The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, declared that he supports the proportional use of force by the Carabineros (militarized police) to respect the rule of law. He explained that he seeks to “give security to citizens.”
“I want you to know that you have our full support for your professional performance, but also for the legitimate use of force by the State of Chile, that force, when exercised proportionally and in accordance with the law, is a guarantee of respect for the State law,” Boric said at an act for the replacement of police vehicles at the Carabineros Noncommissioned Officers School.
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The president supported the actions of a police officer who, at the end of October, shot a man in the leg who had been denounced for domestic violence, when he tried to attack police personnel with a cement block in the Monte commune, in the Santiago Metropolitan Region.
“Such as, for example, in the procedure that was carried out a couple of weeks ago by a Carabinero in the Monte commune, which was public knowledge, the proportional use of force is going to be supported by our Government,” Boric said in the act.
The president of Chile assured that he seeks to “give security to citizens”, and considered it essential that it be possible “as a whole society to recover public spaces from crime is something that is essential.”
He added that he wakes up and goes to bed “just thinking about how to do better in this dimension.”
Boric handed over 236 vehicles to Carabineros, including 146 radio patrol cars and 90 4×4 SUVs, the international chain CNN reported on its website.
In 32% of Chilean households, some member was a victim of robbery or attempted robbery in the last six months, practically 1 in 3 families.
Such a figure that does not represent a statistically significant change with respect to the measurement of the year 2021 and that remains within the three lowest of the last 20 years, according to the Citizen Peace Index of the Chilean non-governmental organization Fundación Paz Ciudadana, released on 26 October.
However, people who are classified as having a high level of fear of insecurity rose 7.6 percentage points, reaching 28% at the national level, the highest figure in the 22 years that the instrument has registered, the organization added.
With information from Sputnik