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Anger at the police brutality against Javier Ordóñez, a lawyer who died after receiving gun shots Taser When he begged the agents to stop, he fanned a flame that had accumulated in Bogotá since the 2019 protests and that, among other things, had paralyzed the pandemic. Ten people died and 248 were injured, 66 of them by firearms, during clashes with the police in protest at the death of Ordóñez: “A massacre against young people”, in the words of the mayor of the Colombian capital, Claudia López.
The councilor assured that “there is solid evidence in at least four places in the city of the indiscriminate use of firearms by members of the Police, attempting against the lives of our young people.” The fact increases the tension between the central and local governments over the handling of violence. “Mr. President Duque, you are the commander-in-chief of the Police, I beg you to order your members not to use firearms. That instruction was unknown yesterday, ”López said, visibly upset.
For more than eight hours, the Colombian capital experienced an escalation of riots that began with stones and fires at the Police Immediate Action Commands (CAI), followed by a battle with tear gas and destruction of public transport, tanks of the Anti-Riot Squad that repelled the protesters and shots that killed several young people. The videos that circulated on social networks on the long Wednesday night predicted that there would be deaths and these were confirmed at dawn in the city’s hospitals.
Most of the fatalities were young people who were shot in the street. One of the most shocking cases was that of Cristian Hernández, who according to his family was returning from work and was shot in the face and died on the street, as recorded. Or that of Jaider Fonseca, 17, who died after four shots while participating in the demonstrations and that of Julieth Ramírez, a 19-year-old psychology and English student, victim of a stray bullet, among others.
The Government of Iván Duque had not clarified this Thursday at noon where those gusts came from. On Wednesday afternoon, the president’s words caused outrage when he said that he had seen “painful events today but we have also seen the gallant, iron attitude, not only of the police commanders but also of the Minister of Defense and of all the institutions so that the investigations are carried out ”.
After the riots, the Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, said at a press conference that it was a night of vandalism and spoke of 93 police officers injured and the destruction of 56 police facilities, of which 22 were burned. And when a journalist rebuked him for sending condolences to the family of the police officers and the lawyer, but not to those of the civilians killed at dawn, Trujillo assured that “it cannot be implied that the Government has partial attitudes.”
However, the mayor of Bogotá was blunt and assured that what happened at night was “a direct attack on defenseless citizens, on civilians. That is the equivalent of a combat, it was not a mere police abuse, ”he added and insisted that the Police should be a civil body of coexistence and not a military one. “Destroying Bogotá is not going to fix the police,” she said.
More military presence
While political tension rises and from various sectors it is requested that the Attorney General’s Office take over the investigations into what happened, the Government of Iván Duque announced that there will be more soldiers in the streets. “The police force in Bogotá will be reinforced with 750 uniformed personnel, plus 850 who arrive from other regions of the country; 300 soldiers from the Army’s 13th Brigade will support the work of the National Police in the country’s capital, ”the Ministry reported.
For the Defense Minister, the riots are related to an “institutional campaign” promoted from social networks. “Profiles were identified that incited actions of vandalism and violence against facilities and police, which is a crime,” said Trujillo, who clarified that “that does not mean that the culprits do not have to pay the consequences, but the context must be taken into account. into account by the Colombian opinion ”. During an extensive press conference, he also assured that there are pages destined to the delegitimization of the Police and the dismantling of the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (Esmad).
However, that request transcends social networks and is not new, it comes from 2019 when that squad shot and killed Dilan Cruz, during a peaceful protest against the Government of Iván Duque. For this case, a Commission of the Attorney General’s Office was created and the removal of the shotguns with Bean Bag type ammunition was demanded, which caused the death of that young man. That same request has been reactivated by human rights organizations and the Bogotá Mayor’s Office, which requested that progress be made on a bill to reform the protocols of action of the Police and not use the so-called non-lethal weapons like pistols Taser or electric.
The national government insists that the Police are “beloved by Colombians” and “an abusive attempt is being made to point out all their members of conduct committed by some of them.” However, the reality is that the latest surveys reveal that trust in this institution is in a pit to which it had not fallen in recent years. Now, in addition to investigating what happened with the death of the lawyer Javier Ordóñez, it will also be necessary to clarify who shot ten people with firearms in a night of chaos in the Colombian capital.
