Carabineros fire tear canisters during the October 2019 protests, Santiago, Chile.José Miguel Araya
Support for the carabineros, Chile’s police force, was pulverized during the 2019 riots. Trust in the institution had shrunk two years earlier when prosecutors uncovered a corruption scheme within the body that ended its lead in rankings of citizen ratings of police units in Latin America. The social punishment of human rights abuses during the outbreak, added to the pandemic, caused claims to the establishment to collapse. “We hope to undo that, but we can’t block the sun with a finger, and both of these events happened in Chile,” says Interior Undersecretary Manuel Monsalve. However, public opinion has changed in recent months. In a context where feelings of insecurity are at their highest level in two decades, support for the carabineros is back in good health (73%, Cadem).
After the outbreak, young people lost interest in joining the facility. An average of 16,000 people have applied in the past five years. They reached fewer than 3,000 in the two worst years of the pandemic, but in 2022 they rose to 5,000, according to the Carabineros’ communications department. The drop also comes in response to the fact that during the pandemic, the number of students admitted to schools has been limited due to social distancing mandated by protocols. “The state’s offer to train police officers has declined,” says Monsalve in the La Moneda Palace.
In Chile, with 19 million inhabitants, there are 49,116 police officers (257 per 100,000 inhabitants), 2,000 fewer than in 2020, according to figures from the General Directorate of Police transmitted to this newspaper through the Undersecretary of State for the Interior. Monsalve clarifies that when debugging the total number of employees stipulated by law, there are around 30,000 people who work in barracks and who, among other things, have to deal with citizens in public order, preventive work and complaints. And of these, a few thousand are approved, on sick leave, on vacation… “There are around 25,000 emergency workers every day who stick to a shift system,” concludes Gabriel Boric’s highest-ranking authority in his cabinet. The second, according to the November Cadem poll, is Secretary of Home Affairs and Security Carolina Tohá.
The Undersecretary of Interior, Manuel Monsalve, on Thursday, December 1st, in his office in La Moneda, Santiago.
The social outburst surprised the carabineros “without the minimum conditions” to face a public order challenge, says Chilean lawyer José Miguel Vivanco, former Americas director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) until February this year. Studies conducted by the agency found that police forces in the metro area had to be increased from 1,000 to 8,000 overnight. “They had to improvise with cops who weren’t trained, who didn’t even have the uniform and protection to act as special forces,” he adds over the phone from Washington.
An example of improvisation recorded by HRW was training in the use of shotguns: it only lasted two weeks and the instruction was to shoot at 40 yards, but the gun had no front sight. Police stopped using pellets after leaving nearly a thousand injured, including 222 people with eye problems, according to data released by the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) in November 2019. On the third anniversary of the protests, the institute reported that of the 2,987 reported carabineros, only 179 were formalized and only 14 convicted of human rights abuses. For its part, Amnesty International has claimed that no senior official responsible for police actions during the protests has been charged.
Demonstrators outside the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago de Chile to demand that Sebastián Piñera’s government stop using pellets and rubber bullets RODRIGO ARANGUA (AFP)
Monsalve claims that in order for Chile to have police institutions that people respect and trust, “a reform process needs to be carried out and the carabineros understand that”. The government of Gabriel Boric, which before its arrival in La Moneda was very harsh on police measures – the president proposed as deputy to re-establish Carabineros – is preparing a reform of the police. The undersecretary explains that it’s divided into two “products”: some that require bills focused on education, training and careers, and those that should have legislative progress next June. And others focusing on the gender approach, human rights and the principle of righteousness, which should be news next March.
In addition, the government is promoting a national agreement on security, the creation of a Ministry of Public Security, the modernization of protocols, and next January a pilot program will start in some police stations in Santiago, where equipment will be updated. Bulletproof vests, for example, are thinner and go under the shirt. Agents will have a greater variety of tools, mainly chemicals, and will have body cameras. The goal, says the Secretary of State, is for all police officers involved in public order matters to have them.
Vivanco says there are serious issues that “encourage and facilitate” police abuse in Chile. One of them is preventive identity control. This power allows police officers “to massively arrest people who do not have strong guarantees that enable them to avoid arbitrariness,” she criticizes. Another problem is the disciplinary control system of the carabiners. The lawyer argues that it should be completely independent of hierarchical leadership. “That there is no way that those investigating or punishing could be put under the authority of an officer in a future assignment,” he stresses. On this matter, Monsalve believes that the department responsible for disciplinary procedures “does not have sufficient autonomy” and that this must be guaranteed when discussing the civil service career in the reform.
Since those turbulent months in Chile, when just over half the population believed that the carabineros incited violence during the demonstrations (Criteria, 2020), citizens’ perceptions have changed significantly. Various surveys published in November showed the upward trend in the assessment of the institute. Cadem, for example, recorded a 19-point approval lead in 2022 compared to the previous year, hitting its highest level in the last six years (73%). In the same month, the Fundación Paz Ciudadana revealed that perceived fear of crime reached its highest level in 22 years, reaching 28% who said they were “very scared”, an increase of 7.6 percentage points compared to the previous year, although victimization rates remain stable.
Vivanco does not take a positive view of such a large swing in support for the institution. “The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction towards unconditional support, where it is highly unlikely that one can speak of professional support, but of a strong hand. We could go back to a scenario where they are untouchable and continue to act ineffectively, with corruption scandals and no one dares ring the cat,” he warns.
The jurist believes that sectors now part of government are “paying the consequences of a radical discourse that has become groundless due to growing uncertainty and has had to rewind and reverse due to public opinion and join the other extreme.” , where they are practically making propaganda for an institution that needs and requires serious reform”.
Regarding this warning, Monsalve says, “understand the fear” because when a society is afraid, it looks for someone to protect it, and that “can effectively give room to authoritarian tendencies”. What the Undersecretary is proposing is that the government is qualified to hold a debate about what are the most effective tools to protect the security of the population. “Society can fully understand that it is important to have police officers, but that they are trained, given requirements for entry, and during the training imparted knowledge and skills that are effective” to solve the problems of citizenship , in a nod to the pillars of the Carabineros reform, one of the big issues that will take over the Chilean agenda in 2023.
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