Buildings were burned during protests in a city in southern Chile on Friday, while angry protesters responded to the fatal police shooting of a street juggler.
The shooting took place in the city of Panguipulli on Friday afternoon after police officers tried to identify the juggler, ADN Radio Chile reported. The regional government later said on Twitter that the man died as a result of the shooting.
By Friday night, video footage had spread on social media apparently showing burning buildings and barriers in Panguipulli. A local official, Carlos Durán, posted a video on Facebook showing several fires across the city, with thick plumes of smoke rising in the night sky.
News reports indicated that several government buildings were among the waves. A photographer took photos of firefighters fighting a fire at the mayor’s office.
There were also confrontations between protesters and police in the capital Santiago, hundreds of kilometers north of Panguipulli. People across Santiago have expressed outrage over the shooting by hitting pots and pans, a ritual for broadcasting public discontent known in Latin America as a cacerolazo, roughly translated as ‘casseroling’.
Some Twitter users footage posted of the flames in Panguipulli with the hashtag: “He did not die, they killed him.”
Others have called for police reform to compare the episode to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota last year, which staged nationwide protests in the United States. Mr. Floyd, a 46-year-old Swartman died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground under the knee of a white police officer.
“It happened in broad daylight in a moment of complete peace and without any threat to public safety,” said Chilean writer and literary critic Pedro Gandolfo. posted on Twitter. A shameful act with a tragic result. ‘
Authorities had not yet identified the juggler early Saturday morning. Panguipulli Mayor Rodrigo Valdivia told CNN Chile he was a “peaceful person” in his mid-20s and living on the streets.
ADN Radio Chile has posted a video of the shooting on its website. The 25-second clip shows a man dressed in black standing at an intersection, looking at several knives and shouting at two police officers approaching him with guns drawn.
After one officer fired two shots, the man chased the officer into the intersection. Three more shots are heard, and the man appears to be falling to the ground.
ADN quoted a police officer, Lt. Col. Boris Alegría, as saying on Friday that the juggler was wearing a machete and that the officer who shot him was acting in self-defense.
Just before midnight, the station reported that the officer who shot the man had been detained and that his arrest would be formalized on Saturday.
César Asenjo Jerez, a regional official, said in a brief version video posted on a government Twitter account Friday night that a police officer had used a service weapon in Panguipulli and that authorities were investigating it. An official who answered the phone early Saturday at the regional government headquarters said no one was available for comment.
Police misconduct came under scrutiny in Chile after massive protests in 2019 over economic concerns, which often escalated into violence and faced police brutality. The state prosecutor has received more than 8,000 reports of human rights violations, including hundreds of complaints of permanent eye damage due to rubber bullets.
The abuse led to widespread calls to reform the national police force, which was never significantly reformed after the end of the dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet in 1990. Human rights groups and analysts have called for more oversight of the power budget and other measures that would work effectively. bring it under civilian control.