode, Luis Chocobar, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to two years in prison by a court in 2021.
Now federal agents can shoot to prevent a serious crime, at someone who poses an “imminent threat and is defying authority,” or “to prevent the escape of the person posing that impending crime until arrested.”
The standard speaks of “imminent danger” if a person acts “under threat of death or serious injury to themselves or third parties” or if they carry a deadly weapon, “even if it turns out after the events that this is the case a simile is about a deadly weapon.
The government of Alberto Fernández (2019-2023) had repealed the protocol based on international treaties requiring police officers to “act in proportion to the severity of the harm, respecting and protecting human life”.
Restoring the protocol leaves it up to the judiciary to determine the innocence or guilt of federal agents who use firearms in the situations contemplated by the regulations.
The decision comes a week after Bullrich received the opposition’s rebuke for ordering the repression – with rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper – against demonstrators and journalists outside Congress, with a different protocol that in this case involves cutting off Traffic routes prevented during protests.
The capital’s deputy, Celeste Fierro, held before Congress, denounced the unconstitutionality of the “anti-picketing protocol” before federal judge Sebastián Casanello, who asked the minister to justify her actions.
In his response, Bullrich referred to “a long-standing passive attitude of the authorities in the face of unrest on public streets, which has resulted in an intolerable situation for the population suffering from these illegal acts, to the detriment of their work and their quality of life” .
SPRING: AFP