Jury Finds Cops Who Kicked Down a Door to Stop an Illegal Party During the Pandemic Not Guilty

Police action in a house on Calle Lagasca in Madrid for an illegal party, in March 2021.national police

A popular jury unanimously declared not guilty on Wednesday the two National Police officers who led the operation that broke into an apartment on Calle Lagasca, in Madrid, without judicial authorization, on March 21, 2021, to end a party that contravened the rules of the state of alarm then in force due to the pandemic. The other four officers who sat in the dock were already exonerated last week when the charges against them were dropped. The two policemen, now acquitted, faced a sentence of two years and six months in prison and six months of disqualification requested by the private prosecution as they were considered perpetrators of the crime of breaking and entering. The Public Prosecutor's Office and the other parties had argued for the acquittal of the six officers from the beginning of the hearing, considering that their actions on that day did not constitute any crime. The judge must now issue the sentence based on this verdict. The prosecution has already announced that it will appeal to the High Court of Justice in Madrid.

In the verdict, the nine members of the jury conclude that the police officers were authorized to break down the door with a battering ram and enter the house ― and, therefore, did not commit any criminal offense ― since it was demonstrated during the trial that there was a flagrant serious disobedience on the part of the occupants of the house by repeatedly and insistently refusing to leave the building to identify themselves as requested by the agents on at least 28 occasions. That was the argument put forward by the prosecution in its final conclusions at the end of the hearing.

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Video | The Kick in the Door That Ended an Illegal Party During the Pandemic, Seen by Police and Detainees

That police intervention generated a huge controversy after the images recorded by one of the occupants of the house were disseminated on social networks, days after the event. The video showed a young woman refusing to open the door if officers were not carrying a warrant. After an exchange of words that lasted 45 minutes, the police broke down the door. Nine of the 14 people who participated in the party were arrested on charges of serious disobedience to authority, although they were released hours later. In their report, the police officers stressed that their actions had been protected, among other legal precepts, by the Citizen Security Law, known as the gag law and which was endorsed by the Constitutional Court in January 2020.

The agents added in the report that they did not request the court order of entry due to "the urgent need" to end the party to avoid the risk of coronavirus contagion of the participants at a time when gatherings in the homes of people who do not live together were prohibited. The Ministry of the Interior then defended that the police had acted within the law by entering the house without judicial authorization because it "would not constitute a dwelling" as it was supposedly a tourist property. This argument was publicly rejected by many jurists, who saw excesses in police action.

The case then entered a winding judicial journey in which a judge agreed in April 2021 to open proceedings against the nine detainees for the crimes of resistance or disobedience to authority and coercion in view of the content of the police report. The decision was supported by the Prosecutor's Office. At the same time, one of the detainees filed a complaint through his lawyer, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, against the six agents who intervened to put an end to the illegal party. In it, the officers were accused of a crime of trespassing, considering that they were not legally authorized to break down the door and enter that day.

The case against the occupants of the house was finally shelved by the Provincial Court of Madrid in an order in which it concluded that the refusal of the occupants to identify themselves was not criminal in nature and ordered an investigation of the agents on the grounds that their actions were "an excess in the exercise of authority". The magistrates considered that, in order to identify the people who were in the flat in violation of the social distancing and curfew measures ordered by the Government to minimize the risk of spreading the coronavirus, "it was not necessary to enter the home by force, violating the right to the inviolability of the home".

The six police officers were then charged and, after taking statements from them, the complainant and the witnesses, the investigating judge sent them to trial in June last year, accused of breaking and entering, a crime that carries penalties for each of up to three years in prison. All of them sat in the dock on November 13 in a hearing that last week had a final twist in the script when the private accusation, which represents the tenant of the house and that was the only party that asked to convict the agents, the accusation against four of them considering that they were only obeying orders from a superior who acted with an "erroneous perception of reality" was withdrawn. He did maintain it against the head of the operation and his deputy for a crime of trespassing.

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