English
Journalists sue the Department of Public Security for information about police officers involved in gender violence
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The number of police officers who have been arrested for domestic violence and sexual assault, or how many officers have been convicted for gender violence are undisclosed statistics, although they were requested in early April from the Police by journalists Cristina del Mar Quiles and Syra Ortiz-Blanes of the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) and of El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald, respectively. After many unsuccessful follow-up efforts, the petition is now before the San Juan Superior Court after a request for mandamus was filed on Tuesday to obtain this public information from the Department of Public Security and the Puerto Rico Police Bureau. “At a time when the island has been sunken under a deep wave of gender violence cases, in which even the work of our public institutions has been questioned, few issues are of greater public interest than what’s reflected in these requests for information that are the matter of this legal recourse,” the mandamus establishes. “There are actions by the Government of Puerto Rico against gender violence that have nothing to do with creating new laws or making new plans, but with the obligation of the Government itself to comply with current laws, and this is a great example. Collecting and publishing reliable data and having it available and up-to-date is something that’s already the duty of security agencies,” said Carla Minet, executive director of the CPI.
