ARGENTINA: Law and Police Going Different Ways

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 29 1996 (IPS) - Newspaper readers in Argentina chuckle daily at cartoons depicting a policeman carrying a large pizza – which has become the symbol, of corruption in the nation’s police force – but the joke is wearing thin.

Stories of police brutality and general wrong-doing have become so common place that citizens are comparing the law enforcers of today with era of the military dictatorship (1976-83), when civilians died with impunity.

“People perceive that the police are becoming dangerous, and that their superiors have lost control of some units of the force,” says Sofia Tiscornia, an anthropologist from the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS). But it is not only a matter of perception.

A report made by the Centre notes that cases of police violence rose 60 percent last year over cases reported in 1994. While police chiefs attempt to differentiate between the force in general with those policemen whom they describe as delinquents, some observers have asked how it is possible that these delinquents are permitted to carry arms – and still are part of an organisation dedicated to fighting crime.

Earlier this month a man who was exceeding the speed limit while driving his sick child to hospital in Buenos Aires was shot and killed by a policemen who drew his gun despite attempots by other agents to restrain him.

The day before, another policeman seriously wounded a youth in the head. The young man was drinking a beer on the street of a district in the Argentine capital. The victim, now hospitalised, had tried to escape when he was asked for his papers, so the policeman shot him from point-blank range.

The officer, now being held in custody, says that the alleged delinquent “pulled out a weapon.” Tiscornia remarked that it would not be the first time that a policeman had placed a revolver on or near the body of his victim after shooting him..

Police also wounded journalists, humanitarian leaders and students during a protest in the city of la Plata. Eleven police officials were themselves detained after security forces had arrested without cause 237 students, some while they were walking along the street.

The defence by their classmates of those arrested aroused the ire of the uniformed police who, armed with clubs, rubber bullets and tear-gas charged the youths.

The picture of an uncontrolled policeman angrily punching one journalist who was trying to document the repression is a symbol which serves to identify police violence in La Plata. The officer in charge of the operation, Julio Saenz Saralegui, was pictured kicking another journalist when a fellow officer, realising that the scene was being filmed, shot the cameraman in the leg.

The incident was condemned by all political parties, social groups, journalists and defenders of human rights in the country, but the phenomenon is by no means new.

One year ago, noted Tiscornia, “there was a theft in a supermarket and the thief escaped in a car. The chase became confused in the traffic and the police car ended up by following the wrong vehicle.

“But this was not the most serious thing that happened. When the police ordered the car to stop, their command was immediately obeyed, and three innocent persons, with their hands up, got out of the car – and were shot to death by the police.” This case is known as “the Wilde Massacre”, after the name of the place where the episode took place.

One of the lawmen involved had already been dismissed from the police force on a homicide charge, and was visiting his former companions when they drove out of the police station on a mission. The court sided with the officers that “some confusion” had arisen, and the policemen were freed.

The scarce training given the police, together with pressure from Chiefs of Police and certain sectors of society to combat delinquency with a firm hand are some of the explanations for the growing violence, according to a CELS report.

Tiscornia pointed out that practical training on firing ranges in the use of weapons lasts barely three months and is given almost exclusively to officers – although it is their subordinates, the ordinary policemen on the beat or on patrol duty, who end up actually using the revolvers and autmoatic weapons.

The CELS study contributes revealing data on an institutional problem.

In 1995 a total of 114 civilians died at the hands of the police – including 14 from use of force “beyond the call of duty.” Four persons died who had nothing to do with what was going on at the time, and five from ill-treatment while they were being held in custody.

The majority of the victims were wanted for theft, and there are some cases of death for “suspicious attitudes”.

In the same period 24 policemen died in armed confrontations, of whom only six were actually on duty when they were killed. In other words, they might have been the victims of people “taking vengeance or justice into their own hands,” CELS said.

The increase in cases of police violence has also been registered by the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, which has created a telephone consultation and assistance service for young people who have been victims of abuse.

At the end of 1995 the number of phone calls doubled because “the use of illegitimate methods by the police was becoming more and more common,” according to Lucia Alberti, Speaker of the (Parliamentary) Assembly.

The large number of cases of police aggression in the last few years also has its correlated reaction in the rise of new humanitarian organisations, formed especially to deal with this type of crime.

The Coordinator Against Police and Institutional Repression is trying to find answers to the problem of trigger-happy policemen, arbitrary detention, kidnappings and disappearances, and the repression of political, social, trade union and local district movements.

Also new is the Commission for the Families of Police Victims headed by the mother of a youth shot by the police.

Likewise, organisations created during the dictatorship, like CELS, the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have now changed their objectives and are centring their programmes on directly attacking police violence.

Faced with this panorama of new organisations, policemen who park their patrol car in front of a stand selling pizza to force the owner to give them a free slice have become only child’s play. Though this practice still irritates and corrupts, it would now seem to be only a minor evil compared with police violence.

“Though violence has displaced the subject of corruption from the centre of the stage, it must not be lost from view, seeing that in the majority of cases in which criminal gangs are uncovered, there is always a policemen forming part of them,” warned Tiscornia.