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The WhatsApp message entered the cell phone of the general director of the Carabineros, Mario Rozas, near the 19.50 hours last Friday, October 2. Sitting in a meeting room in La Moneda, the highest authority of the uniformed police learned that shortly before, around 7:35 p.m., there had been the fall of a minor under 16 years of age from the Pio Nono bridge to the bed of the Mapocho river, in an operation of the Public Order Control team. Therefore, today the carabinero Sebastian Zamora Soto (22) He is in preventive detention, formalized by the Prosecutor’s Office for attempted homicide.
The first reaction of General Rozas, they assure in his surroundings, was ask -by the same WhatsApp route- if in fact the police team had used anti-riot shotguns. The refusal of his advisers, detailed the same sources, led him to go ahead with the meeting with government authorities, without mentioning what happened, since at that time it gave details of the public order control strategies, the number of incidents in the Baquedano sector and other parts of the city, in the prelude to the first commemoration of October 18.
The subsequent messages that entered General Rozas’ cell phone informed him about the number of detainees on the day and the criticism that began to emerge about the case of the injured minor.
The passage of minutes – and the criticisms and images on social networks – led the Carabineros to appoint a spokesperson to face the complaints that accused a policeman of the fall of the teenager from a height of seven meters. Thus, the Commander Rodrigo Soto to assume the first uniformed spokesperson: “I want to deny it outright. For no reason Carabineros threw this person. There are images, which were made available to the Prosecutor’s Office, who will be dedicated to carrying out the investigation “, he assured at 9:50 p.m. on Friday.
The statements bothered the Palace. To such an extent that, as soon as he landed in Santiago after making a visit to the city of Iquique, the undersecretary of the Interior, Juan Francisco Galli, met the police version and received calls that warned him about the existence of new images that would implicate a uniformed.
Galli’s annoyance was felt in the high command of the Carabineros. In knowledge of this fact, General Rozas decided to carry out a second spokesperson, in which the same officer who previously ruled out the participation of the police, now gave a new explanatory version. “What the Carabineros denied and absolutely refutes again is that this person has been taken by the feet or that he has been thrown into the river by a jet from the water-launching car, as witnesses on social networks invented,” said the same officer nearby midnight.
While the Carabineros assure that the third spokesperson in charge of General Enrique Monrás – which he made at 10:00 on Saturday – was planned, in the Ministry of the Interior they assure that this new clarification arose at the instruction of the government, in order to provide details of the case put the general director Mario Rozas in the crosshairs of the opposition again.
Those who witnessed meetings of the highest police authority with their generals, assure that Rozas stated that he believed in the version of the policeman Zamora, which is why he decided to file a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office for the facts to be investigated. However, the Carabineros did not expect the onslaught of the Prosecutor’s Office, which charged the uniformed with the crime of attempted murder, which today keeps him deprived of liberty.
The escalation of criticism of the handling of this case and the onslaught of parliamentarians who called for Rozas’s departure, announced summons to parliamentary committees and reactivated the constitutional accusation against Minister Víctor Pérez, led to The Secretary of State will pick up the phone on Sunday at 10:00 am and speak with General Mario Rozas. The tenor of the conversation culminated in a summons to the office of the chief of staff the following day to inform him of the events that kept the minor hospitalized with broken wrists and a closed TEC.
Although the government assures that they maintain their support for the work carried out by General Rozas, in the Carabineros they view with concern the way in which parliamentarians press – via budget – to remove the high official from his post. Despite this, they detail in the institution, until now General Mario Rozas has worked focused on a single objective: to plan a strategy that reduces violent incidents and avoid repeating episodes with injured people, in what the police themselves call the “Social outbreak 2.0”.
