STATIC PLANNING

EYES ON CHILE: POLICE VIOLENCE AND COMMAND

This chapter has shown that despite commanders’ obligation to ensure that there was an operational framework that was in line with international standards in the context of the protests, they failed to comply with this obligation and avoid harm to the population. This failure was principally the responsibility of the Director General and the Deputy Director General, whose duties, as noted above, include the development of the institution’s policies and doctrines.

The protocols were flawed from their conception and the relevant strategic commanders did not modify them in a substantive way until more than a month after the start of the protests, when the use of pellet shotguns was at least limited.

It consisted of the Deputy Director General, who served as head of the National Plana Mayor, and the directors of personnel, police intelligence, order and security, support for police operations, finance, justice, health and welfare, as well as the head of the Department of Social Communications and the head of Borders and Special Services. These strategic National Police commanders, all with the rank of general, had an obligation under the Plana Mayor to advise the Director General from their respective areas on issues related to possible developments.

The National Plana Mayor, therefore, constituted a strategic planning space in which the National Police high command supervised and defined the institution’s strategy for dealing with the protests.

As mentioned above, however, human rights violations continued day after day despite the high-level oversight through the Plana Mayor. In addition, as discussed below, abusive behaviour persisted throughout the period being analysed. This suggests that senior management in the police failed to ensure dynamic planning that incorporated urgent measures to improve operations from a human rights perspective.

In particular, it underscores the responsibility of the Director General as the “highest authority” of the institution in command of the Plana Mayor; as well as the Deputy Director General, the head of the Plana Mayor; and the Director of Order and Security, in charge of the Operations Department of the National Plana Mayor.³⁵³

Second, the National Police Director of Security and National Order, in particular, has a key role in “planning, organizing, directing, evaluating and coordinating at the strategic level the fulfilment of the institutional mission of security and public order”. In other words, they are in charge of designing, adapting and implementing institutional plans and strategies related to security and public order operations.³⁵⁴

For this, DIOSCAR has the support of the Police Operations Department (OS1), which, in addition to providing information to the national director on incidents that occurred throughout the country, must “propose norms, orders and/or instructions”

and “propose courses of action” and “supervise, oversee and coordinate” the operational plans and strategies proposed by the leadership.³⁵⁵

For this, the OS1 department has an “operations and information management centre”, as well as a “section planning and deployment operation”, whose purpose is to develop operational plans prepared by the Director of Order and Security when there are significant national events and the “department of information and coordination” is in charge of detecting “changes in scenarios regarding possible police and social developments that enable decision-making by the national director”.³⁵⁶ This means that the Director of DIOSCAR, responsible for preparing, adapting and implementing institutional plans and strategies, has at their disposal a department dedicated to proposing these strategies and the corresponding modifications based on the information related to police incidents that have occurred throughout the country.

However, as we will see below, despite this, the strategy promoted by the Special Plana Mayor, including the Director of DIOSCAR, in response to the demonstrations was not modified, at least from a human rights perspective, despite the violations that took place daily throughout the country.

Operational commanders

While strategic commanders are responsible for designing, adapting, and monitoring overall strategies, plans and policies, operational commanders such as area chiefs and prefectures are responsible for developing plans and strategies related to specific operations. These plans, strategies and policies must also take into account human rights standards, such as the need to minimize injuries to civilians and to adapt plans based on mistakes identified.

353 Carabineros, General Directorate, Resolución exenta 52, 5 April 2019.

354 Carabineros, General Directorate, General Order 2435 of 30 September 2016, Article 3.

355 Carabineros, General Directorate, General Order 2435 of 30 September 2016, Article 10.

356 Carabineros, General Directorate, General Order 2435 of 30 September 2016, Articles 12 to 18.

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EYES ON CHILE: POLICE VIOLENCE AND COMMAND

Despite this requirement, Amnesty International has had access to information that shows that far from adopting strategies based on the principles of necessity and proportionality regarding the use of force, operational commanders adopted “attack”

or offensive strategies, sometimes using shotguns and grenade launchers to disperse protesters, regardless of the harm this modus operandi caused.

For example, in the operation on 8 November in the “Plaza Italia” described earlier, National Police officials launched an attack at 18:07. This consisted of carrying out tactical movements whose main objective was to advance towards the mass of protesters, with the aim of dispersing them, clearing the road and detaining people.³⁵⁷

As part of that offensive action, several officials made use of their riot-control shotguns as they advanced eastward. This shows that, in the context of this demonstration, far from reacting to a specific threat, the operational commanders in charge

— the aforementioned STGO-1, STGO-4, G-1, G-2 and G-3 — applied an offensive strategy that consisted of proactively dispersing protesters with a disproportionate use of force, no matter what.

In addition to the adoption of offensive strategies in the context of the crisis, Amnesty International has had access to copies of the operational planning documents prepared by the Metropolitan Region Public Order Control and Intervention Unit which show that operational plans were not adapted, despite the existence of daily information on the human rights violations that were being committed on a daily basis.³⁵⁸

This preparation and planning should have consisted of identifying potential incidents that could occur and organizing the logistics of the necessary operational resources. Specifically, the officials that should be made ready (taking into account their rank), the type of activity (preventive, social, demonstration, etc.), the places and the date of the intervention, depending on whether it was a permanent activity or not (that is, it had already occurred before the crisis or if it was due to the crisis), the arrival time, the head of service in charge and the means (police squads). This preparation focuses on adapting human and logistical resources based on the facts and in a flexible way.

However, the workforce planning that Amnesty International had access to shows that the planning carried out by operational commanders, at least in certain cases, remained static and was not adapted based on emerging human rights concerns.

According to the official document “Carta de servicio Núm. 311 correspondiente al día viernes 8 de noviembre de 2019” of the Order, Control and Intervention Unit of the Metropolitan Unit, whose commander was STGO-4, “permanent” activities were carried out that occurred before 8 November and 20 were projected activities of a “preventive”, “state of alert”,

“demonstrations”, “parades”, “social” or “daily contingency” nature, where the information referred to above was briefly detailed. ³⁵⁹

Among them, “projected activity No. 3” of “daily contingency preventive service”, from 19 October “until further notice”, throughout the day, undertaken by a total of 14 groups (eight squads and six ECOS), whose head of service is G-2, overseen by G-1, in various areas such as “Plaza Italia”. In addition to this, an organizational map that refers to the area of each commander and their contingent stands out.

357 PDI report carried out as part of the investigation into Case RUC 1901217258-6 of the 7th District Court of Santiago.

358 The planning documentation to which Amnesty International had access is the one delivered by the National Police in Case RUC 1901217258-6, after a request by the Attorney General’s Office for “la planificación de las operaciones policiales de la comisaría FFEE correspondiente al día 08.11.2019, Región Metropolitana”.

359 Volume 3, p. 24, investigation case file for Case RUC 1901217258-6.

However, this letter demonstrates that there were operational plans that were designed on 19 October 2019 and that were not subsequently updated, despite the fact that human rights violations had been reported by those same officials that were permanently deployed in the context of those operations, such as the command of the Special Forces Prefecture.

In other words, in addition to the adoption of offensive strategies by National Police operational commanders, through attacks or other offensive modus operandi, the planning allowed the same officers who committed violations to operate daily in the same roles.

In addition to the information drawn from judicial files, a team of experts on digital analysis, and weapons and ammunition, together with Amnesty International’s DVC, analysed dozens of pieces of video related to the Metropolitan Region, mainly Santiago, between the 18 October and 30 November. This study focused on the inappropriate and repeated use of shotguns and gas launchers and shows that the modus operandi remained unchanged during the period analysed.³⁶⁰

The analysis was based mainly on videos taken by the organizations Prensa Opal, Sutra DDHH and Piensa Prensa on 21, 23, 25, 28 and 29 October and on 5, 6, 8, 12, 15, 18 and 26 November; that is, just 12 days.

For the remaining days it was not possible to recognize specific officers, and in many of the events analysed it was not possible to identify a large number of National Police officers because they concealed their identification or did not have an emblem, such as those in GOPE. However, practically every day violations of human rights by agents of the state were identified.

The number of officers who made inappropriate use of shotguns or tear gas fired with a launcher would therefore have been much higher than that identified through the analysis of images, particularly by GOPE and FFEE officials.

Although, on most of the days analysed there were numerous incidents in which protesters threw multiple stones at officers and sometimes Molotov cocktails, numerous instances were also identified where the conduct of the police was not in line with the principles of necessity, proportionality and protecting life and physical integrity. National Police officials used their shotguns excessively and inappropriately and resorted to their use to deter protesters and not as a means of protection.

360 Although the National Police used deterrents such as batons, water cannon and gas launchers, Amnesty International focused on the use of shotguns, and to a lesser extent, tear gas fired with a launcher, because these were the weapons that caused greatest harm to physical integrity.

DAY OF PROTESTS AND INTERVENTION