Argentina’s government decided yesterday Wednesday to relax the rules on the use of firearms by the federal (national) security forces, especially in cases of resistance against the authority or an attempt to escape. The said decision reinstates a 2018 protocol that was later annulled by the outgoing center-left government.

The new regulation, expected to be published today in the official Government Gazette, sets forth a series of circumstances in which the use of firearms is permitted, especially in the case of imminent danger to the lives of police officers or citizens from criminals, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said during an interview with the Press.

It also allows the use of firearms to prevent a very serious criminal offense, to neutralize suspects who pose an imminent danger or resist the authority, and to prevent the flee of a person who constitutes imminent danger to the life or physical integrity of citizens.

Police officers, Mrs. Bullrich said, will be empowered to act without fear, as every fearful police officer is a potentially dead police officer. According to the Minister, this framework sets clear rules for situations in which members of law enforcement forces are reluctant to use their service weapons out of fear of suffering the consequences.

Yet, Mrs. Bullrich assured, the concept of progressiveness will remain in force and firearms should not be used if possible.

With this announcement, a protocol that was implemented last month as a priority for the port corps is extended to all national forces. The port corps is faced with incidents of organized crime in northern areas where it guards rivers forming borders; yet it will soon be equipped with more powerful weapons.

Mrs. Bulrich is effectively reinstating a protocol she herself put in force in 2018 when she was a Minister under liberal President Mauricio Macri.

The protocol will apply to national forces (police, gendarmerie, border police) with jurisdiction to intervene throughout the territory. As Argentina is a federal state, the provincial police have their own regulations.

Source: APA MPA

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