A 33-year-old Carabineros corporal was assassinated this morning in the center of Santiago de Chile, while carrying out a control operation.
The policeman Daniel Palma was shot in the head when he tried to control a car, because its occupants had fired shots in this area of the capital that has become, in recent years, one of the main centers of crime in the country .
The death of the policeman once again shocks Chilean society, because it is the third murder of a police officer in the last 23 days, in a new example of the public security crisis facing the South American country.
After the crime, the Government of Gabriel Boric, through the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá,
The murder has provoked various political reactions in a context strongly dominated by public concern about crime, the greater firepower of gangs and the activities of organized crime.
President Boric leads a meeting at the Government Palace with the police and the powers of the State.
Part of the political class, not only the opposition, asks the Executive for a State of constitutional exception in Santiago de Chile in the face of the security crisis.
“Enough of them continuing to kill those who take care of us, I have already said it.
Today there is a son, a wife suffering, an institution that is suffering”, said the general director of Carabineros, Ricardo Yáñez, between tears.
He did so from the Posta Central, one of the main emergency hospitals in Central Santiago, shortly before Palma's death was confirmed at the care center.
“We are facing a crime that is terrible.
We had not seen this before.
The violence with which these people are acting is obviously going to force us to look for other strategies to be able to face it”, assured the leader of the institution.
After the second deadly attack in the last month against a police station, on March 26, the public commotion motivated the political class to push a battery of laws against crime and the Naín-Retamal law, to give greater power to the police to repel attacks in the streets and raise the penalties for those who attack the uniformed.
It was an intense discussion.
Although there is a social and political consensus regarding the need to strengthen the Carabineros, the Investigative Police (PDI) and the Gendarmerie, the left-wing coalition I Approve Dignity of President Boric opposed in Parliament the regulations that establish privileged legitimate defense -the presumption of justified use of his service weapon – in actions related to the exercise of police duties.
“We do not agree that the burden of proof rests with the victim;
We do not agree that this exemption from criminal liability extends to the Armed Forces;
We do not agree that this figure is used in the maintenance of public order”, said yesterday the communist deputy, Carmen Hertz.
Congress, however, approved this Wednesday the Naím-Retamal law, named in honor of two policemen murdered in 2020 and 2022. It was supported by the right and by Democratic Socialism, the moderate left bloc that supports Boric.
For the Minister of the Interior, the law "meets standards of a democratic police."
It was Tohá herself who announced this Thursday that the law will be promulgated by the president during the day.
Tohá explained that the 30 municipalities that concentrate a third of the national population and 50% of the most violent crimes will be intervened.
The start of the plan was scheduled for May, but President Boric asked to bring it forward, after the death of Corporal Palma.
The minister explained, additionally, that more and new resources will be available for Carabineros.
“We are going to have investigative centers, especially where there is arms trafficking.
We hope to focus the persecution to clarify homicides and violent crimes and, for this, the coordinated work that we already have working with the Prosecutor's Office will be reinforced and accelerated ”, explained the Minister of the Interior.
The murdered carabinero had nine years of service, belonged to the fourth police station in Santiago -which has in its hands the security of the city center-, was married to a police officer, was the father of a four-year-old son and his wife is pregnant .
At dawn, Minister Tohá arrived at the Central Post Office;
the Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero;
the regional presidential delegate, Constanza Martínez;
the mayoress of Santiago, Irací Hassler;
and the general director of Carabineros.
Since early morning there have been raids on various homes in Santiago to find the whereabouts of the criminals, which would be four.
Among those identified would be a subject of Venezuelan nationality with a previous criminal record.
