Dal­mau San­ti­ago said the Sen­ate, an insti­tu­tion which rep­re­sents the peo­ple and which should seek the pro­tec­tion and wel­fare of its cit­i­zens, should ini­ti­ate a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the vio­lence that took place in front of the Capitol.

“The pos­si­ble vio­la­tions of civil rights by police offi­cers against pro­test­ers who were exer­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tional right to free speech must be investigated.

We must take the nec­es­sary steps to avoid these events in the future. The Sen­ate must abide by the words of its Pres­i­dent who has said he will “uphold the Police Chief’s vow to guar­an­tee the con­sti­tu­tional and civil rights of our cit­i­zens,” said Dal­mau Santiago.

The minor­ity sen­ate leader indi­cated that the videos taken by secu­rity cam­eras in the Capi­tol must be care­fully stud­ied to iden­tify spe­cific cases of unjus­ti­fied aggres­sion that war­rant refer­ral to the Jus­tice department.

He explained that this inves­ti­ga­tion would “assure the com­mit­ment made by the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent to inves­ti­gate the per­for­mance of the Police Chief in the exe­cu­tion of his actions.”

Dal­mau Santiago’s peti­tion was made under the Sen­ate Res­o­lu­tion 1433, which orders both the Judi­cial Penal and Safety com­mit­tee and the Judi­cial Affairs com­mit­tee to investigate.

The sen­a­tor recalled that the Bar Asso­ci­a­tion car­ried out its own inves­ti­ga­tion of the events at the Capi­tol, aimed at pro­tect­ing people’s civil rights.

He added that the report pre­sented by the Bar Asso­ci­a­tion includes an eval­u­a­tion of the videos and pho­tographs of the more than 48 per­sons inter­viewed and clearly demon­strates that the police used exces­sive and dis­pro­por­tion­ate force against the marchers.

Even though the report indi­cates that there were instances where the marchers cursed and hurled objects at the police, it also reveals that police offi­cers used force, tac­tics and aggres­sion that was dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the provo­ca­tion they wished to repel.

The sen­a­tor revealed that these vio­la­tions had the full endorse­ment of Police Chief José Figueroa San­cha, whose back­ground denotes a mis­man­age­ment of civil rights infractions.

Dal­mau San­ti­ago added that Figueroa San­cha, as sec­ond in com­mand in the Puerto Rico FBI, headed an oper­a­tive against lead­ers of the Inde­pen­dence Party which ended with the unlaw­ful entry of a build­ing in Rio Piedras.