Panama Forum

panamajames
Joined 2012
Posts: 5096

10 years ago

Panama Police Shooting in San Carlos

10 years ago

Police yesterday, killed a two-year-old boy, and wounded a 15-year-old girl in San Carlos. National Police opened fire on a family in San Carlos, killing one and critically injuring another. On October 23 plainclothes police officers opened fire without warning on a family that was driving on the Inter-American Highway near the entrance to the town of San Carlos, killing a two-year-old boy and gravely wounding his 15-year-old sister. National Police director Julio Moltó said in defense of the shooting, that a prisoner whom his officers had allowed to escape from a La Correrra lockup was suspected of driving a similar car in which the family had been traveling. Two police sergeants and a lieutenant are under investigation in the shootings.
In October of 2010 Ricardo Martinelli proposed, along with such cabinet members at the time as now Panama City acting mayor Roxana Méndez, a law providing that police can’t be jailed for any act of violence committed while on duty, but may be held at a police station. The Martinelli police impunity law rather quickly led to a televised extrajudicial mass torture execution at the juvenile detention facility in Tocumen. Some of the police officers who appeared on television are held at a police station pending an investigation, none of the ranking officers who were the intellectual authors of the crime have even been investigated and the case has been repeatedly postponed, most recently on October 8 of this year. Also in October, prosecutors moved to quash an investigation of several police officers who shot two unarmed Panama City teenagers, killing one. The police first said that the youths had attacked them but evidence showed that this was not the case, and then the police say that they had shouted for the kids — who had committed no cirme — but that they did not stop.
Panama has more prisoners than ever before — more than 14,000 — but is still caught up in a serious crime wave.

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