the names that sound to take over in the PDI and Carabineros

Within the framework of the formalization of the now former director general of the Investigative Police (PDI), Sergio Muñoz, among all the revelations left by this great corruption scandal linked to the lawyer Luis Hermosilla, the Government’s criteria on the cases in that high authorities are involved in judicial cases: formalization is the deadline for a Government collaborator or a trusted authority to continue exercising their position. The departure of Muñoz and the next formalization of the general director of Carabineros, Ricardo Yáñez, which will be on May 7, prompted La Moneda to evaluate who will be his successors and, with this, look for an optimal profile to face the current crisis of security.

Around 4:30 p.m. yesterday, the Judiciary decided to place Muñoz in preventive detention, but before the precautionary measure was published, the Government set out to find a successor. Yesterday morning, Claudio González, deputy director of the PDI, arrived at La Moneda to meet with authorities, including the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, to deliver documents related to the replacement of the now former director general of the institution. police.

González arrived around 11 in the morning and for an hour he was in the Palace delivering documents that have to do with procedural aspects of the replacement. Minister Tohá, in Congress, after the formalization of Muñoz, gave an account of the details of the aspects to be considered when choosing the new director general of the PDI and what those folders contained: “First of all, the resume of the officials who are authorized to be appointed, their background, what their historical performance has been.” Secondly, the minister added, “her vision of the institution in the face of the challenges it has today in terms of security, the new criminal phenomena, the powers it has to face these tasks.”

Regarding the evaluation process, he specified that “it is being done precisely these days. All the complete folders with their history were given to me and the President of the Republic is the one who formulates this definition and, as soon as this is done, it will be communicated.”

According to the law, the general director must be elected from among the first eight senior officials of the institution. Among these options, the acting director González seems to have lost his career, due to his connection with a torture session against an aspiring detective, Mauricio Flores, a fact detailed in the book. Ratiby Javier Rebolledo and former detective Jesús Silva (published in 2021).

The second on the seniority list, and better looking in the eyes of the Executive –as published The counter– es Lautaro Arias Berrocal. He is the current deputy director of Police and Criminal Investigation and has a completely operational profile. But it is his career that is the most attractive part of his profile. Arias, during his beginnings, was an officer of Department V of the PDI, when that unit took over investigations into human rights violations committed during the dictatorship. There he was part of investigations in the Conference, Villa Grimaldi and Colonia Dignidad cases.

As for the replacement of General Yáñez in Carabineros, it is also governed by a seniority list, but in La Moneda there are two names that resonate in the hallways: Deputy Director General Marcelo Araya and National Director of Order and Security Enrique Monrás. Both have an operational profile, that is, they have more experience in the field and know the institution from working in the streets. Now, in different media it has emerged that Yáñez would seek to postpone his formalization, so his replacement would not be so urgent.

A profile of the opposite was the case of former general director Mario Rozas –known for leading the institution during the social outbreak–, who was serving as director of Welfare at the time of his appointment.

Both former Carabineros officials and Executive sources assure that it is General Araya who has the advantage in the race for the succession of Ricardo Yáñez. The current deputy director general has an extensive career: he has vast pedagogical experience at the Carabineros School, but he also worked in the intelligence area, was a commissioner in Iquique, as well as national director of the Department of Order and Security. Also, he was head of the Zone in Coquimbo and Antofagasta, and served as head of the Control and Public Order Zone in La Araucanía in 2019. He took classes at the Carabineros School, in the training center, in the Police Control area. Public order. Additionally, in 2016 he was sworn in as a lawyer before the Supreme Court..

His operational profile, with experience in academics, places him first in the eyes of the Government to lead the Carabineros institution. As for Monrás, he has a history of experience on the street and, currently, with the rank of inspector general, he serves as national director of Order and Security. However, his name is not within the profile that the Government is looking for.

The candidate was involved in a controversy after a report by Cyprus published in 2022. The actress María Paz Grandjean, during the social outbreak, was in La Moneda when Captain Tomás Rodríguez fired a “super” ammunition shock” against her, causing serious injuries to her face. After an internal investigation in Carabineros, Rodríguez was released from all responsibility.

In September 2020, former general Enrique Bassaletti and officer Enrique Monrás sent the prosecutor Ximena Chong –who was investigating the cause– two reports that ruled out police presence on the corner where the actress was hit. However, the information provided was a lie. The cameras of the Traffic Control Operational Unit managed to demonstrate that Captain Rodríguez and his troops were at the intersection of Alameda and Ramón Corvalán at the moment the actress received the impact on her face.

The professor at the UDP Law School and director of Public Space, Mauricio Duce, clarifies, first of all, that “The selection processes of the general directors, both of the Carabineros and of the Investigative Police, are regulated by law in this logic, that is, “You can’t choose just anyone.” Counting on that framework, then, “uI would not have to assume that within the pool that has to be chosen, everyone is in a position to meet the technical requirement,” says Duce.

With that clarified, regardless of whether the person in question has a more operational or academic profile, the discussion that the Government should have should focus on another area: “What we are designing is someone who is going to have leadership, institutional leadership and who has to have management and convening capacity. It has to be someone who, in the current context, gives many guarantees of transparency and have an impeccable track record. And that seems to me to be the key attributes.”

The director of Legal Clinics at the Diego Portales University and professor of the Department of Procedural Law, Cristián Riego, believes that the causes of Sergio Muñoz and Ricardo Yáñez are different and that is why he separates them in the analysis. Regarding Muñoz’s successor, he says that The Government “should probably do a more or less in-depth search to find a person who guarantees good behavior.” Furthermore, he believes that “There, some modifications to the corporate governance of the PDI are necessary, cI believe that power is simply concentrated in a single person, “That you really have the sum of all the power and you have no control, that’s part of the problem.”

Regarding Carabineros, on the other hand, he evaluates “that the lines are different”, since – from his perspective – the Government trusts Yáñez and has seen the will to “keep him.” The academic adds that “fWhat Minister Cordero said is disconcerting.” Furthermore, Riego points out that the legal situations are different between Muñoz and Yáñez, given that the former is in preventive detention for corruption and the latter has not yet been formalized.

Regarding the impact of the legal implications in both cases, he maintains that they are different, but Yáñez is proof that, even though it has not been formalized, the Government and Congress have managed to make progress in strengthening the police. Now, Duce points out that “The central thing here is going to be the capacity that the institutions have, thinking particularly about what happened with the director of the PDI, in the ability to react and “Give, with concrete actions, citizens many guarantees that a situation of this type will not be reproduced.”

Both the PDI and the Carabineros, for years, have been controversial sources of corruption or misuse of office, as we see now. In this sense, the director of Espacio Público maintains that the proliferation of these cases has to do with an issue that was discussed seven years ago, “but unfortunately it did not continue and little was done, or much less was done than it should have been.”

“Our police officers faced a very important challenge, both – I would say – due to excessive factual autonomy, on the one hand, and due to some performance problems,” says Duce. This independenceIt translated into less robust levels of external and internal control than what one would expect for the police,” he explains. “So, that is when institutions are exposed to these acts,” says the academic.

The agenda in this matter evolved in that showing a “need for major reforms in the police to overcome these problems, it was seen as an attack by one sector and was completely opposed to it, and instead a police policy was privileged in the slightly opposite direction, which is to strengthen the police forces”, to the detriment of ” external controls”, he specifies. The academic emphasizes that “these facts show that police policy has to be a balanced policy.”